Elsewhere (121)
May 01, 2014
Thomas Sowell on political dogma versus education:
Attorney General [Eric] Holder’s threats of legal action against schools where minority students are disciplined more often than he wants are a sweeping and damaging blow to the education of poor and minority students across the country. Among the biggest obstacles to educating children in many ghetto schools are disruptive students whose antics, threats and violence can make education virtually impossible... The idea that Eric Holder, or anybody else, can sit in Washington and determine how many disciplinary actions against individual students are warranted or unwarranted in schools across the length and breadth of this country would be laughable if it were not so tragic.
Ah, but reality be damned. Morality be damned. We must have racial quotas in school discipline. It’s the progressive way. Because nothing says fairness like dishing out excuses according to how brown a student is. And attempting to reduce disruption and violence by punishing it less when racial quotas have been reached... well, what could possibly go wrong?
Via Ted, a white male student named Tal Fortgang does as instructed and checks his privilege:
I actually went and checked the origins of my privileged existence, to empathise with those whose underdog stories I can’t possibly comprehend. I have unearthed some examples of the privilege with which my family was blessed, and now I think I better understand those who assure me that skin colour allowed my family to flourish today.
Perhaps it’s the privilege my grandfather and his brother had to flee their home as teenagers when the Nazis invaded Poland, leaving their mother and five younger siblings behind, running and running until they reached a Displaced Persons camp in Siberia, where they would do years of hard labour in the bitter cold until World War II ended. Maybe it was the privilege my grandfather had of taking on the local Rabbi’s work in that DP camp, telling him that the spiritual leader shouldn’t do hard work, but should save his energy to pass Jewish tradition along to those who might survive. Perhaps it was the privilege my great-grandmother and those five great-aunts and uncles I never knew had of being shot into an open grave outside their hometown. Maybe that’s my privilege.
Naturally, Mr Fortgang is immediately berated by his betters, those more pure than he, and denounced as a “privileged piece of shit.”
It’s tempting to blame the rich for this insidery cluelessness and indifference to aesthetics but the same thing goes on in the public art sector. In Edmonton it made news that public sculpture commissioned by Keeley Haftner, consisting of two stacked bales of recycled trash, was deemed so bereft of merit that an area man wrapped it in a tarp and put a sign on it noting sensibly that, “Our tax dollars are for keeping garbage OFF the streets.”
Well, if you continually disrespect your customers, your audience, treat them as rubes, suckers, and piss about at their expense, the smarter ones in that audience will tend to go elsewhere.
As usual, feel free to share your own links and snippets in the comments. It’s what these posts are for.