In A Shocking About Face Some Americans Want To Go Back To The Pre-Civil Rights Era

I ask that Smith College stop reducing my personhood to a racial category. Stop telling me what I must think and feel about myself. Stop presuming to know who I am or what my culture is based upon my skin color. Stop asking me to project stereotypes and assumptions onto others based on their skin color.

…I endured racially hostile comments, and was expected to participate in racially prejudicial behavior as a continued condition of my employment.

…Every day, I watch my colleagues manage student conflict through the lens of race, projecting rigid assumptions and stereotypes on students, thereby reducing them to the color of their skin. I am asked to do the same, as well as to support a curriculum for students that teaches them to project those same stereotypes and assumptions onto themselves and others. I believe such a curriculum is dehumanizing, prevents authentic connection, and undermines the moral agency of young people who are just beginning to find their way in the world.

…I can no longer continue to work in an environment where I am constantly subjected to additional scrutiny because of my skin color. I can no longer work in an environment where I am told, publicly, that my personal feelings of discomfort under such scrutiny are not legitimate but instead are a manifestation of white supremacy. Perhaps most importantly, I can no longer work in an environment where I am expected to apply similar race-based stereotypes and assumptions to others, and where I am told — when I complain about having to engage in what I believe to be discriminatory practices — that there are “legitimate reasons for asking employees to consider race” in order to achieve the college’s “social justice objectives.” Read more»

Jodi Shaw, in Bari Weiss, “Whistleblower at Smith College Resigns Over Racism,” Common Sense With Bari Weiss (Feb, 19, 2021)

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3 comments

  1. Victor Davis Hanson recently commented about the unseen tragedy being the resources wasted in this generation rather then being used to advance our nation and economy. I can recall political correctness wasting time and resources starting in the 80’s when I served in the military. Over the next 20 years of my career mandatory briefings and training programs, as well as exhaustive investigations followed grievance complaints, increasingly took up the time and resources of the workplace. Rather than training in skills that win battles and increase readiness, we were learning the mandatory code words necessary to preserve one’s career, holding silly meetings, and pretending all was well. There is not only the obvious injustice, but a hidden cost to all this insanity.

  2. Having read Pluckrose and Lindsay’s “Cynical Theories” I fully understand how the situation at Smith College developed – and is continuing to develop elsewhere, as well. I feel badly that this employee had to resign due to pressures she had to endure under CRT. But I do not understand, per the title of this blog post, how being against this extreme Leftist “Theory” business takes things back to pre-civil rights era. Instead of properly proceeding from the enactment of that 1960’s legislation into what could have been an orderly adjustment of various racial opportunities, the extremists want only revenge, pushing their agenda into place under the threat of violent dissent. This, of course, accelerated during the late 90’s and moved to warp speed during the second decade of this century. If some strong push-back is emerging, it should come as no surprise. In the final chapter of their book, Pluckrose and Lindsay offer some sane approaches to moving this over-the-top radical Theory back to a (classic) Liberal position. One can only hope, but my confidence level is not very high.

    • George,

      Shaw’s complaint is exactly that of black Americans in the pre-civil-rights era. She is being judged not by the content of her character but by the color of her skin. Smith College is practicing the very bigotry and racism which the civil rights movement opposed.

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