Discriminations

I have an ongoing email correspondence with a good old friend (who’s also an old good friend) who doesn’t think things are as bad as I do. I respect this friend’s views. He’s sort of liberal but basically non-ideological and non-partisan and reads more widely than most. I will refrain from naming him so as not to endanger his relationships with his liberal, i.e, not so open-minded, friends.

In any event, since it’s impossible to comprehend how bad cancel culture has become without reading widely on conservative sites, I thought it might be useful to collect a few of the sorts of examples of cancel culture and spreading general nuttiness that unfortunately pop up every day. I don’t see how one could see this sort of stuff day after day and not think we have a real problem.

Here are a few from the last few days.

• The online publication Slate suspended a well-known podcast host who suggested people who are not black should be able to quote the n-word in a non-slur context.
• Democrats in Congress escalate pressure on tech execs to censor more.
• A veteran Bronx school superintendent was fired when she was fired after sharing information in a struggle session about her grandparents losing two children in the Holocaust and for refusing to take part in a black power salute. She’s suing.
• A Smith College staff member resigned because of attacks on her “white privilege.” She’s suing.
• The Oregon Dept. of Education encourages “ethnomathematics, stating that white supremacy manifests itself in math teaching by such requirements as “getting the right answer.”
• Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation gives millions of dollars to support the teaching of “anti-racist math.”
• Lehigh University asked members of its business school to make short videos advising the new Biden administration in areas of their specialty. All passed politically correct muster except one, on poverty and its relation to race, which was deemed “divisive.” His comments, correct or not, were not “divisive.” Nevertheless, he was roundly attacked by students and other faculty members, his video was withdrawn, and later it was reposted along with several critiques of it. The conventional videos earned no such responses.
• A columnist in the American University newspaper calls white students returning to campus “an invasive species” and accuses them of “settler colonialism.”

This sort of behavior may have become the new normal, but it’s not normal.