Where they burn portraits, they will burn people.
ETA: Now they’re burning down the buildings (h/t With the thoughts you’d be thinkin):
Political Critiques
Mostly responses to Feminism, SJWs and other strains of Cultural Marxism
Cathedral Round-Up #7: Colonialism 2.0
The purpose of Cathedral Round-Up is to keep track of what our betters have in store for us. This month we are headed to Harvard (and for a side-excursion, Oxford,) to witness the progressive push to expand the notion of “refugees” to include virtually everyone not already living in the West; the sheer heart-breaking difficulties of being one of the world’s most privileged black people; and Cecil Rhodes‘s pro-Muslim legacy.
Jacqueline Bhabha brings us “When Water is Safer than Land,” repeating the common claim that “no one puts their children in a boat unless the water is safer than the land” that was so commonly bandied about in the wake of the drowning of 3 year old Alan Kurdi. Alan’s death is a tragedy, but his family was trying to leave Turkey, a peaceful, relatively prosperous nation, not a violence-riddled war zone.
I argued back in Newton’s Third Law of Politics that the official definition of “refugee” is already broad enough to encompass almost anyone the government wants it to; Professor Bhabha wants to do away with the concept of “refugee” entirely, in favor of “distress migrant”:
… news coverage and political attention have highlighted the irrationality and inefficiency of our outdated legal and administrative system of migration management—a system now manifestly premised on incoherent dichotomies and false assumptions.
The most fundamental dichotomy lies at the very root of modern migration law, separating bona fide “refugees” with a “well-founded fear of persecution” under the 1951 UN Convention on the Status of Refugees, from spontaneous “economic migrants” seeking to take advantage of greater prosperity and opportunity outside their home countries. The former are considered legitimate recipients of international protection, the latter unlawful border-crossers.
But for more than a decade, migration experts within the United Nations, in the immigration and justice ministries of many countries, and civil-society organizations such as the Women’s Refugee Commission, the International Rescue Committee, and Human Rights Watch, have acknowledged the artificiality of this dichotomy, given the reality of “mixed migration”—distress migration prompted by multiple, interconnected factors, including survival fears and economic desperation. …
Priority in these entry categories should be given to “distress migrants,” a category that should replace the now unworkable distinction between “legal” refugee and economic but “illegal” forced migrant.
In short, Bhabha thinks it’s unfair to prevent anyone who lives in a country that’s poorer than the West from migrating wherever they want to go. Migration to the West is a human right; wanting to control who enters your country is outdated and shows that you’re not a “team player”:
But such official resettlement is sustainable only if it is a joint endeavor, agreed upon by countries that are willing to host relocated refugees and share the responsibility for doing so with others in their region. The current intransigence of relatively prosperous EU member states such as France, the UK, Slovenia, Hungary, and the Czech Republic vitiates this sort of collective humanitarian endeavor and unreasonably leaves the protection “burden” only to the exemplary few (Germany and Sweden at present).
Germany broke EU rules by inviting in a few million migrants without the consent of the other member states, but Hungary is being totally meanie pants for insisting on this weird notion of “national sovereignty” instead of just lying back, spreading its borders, and thinking of Queen Victoria.
Maybe we should adopt a policy of always letting Germany do whatever it wants to its neighbors–would have saved us a lot of effort about 102 – 71 years ago.
Bhabha also notes that the current system rewards those who break the rules by migrating illegally–if you can just get to Europe, chances are you’ll be fine–while punishing those who try to obey the rules by filling out all of their paperwork and then sitting out the multi-year process just to get rejected. This is completely accurate.
Bhabha believes that “distress migration” to wealthy countries is inevitable and unstoppable, but has several recommendations for making the immigration system more humane and less likely to involve dead children:
- Massively overhaul the immigration bureaucracy (this I actually agree with–bureaucratic systems tend to be awful.)
- Let in all of the “distress migrants.”
- Westerners should stop the wars in foreign countries (how, exactly?)
- More funding for refugee camps in places like Turkey so people will stay there instead of migrating to Europe. (I don’t know what the conditions in Turkish refugee camps are like, but I bet they could be much nicer.)
- Westerners need to make economic development happen in the third world so people will want to stay there, (because third worlders can’t run their own economies?)
It’s funny how people who think colonialism was evil simultaneously think Africans can’t feed their own children or run their own economies without white people stepping in.
Of course, given current fertility rates, the prospects for feeding all of Africa’s children without the rest of the world stepping in do look pretty grim:
Bhabha has left out the simplest, most humane solution: birth control.
Interestingly, Professor Jacqueline Bhabha is an English woman who obtained her last name via her husband, Homi K. Bhabha, son of an Indian Parsi family. The Parsis are interesting in their own right, but that is a matter for another day. Alas, I have not been able to figure out if Homi is the son of the similarly-named Indian nuclear physicist Homi J. Bhabha. (At the very least, if you meet a Bhabha, chances are he’s an exceptionally intelligent person.)
I have noticed that elites tend to be highly international people–born in one country, raised in another, married into a third. A highschool fiend hailed from four different countries; another attended an elite boarding school 15,000 miles away from her family. And they know each other–“Oh, you’re from Hong Kong? Do you know so-and-so? You do? What a coincidence!”
President Obama, son of a Kenyan and an American of mostly English extraction (who met while studying Russian in Hawaii,) lived for four years in Indonesia, and then ended up in Chicago.
Carlos Slim, largest shareholder of the New York Times and one of the richest men in the world, is a Mexican of Lebanese descent–“Slim” was “Salim” back when his father moved to Mexico.
And as Tolstoy notes, at the time of Napoleon’s invasion, the Russian ruling class spoke French, not Russian.
According to the NY Times, getting Homi K. Bhabha, who taught in the Afro-American Studies department in 2001, was a major coup for Harvard. Sure, Indian-born Homi might not look like an expert on the experiences of African Americans, but his co-professors are enthusiastic about his work:
“”He’s manifestly one of the most distinguished cultural theorists of the postcolonial and diasporic experience in the world,’ said Lawrence Buell, the department chairman.”
Other professors point out that Homi’s “expertise” may be entirely high-falutin’ smoke and mirrors:
In 1998, Mr. Bhabha won second place (Judith Butler, a gender theorist at Berkeley, took the top prize) in the annual Bad Writing Contest sponsored by the journal Philosophy and Literature for this passage from an essay on mimicry: “If, for a while, the ruse of desire is calculable for the uses of discipline soon the repetition of guilt, justification, pseudo-scientific theories, superstition, spurious authorities and classifications can be seen as the desperate effort to ‘normalize’ formally the disturbance of a discourse of splitting that violates the rational, enlightened claims of its enunciatory modality.”
A developing theme in this series is the way that elite colleges use majority-white people with a small percentage of black ancestry to pad their diversity numbers. In Homi’s case, “whiteness” is debatable, but he is clearly an elite, light-skinned Indian of Persian (aka Aryan) descent, not one of India’s dark-skinned “untouchables,” Scheduled Castes, or Dalits.
The official logic of “diversity” and Affirmative Action is that universities should correct for past oppression and reflect the racial composition of the population they serve by correcting for the negative effects of racism and poverty on test scores. The logic runs that a poor kid growing up in Detroit with one parent in jail and the other busy working two jobs just to make ends meet is going to attend fewer SAT prep classes than rich kids attending TJ, and so his SAT scores may not reflect his true potential.
In practice, places like Harvard end up with a bunch of high-class elites like Homi who can ticky-box “diversity” but are not actually part of an oppressed minority. (A bunch of white “Hispanics” get in this way, too.)
Elites love diversity–so long as “diversity” means other elites. And they can’t understand why their proles insist on icky nationalism:
“Ewww. Get it away.”
Jacqueline Bhabha on Merkel:
Germany’s Angela Merkel has emerged as the surprising heroine of the humanitarian lobby, leveraging her country’s ever-present past and robust economy to welcome more than one million refugees and to stress the potential demographic dividend of a healthy, youthful workforce for an aging continent.
Yes, I’m sure Merkel is the kind of elite who just loves spending time with the huddled masses of the third world.
And on European fears:
The notion that the magnitude of refugee arrival, on the other hand, poses any sort of threat to Europe’s future prosperity is laughable. The Syrians arriving represent less than 1 percent of the population of the European Union (EU), the world’s richest continent. In Lebanon, an incomparably poorer polity, every fourth inhabitant is now a Syrian refugee, and yet even that war-torn country is not at the brink of collapse. The current flow of refugees poses no objective threat to the future or prosperity of Europe.
Because every country wants to look like Lebanon?
Leaving aside the fact that not all of the migrants are from Syria–many of them are, ahem, “distress migrants” from Africa or Asia fleeing poverty, not ISIS–an argument that Europe can handle its current migration levels is not an argument that Europe can handle far more migrants.
Germany’s overall fertility rate is one of the lowest in the world–about 1.4 children per woman. (Slightly over 2 is necessary for population stability, neither growing nor shrinking.) This means that the population of Germany is shrinking.
As of 2014, 16.3 million of Germany’s 81.5 million people–20% of the population–were immigrants or the children of immigrants. In 2009, about 4.3 million Germans are Muslim–5.4% of the population–but due to much higher fertility rates, 9.1% of Germany’s children were Muslims.
A million migrants arrived in Germany in 2015, and more still arrive every day. Keep this up for a few years, and yes, a very large percent of the country will not be German anymore.
I know it’s unreasonable to expect Harvard professors to be able to do math, but we can:
If Germany has 81.5 million people, and about 18% of them are children, that’s 14.7 million children. Of those, 9.1%, or 1.3 million, are Muslim.
If Germany has about 4.3 million Muslims, and 1.3 million of them are children, then 3 million are adults.
Let’s suppose Germany accepts a modest 1 million refugees a year for just two more years, (for 3 million total,) and they have the same TFR as the folks already in Germany. Now 16% of German children are Muslim.
Keep it up for 9 years (10 million migrants,) and 24% of future voters are Muslim (and that’s not counting the shrinking native German population during this time.)
These are obviously extremely rough numbers, but they are not unreasonable.
If your goal is, “make Germany look more like Lebanon,” then that’s one way to do it. And perhaps the German people are perfectly happy accepting a million migrants a year. But let’s not banter about facile claims like “less than 1 percent” when advocating virtually limitless, long-term immigration policies in a world with over a billion people who would happily move to Germany (or virtually any other Western country) if they could.
Elites think that if elite migration is good for them, then the mass migration of unskilled, illiterate poor folks will be great for proles, and then are confused when the masses do not react with universal jubilation at the results:
The Daily Mail summarizes:
Alexandra Mezher, 22, fatally stabbed at migrant centre where she worked
Her family, who are originally from Lebanon, described her as ‘an angel’ …
A boy, 15, living at centre, arrested on suspicion of murder is from Somalia
Teenage killer was overpowered by other children living at the centre
Swedish police demand more cash to stem rising violence in the country
Italian police have arrested a Senegalese illegal immigrant who prosecutors believe killed Ashley Olsen, a U.S. woman who was found dead in her apartment in Florence last weekend.
“We have collected very serious evidence of his guilt,” Florence chief prosecutor Giuseppe Creazzo told reporters at a news conference on Thursday after the man was arrested and questioned in the early hours of the morning. …
She was strangled in the early hours of Friday, Creazzo said, but the autopsy revealed that she had two fractures to her skull — injuries that would also have proved fatal.
Mamadou Kamara, an 18-year-old from the Ivory Coast, allegedly slit the throat of Vincenzo Solano, 68, and then attacked his Spanish-born wife, Mercedes Ibanez, 70.
Ms Ibanez fell to her death from a second-floor balcony, during a robbery that turned violent. …
Mr Kamara was arrested after police searched his bag on Sunday as he returned to the migrant centre.
Inside they found a mobile telephone, a laptop computer, a video camera and a pair of trousers, allegedly belonging to Mr Solano, that were covered in blood.
Of course, Professor Bhabha, living comfortably in Massachusetts, does not have to worry about being raped or murdered by “distress migrants” from Africa let in under the rhetoric that Turkey is not good enough for Syrian refugees.
But Professor Bhabha isn’t just advocating for increased African migration to Europe; she has also noticed that places like Mexico and Honduras have astronomically high murder rates, and therefore wants to let them into the US. Perhaps there is some magical quality to the soil in America that she thinks will make people suddenly be less murderous when they step over the border.
Prudencio Ramirez stands accused of killing his 18 year old girlfriend and her three year old son in Washington State, the Tri-City Herald reports.
Prosecutors say the victims were shot and then stuffed inside a burning car.
The coroner says it is likely the little boy was burned alive.
Or perhaps she is just an idiot.
Either way, expect to see a lot more people talking about “distress migration.”
********
Switching gears, our next article is My Harvard Education: Learning “what it means to be a walking disruption,” by Jenny Gathright, former editor of the Harvard Crimson and currently assisting Harvard Magazine’s editorial staff. She is also author of Existence as Resistance: Black Chronicles II and Hashtag #Solidarity.
Ms. Gathright starts with a quote from Ta-Nehisi Coates:
You are growing into consciousness, and my wish for you is that you feel no need to constrict yourself to make other people comfortable…The people who must believe they are white can never be your measuring stick. I would not have you descend into your own dream. I would have you be a conscious citizen of this terrible and beautiful world.
I know pretty much everyone spouts vacuous “be yourself” bullshit, but it’s still annoying–everyone has “constrict” themselves to make other comfortable. Just because you feel like farting while in a crowded elevator does not mean you do it; just because you feel like yelling at your cubicle-mate every time he starts humming does not mean you do it; just because you feel comfortable wearing a bathrobe and slippers does not mean you wear them to a job interview. Living among other humans–even in hunter gatherer tribes in the arctic!–means paying attention to social norms and controlling one’s impulses in order to act appropriately.
Anyone who thinks they are special enough to avoid normal human social norms is a fucking sociopath.
Second, “must believe they are white.” ??? What does that even mean?
White person: I don’t see race.
POC: OMG how racist of you to deny my blackness and your white privilege!
White person: Oh, okay. I guess I’m white.
POC: OMG, how racist of you to insist on believing that you’re white!
Continuing on, Ms. Gathright describes a conversation between a guy handing out apples in the cafeteria and her “house tutor” (“RA” in common speak.)
He is standing in front of me, and I am standing next to Jonathan, my lovely, gentle, kind Lowell House tutor.
That sounds awfully intimate.
Ms. Gathright is disturbed because Jeremy and apple-guy are happily talking to each other instead of to her.
Maybe I am just woman enough, just brown enough, to be rendered invisible. It might all be in my head, but isn’t that sometimes just enough to make a moment uncomfortable?
Things that are “all in your head” can indeed make moments uncomfortable, like when you hallucinate spiders crawling under your skin. But that doesn’t make them real.
Apple guy talks about apples:
He is talking about seeds and grafting, about history. Did you know that hard cider was the Founding Fathers’ primary method of hydration? Did you know that they were all drunk pretty much all the time? …
I am distracted. His historical factoids about hard cider have gotten me thinking about a drunken Thomas Jefferson wandering around Monticello, and this image makes me sick and scared in a way that the two men next to me will never understand. [bold mine]
If you are genuinely “sick and scared” from simply imagining someone getting tipsy on hard cider, you need psychological help. That is not normal. If you are not genuinely “sick and scared,” then you are a liar.
There is a distance between my body and the bodies this place was built for. I feel it every day in Lowell dining hall, when I look up at portraits of white men and wonder if they expected me to be here.
Well, the folks it was built for are probably all dead, so unless Ms. Gathright is sitting in a graveyard while writing, I guess this is technically true.
Ta-Nehisi Coates uses “body” where a normal person would write “souls,” because he’s an atheist. There are times when he pulls it off, and times when the effect is horribly awkward.
This is one of those awkward times.
The Lowell House dining hall is not as fancy as Harvard’s freshman dining hall, but the chandelier is a nice touch:
According to the History of Lowell House:
In the Dining Hall are portraits of President Lowell and his wife; his sister Amy Lowell (Pulitzer prize winning poet, and a lover of scandal credited with introducing D. H. Lawrence to America); his brother Percival Lowell (the astronomer who spearheaded the search for the planet Pluto); and his grandfather John Amory Lowell (a fellow of Harvard College for forty years).
Lowell House was built in 1930; Harvard Medical accepted its first black students way back in 1850:
1869: George Lewis Ruffin is the first black to earn a degree from Harvard Law School. In 1883 Ruffin became Massachusetts’ first African-American judge.
1869: Harvard awards its first degree in dentistry to an African American named Robert Tanner Freeman.
1870: Harvard College graduates its first black student, Richard Theodore Greener, who goes on to a career as an educator and lawyer. After graduating from Harvard, Greener becomes a faculty member at the University of South Carolina. He is the first known black to be hired to the faculty of a flagship state university.
1870: George F. Grant graduates with a degree of dentistry from Harvard. He later serves as its first black instructor at the dental school from 1878 to 1889.
1895: W.E.B. Du Bois earns his Ph.D. in history from Harvard, the first black to do so at Harvard.
1896: Booker T. Washington receives an honorary master’s degree from Harvard University.
1907: Alain LeRoy Locke of Harvard University becomes the first black Rhodes scholar.
1912: Carter G. Woodson becomes the second black in the U.S. to earn a doctorate in history. His Ph.D. is from Harvard. He goes on to found the Journal of Negro History in 1916 and inaugurates Negro History Week in 1926.
1921: Amherst College graduate Charles Hamilton Houston becomes the first black editor on the Harvard Law Review.
1933: Harvard Business School graduates its first black MBA student, H. Naylor Fitzhugh, the founder of Howard University’s marketing department.
In other words, at the time Lowell House was built, black students had been attending Harvard for decades. There is no “distance” between Ms. Gathright’s body and the bodies it was built for, because people like her were in the group it was built for. So, yes, I guarantee you that the folks in the portraits expected people like you to be there.
You’d think she’d have Googled “when did Harvard start accepting black people” to find out if the folks in the portraits had black students before writing an article about how stressed out she was by her incorrect assumptions.
For goodness’s sake, this is Massachusetts.
But getting back to the article:
I am taking an economics class on libertarianism. I don’t consider myself a libertarian at all, so I took the class to challenge my thinking. …
One day, we are talking about the consequences of drug prohibition. Libertarians believe that the negative effects outweigh the positive effects. I’m sympathetic to the viewpoint, and I’m glad this policy debate is a topic of discussion. Professor Miron briefly lists “increased racial profiling” and the resulting “racial tensions” as a negative consequence of drug prohibition laws. He moves on—he has other slides to discuss, other lines of argument to explore. But I am stuck, still thinking about what it means for him to name “increased racial profiling” and “racial tensions” without naming Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Rekia Boyd, Freddie Gray, Sandra Bland…I want to stand up and scream about how the things he is talking about tear bodies apart. [bold mine]
Geez. Psycho, much?
Seriously, this woman can’t watch two people talk about apples without wanting to know why they aren’t talking to HER; she cant look at her posh, crystal chandeliered cafeteria without wondering what the people in the portraits would have thought of HER; she can’t listen to a lecture without wanting to scream that the professor didn’t talk about exactly the things SHE wants to talk about.
I want to be clear here: I’m not asking my professor to re-write his lecture. He is teaching a class that doesn’t center on my experience in every moment, and that’s okay. This isn’t necessarily about my professor or my classmates or my syllabus.
When you feel compelled to clarify that it’s okay if a class doesn’t center on, “MY experience in EVERY moment,” that is a sign that you are hilariously unaware of just how narcissistic you are.
I am talking to my friend. He has had a tough couple of days. He is telling me about a class on race and gender that he is taking. He is feeling the course material in his body, he says. The readings are causing him pain. … Section is causing me pain.
I think people actually do this thing where, by constantly reading/watching/thinking/talking about something horrible, they prompt their brains to release far more stress hormones than their physical situation actually warrants. This is because our brains can’t really tell the difference between “picture I saw on TV” and “thing I saw in real life,” and a person being murdered before your eyes in real life would be a very concerning thing indeed that you probably ought to do something about (fight or flight,) thus prompting a massive outpouring of hormones.
Feminists do this by reading sixteen blog posts in a row about rape; white nationalists do this by reading sixteen blog posts in a row about “white genocide”; housewives do this by reading about children who’ve been abducted and murdered; etc. I do this by researching human sacrifice in animist religions.
By the end, you feel awful.
There are was to deal with this: First, realize that your brain is producing hormones in response to a threat that is not actually physically present in the room with you. Second, calm down. I find meditation helps, or prayer if you’re religious. Third, recognize that this is not a healthy thing to do to yourself. Take breaks, don’t let yourself get sucked into reading 16 articles in a row, and most importantly, don’t do it at 4 AM, because that is a quick road to nightmaresville.
Ms. Gathright then discusses Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff’s Atlantic article, “The Coddling of the American Mind”:
I could critique their piece on several grounds. But one of the first things I thought when I read it was, “Where is this movement, and how did I miss it?” Because here is my truth: I don’t see a ton of liberal students trying to “scrub” Harvard’s campuses “clean” of offensive or uncomfortable ideas. Instead, I see all around me students, my friends, who are willing to be made uncomfortable by words and ideas all the time. I see students who willingly walk into classrooms that will make them, in the words of my friend, feel the course material in their bodies.
Oh, honey, don’t you understand that feeling bad is exactly how the SJWs want you to feel? You feel bad because you have already imbibed a political ideology that dictates how you react to the world. You are not “willing” to be made uncomfortable by words or ideas; you make these things make you uncomfortable.
There is a difference. Being willing to be uncomfortable means being willing to consider that someone else’s POV might be right.
When I read about cannibalism, I am uncomfortable, but I am not willing to consider that cannibalism is moral. When I speak with a friend about philosophy, I am willing to consider that they might be correct. If they question some deeply held assumption, I may be uncomfortable–but I am not going to have nightmares.
Some people go through this place without having to ask and answer hard questions about the spaces they occupy. I have had to constantly articulate and question my relationship with this institution: the way I fit into its history, and the way I feel in its classrooms.
Aww, it sure is hard being at Harvard. I mean, if you can’t feel insanely privileged while siting in a cafeteria with glittering chandeliers or attending classes taught by some of the most elite professors in the entire world, I don’t think anything will.
************
Oxford, Rhodes, and Syria
Hey, did you hear about the “Rhodes Must Fall” protests at Oxford?
Student campaigners have condemned an Oxford college for deciding to keep its statue of Cecil Rhodes, claiming the college has been influenced by a “dictatorship” of donors.
Ella Jeffreys, a master’s student, told the Guardian: “We feel that the decision of Oriel College, due to the threat of withdrawing funding by alumni, shows that money talks over students. …
The campaign said in a statement: “Oriel has been rushed into this decision by the irresponsible threats of wealthy individuals. This is a decision for the short term. It is a decision made by authorities, not by students. It is a decision motivated by power not by principle.”
Welcome to real life. No one cares about you.
The statement said the decision lacked “legitimacy” and warned: “It is a decision that jeopardises trust between students and the institution.”
That’s okay. You’ll be gone in a few years. Oxford has been around for almost 1,000. They don’t need you:
Student activists said they would not be derailed by interventions such as those of Chris Patten, the chancellor of the university, who said in a recent interview that those involved with Rhodes Must Fall should “think about being educated elsewhere”.
At least someone has a spine.
I am personally uncomfortable with pulling down statues for the same reason that I am uncomfortable with burning books. There are times when a nation simply finds that it has an excess of statues of a former dictator, and people reasonably desire fewer of them, but England does not suffer an over-abundance of Rhodes statues.
Students called for a reckoning from the institution, and said their first demand was for Oxford to “acknowledge and confront its role in the ongoing physical and ideological violence of empire”. They want the university to apologise for its role and to offer more scholarships to black students from southern Africa.
Why? Did they help build Oxford? Did Oxford tear down their universities?
No.
Then Oxford owes them nothing.
They said they wanted to hear “the voices suffocated into silence by a Eurocentric academy”.
Then get the fuck out of Oxford. What, you can’t physically listen to people talk without a professor telling you to listen to them, first?
Simukai Chigudu, a postgraduate student in international development, said Oriel’s decision “throws into sharp relief that strong power donors have in shaping the college and underscores that it is not a free, open and democratic [process].
WHY THE HELL DID YOU THINK OXFORD WAS A DEMOCRACY? It is a college, not a country.
It turns out that the money threat was quite substantial:
Oxford University’s statue of Cecil Rhodes is to stay in place after furious donors threatened to withdraw gifts and bequests worth more than £100 million if it was taken down, The Daily Telegraph has learnt. … The governing body of Oriel College, which owns the statue, has ruled out its removal after being warned that £1.5m worth of donations have already been cancelled, and that it faces dire financial consequences if it bows to the Rhodes Must Fall student campaign.
100 million pounds is worth about 144 million dollars.
So I decided to see how Rhodes’s colonialist legacy is working out. According to Wikipedia, Cecil Rhodes created the Rhodes Scholarships, which pay for international students to come study at Oxford, in order to:
promote civic-minded leadership among “young colonists” with “moral force of character and instincts to lead,” for the purpose of ‘extending British rule throughout the world…the consolidation of the Empire, the restoration of Anglo-Saxon unity…” and the foundation of so great a Power as to render wars impossible and to promote the best interests of humanity.”
What kinds of students win such a scholarship? Luckily for us, Harvard Magazine has a helpful article on Harvard’s winners:
The Rhodes Trust has announced that five Harvard seniors have been awarded American Rhodes Scholarships this fall. Among them, one is vice president of the Harvard Islamic Society and co-founder of the Ivy League Muslim Council, a second is pursuing Islamic studies, and a third, the son of a Syrian immigrant, is studying global human-rights institutions. …
Alacha is “concentrating in Social Studies. For his senior thesis, he is studying global human rights institutions and examining their effect on local practices in Jordan. … He is the son of a Syrian immigrant and is interested in the movement for Islamic human rights.” Alacha plans to pursue an M.Phil. in modern Middle Eastern studies at Oxford.
Huckins is “concentrating in Neurobiology and Physics. …
Hyland “majors in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations (Islamic Studies). Her primary academic interest is the common intellectual heritage of medieval Islamic and Christian theologians. … She is a leader in community and campus work, especially addressing the problem of sexual assault. …
Lam is pursuing “a joint concentration in Neurobiology and Philosophy. He is interested in philosophical problems of free will, moral responsibility, and punishment, and has career interests in criminal justice reform. He is an active advocate of the effective altruism movement …
Shahawy “is pursuing a double major in History and Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations. He has devoted himself to working with marginalized communities to correct social injustices and improve access to opportunity, while also studying Islamic jurisprudence and global health and medicine. He worked with Los Angeles County inmates with the American Civil Liberties Union, as an intern in rural health clinics in Kenya with Vecna Technologies, and as an analyst with small-business lender Liwwa Inc. in Amman, Jordan. He has also conducted research on transplant surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital and on the causes of Saudi Arabia’s private sector labor shortage at the Harvard Center for International Development. Hassaan is the Vice President of the Harvard Islamic Society and Co-Founder of the Ivy League Muslim Council. He has volunteered at the Children’s Cancer Hospital in Cairo, Egypt and mentors prison inmates in Norfolk, Massachusetts.” Shahawy will pursue an M.Phil. in Islamic studies and history.
Welcome to the new colonialism.
Cultural Marxist Happy Hour
or ragey hour, whichever emotion you want to go with.
I was recently asking myself, “What happened to drag queens? Sure, you hear about trans folks all the time these days, but what about good ol’ fashioned drag queens? Are people just not doing that anymore?”
I’m sure you ask yourself these sorts of things all of the time, so take heart! I’ve found some, and it turns out that politically active drag queens are crazy Cultural Marxists. Who knew?
Yup, it’s those guys I highlighted the other day, Alok Vaid-Menon and Janani Balasubramanian, claiming that Norway was “colonizing” black people by expecting migrants to Norway to obey Norwegian laws and hosting voluntary classes to explain to the immigrants some of the ins-and-outs of Norwegian social codes.
Alok and Janani have degrees from Stanford University.
This time, they’re back to helpfully explain to us how, exactly, Norway is “colonizing” people who moved there voluntarily. I was going to just post a screencap, but I keep wanting to respond to individual lines, so we’re going to quote:
This has been said so many times but I’m reading some troubling comments about the news from Norway (https://tinyurl.com/norwaycolonialism) and I suppose it needs to be constantly pushed.
Yes, constantly push that narrative! Constantly! Push, push!
Gender based violence can never be discussed outside of colonialism because gender based violence is foundational to colonialism.
Concrete used in my sidewalks can never be discussed without discussing the World Trade Center, because concrete is foundational to the World Trade Center. It’s also foundational to almost every large building on Earth, so discussing this crack in the sidewalk outside my house is going to take a really, really long time.
Also, colonialism was about conquering land and making money.
Also, Norway hasn’t colonized anyone since the Viking era.
Norway’s training of refugees in European “sexual norms” is part of a long history of the West understanding Black & brown masculinities as “backwards” and white feminism as the answer.
Actually, it’s an immediate response to these migrants raping Norwegians.
Funny how people who are quick to proclaim that “race is a social construct” will turn around and talk about “The West” as though it were a single, coherent entity–of which Norway constitutes less than half of one percent!
Norway, with no history of colonialism and no (until now) imported minority of non-Europeans, has no “history” of “understanding” black and brown “masculinities”–at least, not until they altruistically let in a bunch of people who started raping the locals.
White supremacy would have you dwell on the particular (“But who did Norway colonize anyways?” “Isn’t it harmless?”) without addressing bigger systems and ideologies. Whiteness is the privilege to observe the particular and not experience the structural.
Who needs facts? What facts? Sure, all of the facts might actually contradict all of the bullshit I’m blathering, but that’s some kind of “white privilege” to notice actual reality! Nonwhites get to notice “structures”, even when those structures are completely contradicted by actual facts.
The West isn’t a saint because it’s taking in (a few) refugees because it was the West who drew the borders the refugees are being forced to cross to begin with!
1. Norway had nothing to do with the drawing of anyone’s borders.
2. The Syrian refugees are genuinely fleeing violence, but the black migrants are went to Norway voluntarily.
Blah blah blah…
The fact that you are unaware about the long and brutal history of the West “training” the Global South into gender and sexual norms (read: imposing Victorian sexual ethics, codifying the gender binary, importing homophobia and transmisogyny, etc.) has everything to do with colonialism. The fact that it’s easier for you to think of Black & brown masculiniteis as sexist/homopohbic moreso than white European culture (the most (trans)misogynist of all!) has everything to do with colonialism.
Oh hey, you know how people claim that whole “Cultural Marxism” thing is just a conspiracy theory? (How does anyone who has ever been to college claim such a thing?)
Marxism became a popular ideology among the de-colonializing nations because colonialism was capitalist, and Marxism is anti-capitalist. Cultural Marxism takes the original Marxism’s economic arguments and replaces them with cultural arguments. So we get this weird and completely a-historical argument about colonization having to do with gender oppression and homophobia.
Of course, no statistics are given on rates of homophobia, transmisogyny, etc. Statistics are like “facts”; things that only white people use. But hey, since I am white, how about some poll data on what Muslims think of homosexuality?
Yeah, whites are SOOO homophobic.
It reveals a deep and misplaced anxiety that white supremacy has always held: that immigration is really about penetration, that opening white imposed borders for Black & brown men is inviting in rape.
Someone here is a Freudian, and it isn’t me.
Just as economists don’t discuss Marxism anymore, especially since the major test case crashed and burned, psychologists don’t discuss Freud anymore, since his theories were found to lack predictive value.
This is the point where one might want to cite some data that proves that black and brown men rape at the same rate as white men.
Of course he doesn’t, because data is for white people he knows the data overwhelmingly contradicts him.
(Newsflash: White people already did this very thing: it’s called colonialism!) Colonialism IS rape culture.
Wait, now he’s arguing that invasion is rape?
White feminism is never the answer unless your solution to ending gender based violence involves mass criminalization, detention, torture, bombing, occupation, and war. … White feminism is never the answer because it actually can and will never be about the liberation of all women and femmes: it will always only be about the conditional safety of white women and femmes. Never forget: White men have used the alleged “safety” of white women as an excuse to occupy the whole world haven’t they?
Nope. They haven’t.
It keeps going, and going, and going, like the Energizer Bunny of made-up history and bad logic. I’m going to stop here, because it really isn’t worth continuing with this idiocy, but you can read the whole delusional thing if you want to.
The sad thing is that this is not some obscure, random voice, but a post that received over a 1,000 likes.
Cathedral Round Up #6: Dartmouth’s Diversity Scam
This month, I decided to take a look at Dartmouth, better known for drunken frat parties than Ivy League-style academic excellence.
So it turns out that being part of the Ivy League actually has nothing to do with academic excellence; it’s just an athletic conference. That’s right, the entire perception of academic prestige is due to Dartmouth and Harvard occasionally playing football together.
Dartmouth’s motto is Vox clamantis in deserto, which is Latin for “Help, I’m stuck in New Hampshire!”
Technically, that’s still better than Cornell’s motto, “I would found an institution where any person can find instruction in any study.”
(That’s… not a motto.)
Dartmouth comes across like a culturally blue-tribe white frat guy who’s never actually met any black or Hispanic people, but knows that anti-racism is the difference between people like him and beer-swilling rednecks from the South.
Don’t ask me why; I hail from one of those regions where Prohibition is still in force.
As you would expect, Dartmouth is therefore trying to correct its “whiteness problem.”
From The Dartmouth, which bills itself as America’s Oldest Student Newspaper, Vice Provost Aims for Faculty Diversity:
“Vice provost for academic initiatives Denise Anthony, who assumed the position last October, has been entrusted to help retain and recruit a diverse faculty at the College.”
Anthony is a sociologist whose specialty appears to be patient trust of electronic health care records, which doesn’t seem like an ideal background for the job, but then, it’s probably not hurting her. The article continues:
Anthony’s new position was publicized during College President Phil Hanlon’s “Moving Dartmouth Forward” speech late last month, in which he also said the College has committed $1 million per year to further this diversity initiative. …
Diversity is big business these days.
“To the extent that we are an educational institution and really training the next generation of thinkers and leaders, it is also necessary to have a diverse faculty to be training those leaders to recognize the value of diversity,” Anthony said.
If you were my student and you produced a sentence like that, I would circle it in red and tell you to fix it. There is no “extent” to which Dartmouth is an educational institution; Dartmouth is an educational institution.
Her goal, she said, is to increase recruitment and retention for underrepresented groups such as African Americans, Hispanics, Native Americans and Asian Americans in a variety of fields and women in science.
I’m circling this one in red, too.
Any time a department does a faculty search, that department works with the dean to create a search committee. The $1 million in annual funds will go in part toward increasing resources for department search committees, such as websites and literature on unconscious bias that search committees can utilize before they commence a search, she said. These resources will be available to any department.
Wow, a million dollars to recommend a website!
The sheer level of scam astounds me. This woman is being given $1 million dollars a year to email links to other professors. Hey, Dartmouth, I’ll make you a deal: pay me a measly $900,000 per year, and I’ll email you all the links you want. You get to save $100,000, and my links will be much more entertaining.
Plus, I’ve got much better credentials.
Success for the program would mean an increase in the number of underrepresented faculty and in their retention, along with the full engagement of those faculty members.
Not the production of knowledge or education of students or any of those silly, results-based measures of “academic” success. After all, Anthony thinks Dartmouth is only an educational institution “to an extent.” Perhaps its other purpose is simply “to hire people.”
Anthony said she meets with faculty and staff from the Geisel School of Medicine and the Thayer School of Engineering daily to talk about diversity on a student and staff level.
Every day? What do they have to talk about?
Day One
Anthony: So, is the Engineering Department still mostly white?
Engineering Faculty: Yes.
Anthony: Well, that’s enough talk to justify billing this lunch to the department. Let’s get started on our appetizers.
Day Two
Anthony: So, is the Engineering Department still mostly white?
Engineering Faculty: … You know new students only really start school once a year, right? And that day wasn’t yesterday.
Anthony: Is that a yes?
Engineering Faculty: Yes.
Anthony: Well, that’s enough talk to justify billing this lunch to the department. Let’s get started on our appetizers.
Repeat ad nauseam. But moving on with the article…
Chair of the African and African American studies program and English professor Gretchen Gerzina, who has been teaching at the College for 10 years, said that she thinks faculty of color leave Dartmouth for a variety of reasons…
Gretchen Gerzina is about as black as Rachel Dolezal, complete with the fake-permed hair:
You know, I might think this is funny, but I bet actually black women don’t think it’s funny when majority white-DNA women perm their hair and take jobs meant for blacks.
Fact is, it is actually trivially simple to hire black people if you want to. There are, after all, nearly 42 million black people in this country, and even though Dartmouth is, as Gerzina notes, located in an isolated backwoods with little to do on a Friday night but attend frat parties, it still would not take much effort to find a couple hundred who would be willing to come write poetry and opine for Dartmouth’s students on the “African American experience.”
These might not be folks with the kind of credentials traditionally looked for in Ivy League professors, but it is easy to wave that away by pointing out, quite accurately, that such credential requirements disproportionately rule out black (and Hispanic) applicants.
But finding (and keeping) qualified black professors, especially in fields with technical requirements that you can’t just wave away, is much harder, hence the continuous demands that elite institutions allocate more money to attract them. Being even vaguely black is a high-demand commodity.
Let’s finish the article:
Between 2006 and 2013, Yale University had a faculty diversity initiative, which focused on increasing the number of underrepresented minority faculty members and women in science. The initiative set the hiring goal of 30 minority and 30 female professors from 2006 until June 2013. As of February 2013, the University was able to retain 22 minority and 18 female faculty members, one year after the university hired 56 minority and 30 female faculty members.
And look what a harmonious place Yale has become:
Meanwhile at The Dartmouth Review, Eyes Wide Open at the Protest:
Black-clad protesters gathered in front of Dartmouth Hall, forming a crowd roughly one hundred fifty strong. Ostensibly there to denounce the removal of shirts from a display in Collis, the Black Lives Matter collective began to sing songs and chant their eponymous catchphrase. Not content to merely demonstrate there for the night, the band descended from their high-water mark to march into Baker-Berry Library.
“F*** you, you filthy white f***s!” “F*** you and your comfort!” “F*** you, you racist s***!”
These shouted epithets were the first indication that many students had of the coming storm. The sign-wielding, obscenity-shouting protesters proceeded through the usually quiet backwaters of the library. They surged first through first-floor Berry, then up the stairs to the normally undisturbed floors of the building, before coming back down to the ground floor of Novack.
Throngs of protesters converged around fellow students who had not joined in their long march. They confronted students who bore “symbols of oppression”: “gangster hats” and Beats-brand headphones. The flood of demonstrators self-consciously overstepped every boundary, opening the doors of study spaces with students reviewing for exams. Those who tried to close their doors were harassed further. One student abandoned the study room and ran out of the library. The protesters followed her out of the library, shouting obscenities the whole way.
Students who refused to listen to or join their outbursts were shouted down. “Stand the f*** up!” “You filthy racist white piece of s***!” Men and women alike were pushed and shoved by the group. “If we can’t have it, shut it down!” they cried. Another woman was pinned to a wall by protesters who unleashed their insults, shouting “filthy white b****!” in her face.
The Dartmouth has a rebuttal article, which claims that,
“These allegations of physical assault are lies to make white students look like the victims and students of color to look like the perpetrators,” Abera said. “The protest was meant to shut down the library. Whatever discomfort that many white students felt in that library is a fraction of the discomfort that many Natives, blacks, Latina and LGBTQ people feel frequently.” …
Many of the demonstrators then approached the sitting students and chanted “F**k your white privilege” and “F**k your white asses,” demonstrator Dan Korff-Korn ’19 said.
“It was important to point out that the students sitting there in the library at the computers represented this greater degree of ignorance, apathy and privilege that you see at Dartmouth, …” Korff-Korn said. …
Comments such as “F*** your white privilege” were not personal or racist attacks on individual white persons in the library, Diakanwa said. Instead, these comments were meant to target the legacy of white supremacy that many students have benefited from and students of color are fighting against, he said.
Got that? “Fuck your white ass” is not supposed to be a personal or racist attack.
The Dartmouth also brings us The Death of Peaceful Protests? about no, not the difficulties of studying at Dartmouth, busy highways being shut down, convenience stores burned down by protestors, a police precinct occupied by protestors, or a man wearing a “Stop Killng Black Men” t-shirt getting his head bashed in with a hammer by a “Black Lives Matter” protester:
(Also from the article about the guy hit with the hammer:
Some of the protesters made their way to a freeway in Oakland and blocked traffic. The California Highway Patrol said some tried to light a patrol vehicle on fire and threw rocks, bottles and an explosive at officers. Highway patrol officers responded with tear gas. [source])
No, it’s about some dudes in Oregon occupying a building in the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, which, while lovely:
Is not exactly densely inhabited.
The Death of Peaceful Protests? claims that:
If the armed men were African-American, they would be called thugs. If they were Muslim, they would be called terrorists. The showdown between the armed protestors and the government illuminates a tremendous hypocrisy. We label violent groups based on the race or religion of their members.
Look, I am the first person to complain about inconsistent language use, but I’d like to see one credible news source that has called Time Magazine’s #4 Person of the Year “thugs.” I’d like to see a single non-violent (and until violence happens, I’m going to call this non-violent) Muslim take-over of a building in some rural part of the country called a “terrorist” act.
The author further argues:
The federal government has not been quick to respond due to its experience with right-wing militant groups in Waco and Ruby Ridge in the 1990s. …
Additionally, the occupation has exposed the government’s fear of antagonizing right-wing groups. Our nation’s leaders have given such extremists carte blanche. They can act with impunity. If the armed men were African-American or Muslim, the government would have mustered all of its strength to crush the opposition.”
The government hasn’t been “hands off” with the Oregon militia thing because they’re afraid of antagonizing right-wing groups, (goodness knows militias aren’t exactly one of Obama’s core voting demographics,) or because we’ve somehow become more pro-white guys with guns since 1993, but because everyone basically agrees that this:
is a really bad way for a standoff to end. From Texas Monthly, The Fire that Time:
We found the women and children huddled together, under blankets. There were 27 bodies, two of them pregnant women. They were covered in debris—not just construction debris but spent rounds of grenades and ammunition. I suspect that the blankets were moist, to try and keep out the smoke. But there was such a rip-roaring fire that they were trapped. That was the most profound and distressing aspect of this entire case. To see that mass of human remains was a horrific thing for all of us. …Many of the Davidian children’s remains went unclaimed because whole families were dead or their relatives were too poor to pay for funeral services or no one wanted them. And so all those bodies that had been at the coroner’s office were buried, without markers, in paupers’ graves in a Waco cemetery.
Martin We had to stand behind the caution tape. We watched them bring out coffin after coffin and drop them in the ground. It was a horrible thing.
No one really cares about some random building in rural Oregon, even if there are some guys with guns holed up in it.
In our final article from The Dartmouth, Educated Action reminds us that young people vote liberal, therefore, be sure to vote, because who could argue with logic like this?
PSA: Honesty is not hate
You can love people and still be honest about them. (You can also hate people and be honest about them.) For example, when my kids’ report cards come home, I don’t react in shock that they haven’t gotten 100% perfect scores and call up their teachers to demand to know what diabolical evil motivated them to lie about my darlings. Having paid at least occasional attention to my kids over the past few years, I already know their strengths and weaknesses–and I still love them.
I was recently conversing with a gay acquaintance who is convinced that mainstream Muslims are just fine with homosexuals. Only Muslim extremists are anti-gay folks, just like American extremists.
This is how to make EvolutionistX sputter in disbelief at your idiocy.
Then they asserted to say otherwise is racist.
Look. Let’s assume that you love Muslims. (And before anyone tries to resist the hypothetical, remember that there are about a billion people in the world who are Muslims and the vast majority of them think Islam is the bee’s knees, not to mention plenty of non-Muslims who’ve lived in Muslim countries and enjoyed the experience, or non-Muslims who have Muslim friends/family.)
You cannot simultaneously claim to love Muslims and profess ignorance of their values.
It’s not hard to figure out what Muslims believe; if you don’t like looking up poll statistics, you can just ask them. Muslims use the internet, too, and millions of them speak English.
In fact, this is true for pretty much everyone: if you want to know what they believe, just ask them. They will probably tell you. (Of course, if you have to ask what the mainstream view on homosexuality is in Saudi Arabia or Iran, I think you have forgotten how to think.)
To save us some time, I’ve already done this, and not only do “mainstream” Muslims disapprove of homosexuality, even “liberal” Muslims aren’t keen on the idea. But in case you don’t believe me, we have poll data:
Honestly, I suspect that if you told the average Muslim that you think most Muslims are okay with homosexuality, they’d get offended, in the same way that the average American would get offended if a Muslim said that mainstream Americans think pedophilia is moral. Saying things that are in direct contradiction of people’s deeply held moral convictions tends to get you that response.
Oh, by the way, from the New York Times:
US Support of Gay Rights in Africa May Have Done More Harm than Good:
In Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation, the final passage of the 2014 law against homosexuality — which makes same-sex relationships punishable by 14 years in prison and makes it a crime to organize or participate in any type of gay meeting — is widely regarded by both supporters and opponents of gay rights as a reaction to American pressure on Nigeria and other African nations to embrace gay rights.
Nigeria is about 60% Christian and 40% Muslim. I don’t think either group is keen on homosexuality.
Anti-gay sentiments are widespread across Africa. Same-sex relations remain illegal in most nations, the legacy of colonial laws that had been largely forgotten until the West’s push to repeal them in recent years.
Fierce opposition has come from African governments and private organizations, which accuse the United States of cultural imperialism. Pressing gay rights on an unwilling continent, they say, is the latest attempt by Western nations to impose their values on Africa.
“In the same way that we don’t try to impose our culture on anyone, we also expect that people should respect our culture in return,” said Theresa Okafor, a Nigerian active in lobbying against gay rights.
It’s sad how often people are genuinely surprised to discover that other people actually like their own cultures.
“Before, these people were leading their lives quietly, and nobody was paying any attention to them,” Ms. Iwuagwu said. “Before, a lot of people didn’t even have a clue there were something called gay people. But now they know and now they are outraged.”
One of the more amusing SJW-arguments is that white “liberals” aren’t actually liberal because they make every effort to insulate themselves, in real life, from black people. The immediate cause for this is obvious: black neighborhoods tend to have high crime and low property values. You don’t have to agree with SJWs or have any particular opinions to agree that 1. Whites tend to avoid black neighborhoods and know extremely little about black culture, and 2. black neighborhoods tend to be poor and high-crime.
If anything, it seems to me like whites have begun wearing their ignorance as a badge of pride, as insurance against the threat of being called “racist.” If you know nothing at all about a group of people and so never talk about their traits, then how can anyone call you racist? And better yet, when someone does say something about other groups, you can then, from your position of total ignorance, tell the other person that you are “deeply disturbed by [their] problematic and racist language” and stop the discussion.
Ignorance of others should be called what it is: ignorance.
Today we heap praises upon it and call it virtue.
To put things in slightly less politicized terms, modern conversation is like trying to talk about a local forest with someone who thinks that “forest” is a social construct. You say, “The forest is about 200 miles long and 100 miles wide,” and your interlocutor replies that you are ignorant, and furthermore, “This ‘forest’ consists of individual trees, which are found scattered across the entire country!”
There is no arguing with such people, and yet the temptation always remains.
I read something like Strawberry Girl, and I can’t help but suspect that 70 years ago, the average elementary-school aged child was expected to understand and handle concepts about human groups that today, graduates from our nation’s finest universities profess profound ignorance of. Lois Lenski can love the “Florida Crackers” and still speak honestly of their moral shortcomings and the aspects of their life that an outsider would not agree with. De Poncins loves the Eskimo and probably prefers their lifestyle to his, but he does not lie about their murder rate.
Even the humble Protestant parishioners of a century ago, who received lurid letters describing horrific cannibals and pleading for more money for their churchs’ missionary efforts, probably had a better general grasp of at least one chunk of the world than educated, urbanized moderns.
The devout Protestant of yesteryear believed a great many things that today’s atheists find absurd, such as anything about god. Indeed, a cynic might claim that requiring people to spout nonsense is a good way to separate out all but the true believers. But these articles of faith were focused primarily on the realm of the unprovable, a spiritual realm removed from Earth in time and space. When it came to daily life, these folks were practical and concrete, believing in the straightforward evidence provided by their own eyes.
Today’s devout believer is still required to spout nonsense, but about the very reality he passes through. His eyes are deemed liars; noticing patterns in peoples’ behavior is grounds for excommunication; racism is the new Original Sin. Like the virgin of yesteryear, he professes innocence.
But that spot will not out.
There is no god for the atheist to sacrifice to exculpate his guilt; no bleating goat to load with his sins and turn out into the wilderness.
The modern man must sacrifice himself, give his own–or his children’s–life to absolve the sin of Knowing.
What Heaven does he hope to attain?
Cathedral Roundup #5: Harvard Jumps the Placemat
Freshmen students at Harvard University recently sat down for dinner in their cathedral cafeteria:
Yes, that is actually what Harvard’s freshman dining hall looks like. No, they didn’t conquer a church. Harvardians will tell you that the rest of the campus isn’t as ostentatious, but honestly, it is.
Anyway, so they walked into their sumptuous food-cathedral and found that Harvard had helpfully laid out placemats for them:
:(If you heard any of these arguments over Christmas Dinner and didn’t know where they came from, now you do.)
Oh, Harvard. Harvard, Harvard, Harvard.
Stop being such bloody hypocrites. Why don’t you invite the homeless beggars of Harvard Square and the many poor residents of the ghetto neighborhood you border into your absurdly expensive cafeterias for a warm, holiday celebration in the midst of all this December darkness?
Of course, Harvard carefully keeps those people out of its cathedrals. Beggars aren’t good for the image.
Why is Harvard wedging itself between students and their families? Seriously, the holidays can be a rough time for a lot of people, students included. They’re in this transition zone, where they’re basically living like adults, but on their parents’ dime. There’s a good chance the parents still treat them like children, and a good chance the students think themselves more mature than they really are. Negotiating this is tricky, and the very last thing Harvard should do is make things worse by encouraging students to get into political fights with their relatives.
It is none of Harvard’s business what students’ uncle think, and it is certainly not the students’ jobs to proselytize their professors’ beliefs to their parents.
Hey, Harvard, you know how everyone hates it when Mormons or Jehovah’s Witnesses knock on their doors?
You’re using your students to do the exact same thing, only the people you’re calling racists are the folks paying their tuition bills of over $45,000 per year (add room and board, textbooks, etc., and the cost skyrockets to almost $70,000 per year.)
Just let those numbers sink in for a moment, then remember that these are the students–and professors–who complain about the “privileges” of whites who live in trailer parks.
The Harvard Republicans released a counter placemat:
Okay, so maybe they should rename themselves the “Harvard Neutrals,” but considering that Yale students started protesting, became too emotionally traumatized to eat, and got a professor fired over something equally mild, I suppose this counts for “bold” in the Ivy League today.
Yale, you reaped exactly what you sowed.
Since I do not have any student protesters to worry about, I can give a more thorough response to the original placemat:
1. Yale:
I’m not paying $70,000 a year so you can lie to my face.
Do you really think whites get this same, “safe” environment? Please find me a case of white student protesters at Yale accusing a black professor of racism, yelling and cursing in his face, and the administration pressuring the black prof into resigning?
No semantics games. You said “the same,” so I’m holding you to that. Prove that they’re the same, or shut up and pass the gravy.
2. Islamaphobia: Not one single incident of violence in all this time from all of those people? There isn’t a single group on the entire planet that refrains entirely from violence.
Also, unlike guerrillas in South America, ISIS has specifically stated its intention to infiltrate the refugees and target the West — but you know what, maybe you shouldn’t play ISIS videos at Christmas dinner with your loved ones.
Regardless, the US government exists to serve the interests of Americans. The US government has zero moral obligation to non-Americans.
3. Black murders:
4. House Masters: Wow, Harvard students are admitting that they can’t find some actual slavery and racism to protest, so they made up fake grievances about a name they understand perfectly well has nothing to do with slavery?
Once you graduate and get a job, you’ll come to understand, very quickly, that there are, in fact, people with authority over you. They’re called your boss, and you’d better do what they say or you’ll end up homeless.
Harvard’s placemat was inspired by Showing up for Racial Justice’s creation:
Thanksgiving also saw folks making use of the holiday get together to spread the message: As Investors Business Daily noted,
On Tuesday, @TheDemocrats tweeted “It’s the holiday season, which means lots of time with your Republican uncle. Give him the facts this weekend.” Included was “The Democrat’s Guide To Talking Politics With Your Republican Uncle,” in case Democrats out there “need help setting your Republican relatives straight this holiday season.” The guide is supposedly useful for sorting out “the most common myths” and has “the perfect response for each of them.”
@TheDemocrats helpfully links us to Your Republican Uncle, exactly as claimed:
The holiday season is filled with food, traveling, and lively discussions with Republican relatives about politics sometimes laced with statements that are just not true. Here are the most common myths spouted by your family members who spend too much time listening to Rush Limbaugh and the perfect response to each of them.
The Your Republican Uncle website has been thoroughly responded to already, of course, but dear god it’s smarmy.
And last year, Obama helpfully encouraged us to utilize Christmas to shill for health insurance, like an unpaid Amway representative.
And if that’s not fun enough, there’s always racist uncle bingo!
Courtesy The Daily Dot, “5 Thanksgiving tips for talking to your racist family members about Ferguson:”
“White people have to understand that any amount of suffering they’ve encountered in their own lives is most likely dwarfed by the weekly, sometimes daily amount that people of other skin colors continue to face in America. “
Really?
Not only is telling people that their personal misery is dwarfed by other people’s misery a completely asinine way to comport yourself at any family gathering, there’s a good chance you’re wrong. There’s a good chance someone in you family has a terminal illness, is grieving the death of a loved one, or is struggling with severe poverty. Multiply this over all of the families of everyone who read the original article, and that’s a lot of people.
Frankly, I don’t know where this whole “OMG Thanksgiving/Christmas is so terrible cuz my uncles!” meme got started–it used to be racist grandmas, but maybe people love their grandmas too much to use them as scapegoats too often. Personally, I’m just glad my relatives are still alive. I can save my political agenda for people who actually want to hear it.
If you have any question about how to comport yourself during the holidays, here’s a handy guide:
Created by Moe Lane.
SJWs come out in favor of rape, violence against women
FromDarkMatter’s FB page: “DarkMatter is a non-binary trans south asian artist collaboration composed of alok vaid-menon and janani balasubramanian.”
They’re also, apparently, in favor of raping white women.
Oh, btw, while there is someone named EvolutionistX on Twitter, they’re not me.
Cathedral Round Up #4 (no heroes for you)
Today we come to a flaw in my methods: I usually write my posts a few weeks before they actually go up. Normally, this is not an issue–genetics tends not to change very much from week to week. And to keep a them evenly paced, I just write each Cathedral Round up on the day the previous one goes up. Since articles from the Yale Law bulletin or Princeton Magazine are not normally of interest to outsiders, the delay between publication and commentary hasn’t been a big issue.
But this month, all the stuff going on in the echelons of higher education has made it into the actual news! Do you know how weird it is to suddenly have relatives complaining about student protests at Yale or U Missouri? Obscure campus news–that’s my schtick, not theirs.
Next month, I’m going to try out a new methodology for keeping the Cathedral Round Up both on-schedule and topical. For today, though, here’s what was going on before all this stuff broke into the media:
This month, I decided to focus on Yale, Princeton, and Penn (though Stanford managed to sneak back in, because Stanford.)
Yale is in the process of cannibalizing itself. Princeton is halfway there, but some students are still holding out due to Princeton’s stronger culture of elitism. Poor Penn is never going to get taken seriously as an Ivy so long as it continues insisting on publishing mostly reasonable articles about itself, instead of concentrating on world-breaking levels of crazy.
The Yale Alumni magazine has a transcript of Deal Holloway’s Freshman Address, Yale’s Narrative, and Yours, (gosh, that comma bugs me. Commas are for lists of three or more things, or separating two different actors in a sentence, eg, “She went to the store, and I vacuumed the house.” This title should not have a comma,) which I am going to quote quite a bit from because it is just so awful:
Class of 2019, I am thrilled to see you and look forward to getting to know you well in the years ahead. … But who, exactly, are you? You hail from across this country and from around the world. Many of you are the children of parents who are already Yale alumni. More of you will be the first in your families to graduate from college at all. Most of you went to public school. Nearly half of you are receiving financial aid. …
I’d like you to turn to the images that are in your program. … The images you see are something of a triptych—three different paintings of British merchant Elihu Yale that when brought together tell a fascinating story. For those who don’t already know, Elihu Yale rose to power and accumulated wealth through his leadership in the East India Company. In 1718, Yale received a request to finance a new building for the Collegiate School of Connecticut, a small enterprise founded in 1701 for the training of Congregationalist ministers. Yale sent hundreds of books, a portrait of King George I, and bales of goods that were later sold to finance the building. In short order, the Collegiate School was renamed in his honor. …
In all of the paintings Elihu Yale is wearing and surrounded by sumptuous fabrics. … In the two paintings on side one we see ships in the distance—a reference to the fact that Elihu Yale built his career on trade that navigated the ports in the British empire. In the second and third paintings we see an unidentified attendant. Much like the wearing of exquisite clothes suggested, placing a servant in a portrait was an articulation of standing and wealth. But when we look more carefully at these two paintings we notice that in addition to the fine clothes the servant and page are wearing they also happen to have metal collars and clasps around their necks. What we are seeing in each painting, then, isn’t a servant or a page, but a slave.
We are fairly certain that Elihu Yale did not own any slaves himself, but there’s no doubting the fact that he participated in the slave trade, profiting from the sale of humans just as he profited from the sale of so many actual objects that were part of the East India trade empire. As such, Elihu Yale’s wealth was linked to a global economy that was deeply, practically inextricably, interwoven with the sale of human beings to other human beings. In fact, when we look at the paintings it is safe to assume that Elihu Yale was a willing participant in that economy. Since he could have selected anything to represent him in these paintings we can conclude that he chose to be depicted with enslaved people because he believed this narrative would best signify his wealth, power, and worldliness.
This is a difficult story to hear, especially on an occasion of welcoming and celebration. But I share it with you because just as proper histories are unafraid of their darker corners you should be unafraid to ask difficult questions of this university. Indeed, we expect you to do so.
… The first of your three images hangs in the Corporation Room of Woodbridge Hall—the nerve center of the university. That this specific portrait hangs there, however, is fairly recent history. Until 2007, the second painting of Elihu Yale you see in the program insert is what you would have found in the Corporation Room. That year, recognizing that this representation was terribly jarring whether it was understood in its historical context or not, the university removed the painting. …
So, Class of 2019: here you are, in a place that has been waiting a long time for you to arrive, a place where you emphatically belong. Whatever your race, religion, wealth, sport, political philosophy, taste in music; whatever your sexuality, your passport’s origin, or the number of stamps in your passport, this place is yours, ready for you to make your contribution to it. …
You have come here at a unique moment, when this university engages with questions of its own identity, at a time when national conversations about race have shined a light on social constructions and assumptions that for many (but not for all), have lain dormant for decades, if not centuries. …
I have to interrupt here. Who the fuck thinks that our ideas about race have been lying dormant for centuries? WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN? Were there no Civil Rights marches in the 1950s? Did no one in the 60s and 70s ever mention race? Did we never celebrate Martin Luther King Day in school? Are there no streets named in his honor? People talk constantly about race, but for some strange reason keep claiming that we have not been talking about race.
These big questions will form part of the education that awaits you, even more than problem sets, term papers, or exams. But so will the conversation that begins today, as you write your own story and build your own Yale.
This is hard but joyous work, and you embark on it with many others. Joining you are your peers and your professors, the friends you are about to make, and the students who have preceded you. I join you, too.
Welcome to this work. Welcome to this place. Welcome to Yale.
TL; DR: White history is shit and white people should feel bad. Welcome to Yale!
The President of Yale, Peter Salovey, also gave a Freshman Address, “Launching a Difficult Conversation.” Let’s see if it is any better:
Good morning and welcome, Class of 2019, family members, and colleagues sharing the stage with me. …
Well, as the events in South Carolina shook the nation, many members of our own community could not avoid considering a matter that ties us here in New Haven to similar questions of history, naming, symbols, and narratives. …
About one in twelve of you has been assigned to Calhoun College, named, when the college system was instituted in the 1930s, for John C. Calhoun—a graduate of the Yale College Class of 1804 who achieved extremely high prominence in the early nineteenth century as a notable political theorist, a vice president to two different US presidents, a secretary of war and of state, and a congressman and senator representing South Carolina. …
Calhoun mounted the most powerful and influential defense of his day for slavery. …
Are we perhaps better off retaining before us the name and the evocative, sometimes brooding presence of Yale graduate John C. Calhoun? He may serve to remind us not only of Yale’s complicated and occasionally painful associations with the past, but to enforce in us a sense of our own moral fallibility as we ourselves face questions about the future.
So it was not surprising that within a short time of the massacre and subsequent debate in South Carolina, we found that the issues of honoring, naming, and remembering that have occasionally surfaced regarding Calhoun College returned to confront us again. … And inevitably we found ourselves wondering, and not for the first time, how best to address the undeniable challenges associated with the fact that Calhoun’s name graces a residential community in Yale College, an institution where, above all, we prize both the spirit and reality of full inclusion. …
As entering Yale students of the Class of 2019, what are your obligations to wrest from this place an education that encourages you to question tradition even while honoring it, to chart your own history even while learning from the past, to enter fully into difficult conversations even while respecting contradictory ideas and opinions?I know in the next four years, you will make progress on figuring all this out. Let’s get started together. Let’s get started today.
Yale has, apparently, no heroes worth honoring or inspiring its students to emulate, only villains. The grand duty of Yale students is to decide whether their past heroes should cast out and forgotten, or remembered solely as a warning about evil.
On a related (but funnier note): Yale still receiving money from evil, evil capitalists:
Take Yale’s bond from a Dutch water authority: it was originally issued in 1648, it is inscribed on goatskin, and recently, it added €136.20—about $153—to Yale’s coffers. … the bond was acquired as part of “a collection that traces the history of capital market development and financial innovation.”
Then in quick succession, just to drive home the point: Faculty Departures Raise Diversity Questions, What Color is Yale’s Faculty, and It Can’t Just be the Righteous Few (about the NAACP’s new leader.)
A bestselling memoirist, the poet for Barack Obama’s first inauguration, and Yale’s first endowed professor of poetry, Elizabeth Alexander ’84 is one of Yale’s highest-profile professors. But not for long: Alexander is leaving the Yale faculty for Columbia next fall.
Her departure, along with that of anthropologist Vanessa Agard-Jones ’00, also for Columbia, was reported in the Yale Daily News as a sign of “systemic problems” in Yale’s efforts to make its faculty more diverse. (Alexander and Agard-Jones are both African American.)
Really? You could have fooled me:
At least Agard-Jones is actually a black person, though calling her an anthropologist is a bit misleading. She actually describes herself as, “an Assistant Professor of Women’s, Gender + Sexuality Studies at Yale University. … As a political anthropologist, I specialize in the study of gender and sexuality in the African diaspora.“ Anyway, the article goes on:
Columbia has invested $63 million in its faculty diversity initiative to finance “recruitment, support, and related programs” since 2012.
“We have not made nearly enough progress on diversifying the faculty, and my colleagues in the higher administration know that I have long believed we need to have powerful commitments from on high, both in continued, stated vision and also with extensive resource allocation,” Alexander told the News. “Yale lags behind its peers where we should be leaders, and [faculty diversity] goals, in my opinion, should be a priority, as they are elsewhere, including Columbia.”
Ultimately, it all comes down to money. Qualified black professors are few and far between, and so capable of commanding much higher salaries than they would if they were white.
The world does not need more scientists, engineers, or people who build complicated systems for the delivery of electricity or removal of waste. The world needs more vaguely black-looking poets and gender studies professors. Those are the folks who will bring us the next set of civilization-building innovations!
Here at Yale, your worth as a person is not determined by what you do, by what you accomplish, or by the content of your character, but by the color of your skin. And maybe your sexual proclivities and gender.
I have a proposal: Let’s rename the whole shebang. Get rid of “Yale”. Let’s rename them “Rosa Parks University” and “Caesar Chavez College” and be done with it. It’s not like anyone actually cares about Elihu or Calhoun, except as representatives of a hated history.
Penn had an interesting article on helping ex-cons start companies by teaching them how to fill out paperwork, but that kind of practical approach to the world will never get Penn the kind of attention it needs to be a world-class university.
Meanwhile, over at Princeton, one of the nation’s most prestigious and selective colleges, a student noticed that in order to have a functional social club that pursues a particular interest (in this case, literature), some people have to be excluded. The student therefore decided not to join a social club, because excluding people is bad.
Princeton: Revoke Cosby’s Honorary Degree
Penn: Revoke Cosby’s Honorary Degree
That’ll stop rape!
Here I need to stop and mention an article in the Stanford Daily, “‘One in Five’ Takes action to combat sexual assault“:
A group of students is in the process of creating a new student organization that aims to raise awareness and educate the community on the subject of campus sexual assault. …
Because no one has ever done that before. Seriously, I bet no one on the entire Stanford campus has ever thought to raise awareness of sexual assault before.
The idea for the student group grew out of a Sophomore College course this summer called “One in Five: The Law, Policy and Politics of Sexual Assault” with law professor Michele Dauber. The group will be called One in Five after the class.
The three-week experience was “completely immersive,” according to Dauber.
“Immersive”? What, did they rape the students in the course?
In The Problem with Philanthropy, a Princetonian critiques Effective Altruism on the grounds that capitalism is evil:
Perhaps more troubling than Whitman or Rockefeller are the cases of individuals like Matt Wage ’12. Wage took Peter Singer’s ethics class and decided to work on Wall Street after graduation in order to make large amounts of money that he could then donate to life-saving causes. In his book, Singer argues that Wage exemplifies the model of effective altruism, a concept that enshrines individual charity as the most effective force for good while ignoring entirely the power of collective action against structural injustice.
Wage joined a toxic system of finance dominated by rent seekers that helps maintain an environmentally unsustainable global economy. This economy is already taking lives and bringing suffering [PDF] for some of the world’s most vulnerable populations. While Wage can take credit for the lives that he has supposedly saved with his Wall Street earnings, he can also conveniently ignore his complicity in a system of finance inextricable from climate injustice as well as other forms of oppression like private prisons, sweatshops, the domestic and global exchange of weapons and practices like insider trading, cronyism and corruption.
If you look at the PDF about “taking lives and bringing suffering,” you’ll note that Wage is being blamed for global warming.
While I actually dislike Wall Street and economic theories based on the idea of endless growth, which are bad for long-term resource maintenance necessary for people to have nice lives, this is not a critique of Effective Altruism. Coherent critiques of EA exist, but “EA => Global Warming!” is not one of them.
Princetonian feminists would like to let us know that male sexuality is still disgusting, and I would like to remind you that colleges are breeding grounds for disease.
Finally, Princeton students are questioning the Legacy of Woodrow Wilson, a Racist Bigot:
… it is time for our University to reevaluate its blind veneration to its deeply racist demigod. … This response assumes that Wilson’s racist actions were minuscule despite the fact that he actively worked to destroy, hinder and thwart the communities of black and brown peoples in America. … I told the administrator that Wilson is arguably the most racist U.S. and Princeton president, and the administrator agreed that Wilson was indeed racist.
I think the Cherokee might disagree with that assessment.
Remember: no heroes. Ever.
“Indigenous Culture Day” celebrates genocidal cannibals who were even worse than Columbus
Cranky writing is best writing!
The only reason why we started celebrating “Columbus Day” was to make the Irish and Italians feel like Catholics can be real Americans, too, not just Protestants.
“Columbus Day” isn’t really about celebrating Columbus. Not as a person. Nobody says, “Read this biography of a great man from infancy to dotage and try to be more like him!” Columbus day is about celebrating what Columbus did–find a New World and launch the Age of Exploration and discovery.
Do I care about Columbus Day? No. Don’t be silly. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who actually celebrates Columbus Day, but maybe the Italians are really into it. If so, I don’t begrudge them a holiday. However, I do care about Columbus’s accomplishments.
“But Columbus was an idiot who only found the New World by accident!” I hear someone protest.
Yeah, well, I don’t see you discovering any continents lately. Where does that put you on the intellect ladder? Also, Penicillin was discovered by accident, so I guess it doesn’t count, either.
Here, I’ll take all of the penicillin, and you can go play with rodents. We’ll see which of us survives the longest.
“But Columbus was an asshole,” someone protests. “He conquered and enslaved people!”
Guys, it was the 14 hundreds. Pretty much EVERYBODY in the 1400s thought it was okay to conquer and enslave people. If you start applying modern standards to people from the 1400s, you’ll discover that none of them meet your standards.
You want to celebrate “Indigenous Culture Day” instead of Columbus Day? Do you know what kind of assholes indigenous cultures were full of?
Let’s hear it for the Aztecs, one of those peaceful wonderful indigenous cultures Columbus’s Spanish employers went and conquered as a result of his voyages.
They liked to rip people’s beating hearts out of their bodies as human sacrifices to their gods.
Also, they were cannibals who caught people, sacrificed them, butchered them, and then ate them.
The Spaniard’s pigs, however, they just killed and threw in a well. WTF do you do with one of those things? They didn’t know. Humans, however, they knew what to do with: eat them.
The Wikipedia records many documented cases of Aztec cannibalism:
- Hernán Cortés wrote in one of his letters that his soldiers had captured an indigenous man who had a roasted baby ready for breakfast.
- Francisco López de Gómara (c. 1511 – c. 1566) reported that, during the siege of Tenochtitlan, the Spaniards asked the Aztecs to surrender since they had no food. The Aztecs angrily challenged the Spaniards to attack so they could be taken as prisoners, sacrificed and served with “molli” sauce.
- The Historia general… contains an illustration of an Aztec being cooked by an unknown tribe. This was reported as one of the dangers that Aztec traders faced. …Bernal Díaz’s The Conquest of New Spain (written by 1568, published 1632) contains several accounts of cannibalism among the people the conquistadors encountered during their warring expedition to Tenochtitlan.
- About the city of Cholula, Díaz wrote of his shock at seeing young men in cages ready to be sacrificed and eaten.[1]
- In the same work Diaz mentions that the Cholulan and Aztec warriors were so confident of victory against the conquistadors in an upcoming battle the following day, that “…they wished to kill us and eat our flesh, and had already prepared the pots with salt and peppers and tomatoes”[2]
- About the Quetzalcoatl temple of Tenochtitlan Díaz wrote that inside there were large pots, where human flesh of sacrificed Natives was boiled and cooked to feed the priests.[3]
- About the Mesoamerican towns in general Díaz wrote that some of the indigenous people he saw were—:
“ eating human meat, just like we take cows from the butcher’s shops, and they have in all towns thick wooden jail-houses, like cages, and in them they put many Indian men, women and boys to fatten, and being fattened they sacrificed and ate them.[4] ” Díaz’s testimony is corroborated by other Spanish historians who wrote about the conquest. In History of Tlaxcala (written by 1585), Diego Muñoz Camargo (c. 1529 – 1599) states that:
“ Thus there were public butcher’s shops of human flesh, as if it were of cow or sheep.[5]
Is that what you want to fucking celebrate? THIS IS WHAT YOU THINK WAS BETTER THAN COLUMBUS?
No, hunter-gatherers were not peaceful paragons of gender equality. Stop fucking saying that. It is a lie. There is no evidence to back it up. Primitive, pre-modern societies had absolutely atrocious crime rates. There are real live fucking cannibals living right now in the Congo rainforest. They eat the Pygmies (and each other.)
And this is supposed to be my fault? “White privilege” is the magic sauce that explains why some cultures produce penicillin and others produce cannibals.
Of course, the Aztecs are only one group. The Pueblo peoples also practiced cannibalism. Cannibalism was practiced among various coastal tribes stretching from Texas to Louisiana.
When Captain John Smith of Jamestown fame inquired about the fate of the lost Roanoke Colony, Chief Powhatan–you know, the Pocahontas’s dad, the guy who’d tried to kill John Smith–confessed to having massacred them all. Historians aren’t sure if this is actually true–Powhatan might have just confused them with some other guys he’d massacred–but the fact remains that Powhatan and his people went around massacring their neighbors regularly enough that, “Oh yeah, we killed them all,” was seen as a reasonable explanation by everyone involved.
It wasn’t too many years later that the Powhatan tried to do the same thing to Jamestown, killing about a quarter of the people there.
Celebrating Columbus was never about Columbus, and denigrating Columbus isn’t about Columbus, either. Celebrating Columbus is about celebrating American history and the contributions of Catholic-Americans to that history; denigrating Columbus is about denigrating American history and European contributions to it.
Who should be the America’s moral superior and successor? Whose successes should we celebrate instead of Columbus’s? Should the people of Mexico overthrow the culture of their evil oppressors and go back to holding human sacrifices in the middle of Mexico City?
Funny, I don’t see a lot of people trying to go live in Mexico, much less return to the actual lives of their indigenous ancestors. Most people seem to like having things like penicillin, cell phones, cars, air conditioning and sewers, and dislike things like cannibalism and constant tribal warfare. The process by which civilization was made was not pretty, but civilization is good and we should celebrate it.
We should not attack people’s cultural heroes just to denigrate their nation.
Oh, and happy Thanksgiving, since the backlog means that this post isn’t going up for a month.
Frida Kahlo and the Library
So I was researching the Mexican Revolution the other day–because hey, revolution–and you know, 1910-1920 really was a high point for socialism.
We had the Mexican Revolution, the Russian Revolution, that election when instead of Dems vs. Repubs we had the International Socialist (Wilson) vs. the Nationalistic Socialist (Teddy Roosevelt) vs. whatever Taft was, normal conservatism or something. Wilson won and gave us the income tax (so we could tax the rich to give to the poor, and also a massive standing army,) the League of Nations, and the Federal Reserve.
Anyway, so I was researching the Mexican Revolution, and happened across Diego Rivera–you know him, he’s famous for being married to Frida Kahlo, who’s famous for being one of the twentieth century’s most over rated artists.
No, wait, Frida Kahlo is famous for having been married to Rivera, who’s famous for being an actually pretty good artist who painted a bunch of pictures of Marx and Lenin and the like inside the Mexican capital building. Which I suppose explains why Trotsky died in Mexico.
Anyway, yes, so Diego and Frida were hipsters. But I got to thinking–how is it that I know the name of Diego Rivera, (and even Frida Kahlo!) the guy who painted at least part of the Mexican capitol building, but I don’t even know the name of the guy who painted the US Capitol building?
I got 11 months of white history a year in school, and I don’t even know Diego Rivera’s opposite number?
Yes, there were probably multiple guys involved in painting the US Capitol building (and the Mexican Capitol.) But can you name any of them?
Neither can I, and I actually posted one of his paintings about a month and a half ago on this blog:
Brumidi also painted this lovely lady on the White House:
But Brumidi is clearly a nobody whose work is not worth remembering, whereas Frida Kahlo is so important, she gets a two-page spread in National Geographic’s Little Kids First Big Book of Who. (The book is actually more serious than it sounds.)
From Amazon’s description of the book:
“Introduce young readers to some of the world’s most interesting and important people in this bold and lively first biography book. More than 100 colorful photos are paired with age-appropriate text featuring profiles of each person, along with fascinating facts about their accomplishments and contributions. This book inspires kids about a world of possibilities and taps into their natural curiosity about fascinating role models from education advocate Malala Yousafzai to astronaut Neil Armstrong.”
The book awards Albert Einstein one entire paragraph, but Isabella Bird (who?) Jackie Robinson, and Amelia Earhart all get two-page spreads.
You know, can we please stop using Amelia Earhart as some sort of symbol of female accomplishment and empowerment, considering that Amelia is most famous for having failed spectacularly to fly across the Pacific and probably died horrible in a plane crash? If we have to scrounge around for female role models, can’t we find one who didn’t die hideously while failing at the thing she was supposedly paving the way for women to do? I mean, a woman recently won the Fields Medal, isn’t that some sort of accomplishment? Or do we only talk about math when whining?
Of course, Brumidi doesn’t even make it into the book.
I happened to be at the library because I was looking for a picture book about Teddy Roosevelt, because the kids wanted to know why teddy bears are called teddy bears. Roosevelt is generally acknowledged to be one of our greatest presidents–he once got shot in the shoulder by a would-be assassin, got up, and gave his campaign speech anyway. He won a Nobel Prize (I know, I know,) and folks even bothered to carve a mountain into the shape of his face to make sure that we all remember just how awesome he was.
Of course, there were no picture books about Teddy Roosevelt. I wasn’t surprised. I did find picture books about black female civil rights leaders (besides Rosa Parks;) a picture book about how poor Frida Kahlo was lonely and doubted herself when she moved too the US, but then she did ART and so it was all okay; a picture book about how slaves built the White House; a picture book about Loving v. Virginia; etc.
I did find a book by Newt Gingrich’s wife about how much elephants love America, and one by a Biden relation about a little girl who prays for god to bless our troops. It was shelved next to the children’s picture books about gay parents.
I did manage to find some decent-looking history books, but sadly, nothing on Teddy Roosevelt. I mean, who was he? Some guy who didn’t even make it into the Big Book of Who?
