#anti racism workshops

[deltamusings]

If you can afford $60,000 a year for these schools, you can afford a personal tutor to home school your kid.  It’s absurd that we live in times where schools believe they have the right to demand not only children but their parents prescribe to racist, anti-white hatred.  

[elder-millennial-of-zion]

Proud Jew. Proud Zionist. Every single one of us makes a difference, so I created this blog to be just one more.

I stand with Jews against antisemitism. Yes, all Jews, including those who disagree with me.

Politically I thought I was a leftist, but apparently the left has decided that progressive principles don’t apply to Jews. Like human rights. And anti-racism and anti-discrimination. And dismantling systems of oppression. And liberation. And decolonization. And believing sexual assault survivors. And not speaking over marginalized groups about their own identities and experiences. And not committing hate crimes. And not committing crimes against humanity. So I’m not sure what that makes me. Left-plus-Jews? Left Plus? That sounds like a streaming service. I’m still workshopping it.

My definition of “Zionist” is “someone you may disagree with, but is still a human being who doesn’t deserve to be murdered and brutalized and harassed on medieval-blood-libel levels by Jew haters who then turn around and wonder why we need our own homeland.”

Am Yisrael Chai 🇮🇱

[sad-boys-book-club]

"&" Ampersand - A Literary Companion

Selected stories with the themes of Bastille's upcoming project "&" Ampersand. And, of course, a love letter to my favourite band.

PART 1

Intros & Narrators: Wallace, David Foster. Oblivion: Stories. Little, Brown and Company, 2004./ Nancherla, Aparna. Unreliable Narrator: Me, Myself, and Impostor Syndrome. Penguin Publishing Group, 2023.// Eve & Paradise Lost: Bohannon, Cat. Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2023. / Milton, John. Paradise Lost. Alma Classics, 2019.// Emily & Her Penthouse In The Sky: Dickinson, Emily. Emily Dickinson’s Poems: As She Preserved Them. Harvard University Press, 2016. /Dickinson, Emily. Emily Dickinson: Letters. Edited by Emily Fragos, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2011.// Blue Sky & The Painter: Prideaux, Sue. Edvard Munch: Behind the Scream. Yale University Press, 2019. / Knausgaard, Karl Ove. So Much Longing in So Little Space: The Art of Edvard Munch. Random House, 2019.//

PART 2

Leonard & Marianne: Hesthamar, Kari. So Long, Marianne: A Love Story - Includes Rare Material by Leonard Cohen. Ecw Press, 2014./ Cohen, Leonard. Book of Longing. Penguin Books Limited, 2007.// Marie & Polonium: Curie, Eve. Madame Curie. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2013./Sobel, Dava. The Elements of Marie Curie: How the Glow of Radium Lit a Path for Women in Science. Atlantic Monthly Press, 2024.// Red Wine & Wilde: Wilde, Oscar, et al. De Profundis. Harry N. Abrams, 1998./ Sturgis, Matthew. Oscar: A Life. Head of Zeus, 2018.// Seasons & Narcissus: Ovid. Metamorphoses: A New Verse Translation. Penguin, 2004./ Morales, Helen. Antigone Rising: The Subversive Power of the Ancient Myths. PublicAffairs, 2020.//

PART 3

Drawbridge & The Baroness: Rothschild, Hannah. The Baroness: The Search for Nica, the Rebellious Rothschild. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2013./ Katz, Judy H. White Awareness: Handbook for Anti-racism Training. University of Oklahoma Press, 1978.// The Soprano & Her Midnight Wonderings: Ardoin, John, and Gerald Fitzgerald. Callas: The Art and the Life. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1974./ Abramovic, Marina. 7 Deaths of Maria Callas. Damiani, 2020.// Essie & Paul: Ransby, Barbara. Eslanda: The Large and Unconventional Life of Mrs. Paul Robeson. Haymarket Books, 2022./ Robeson, Paul. Here I Stand. Beacon Press, 1998.//

PART 4

Mademoiselle & The Nunnery Blaze: Gautier, Theophile. Mademoiselle de Maupin. Penguin Classics, n.d./ Gardiner, Kelly. Goddess. HarperCollins, 2014.// Zheng Yi Sao & Questions For Her: Chang-Eppig, Rita. Deep as the Sky, Red as the Sea. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2023./ Borges, Jorge Luis. A Universal History of Infamy. Penguin Books, 1975. // Telegraph Road 1977 & 2024: Kaufman, Bob. Golden Sardine. City Lights Books, 1976./ Wolfe, Tom. The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Pan Macmillan Australia Pty, Limited, 2008.

Original artwork created by Theo Hersey & Dan Smith. Printed letterpress at The Typography Workshop, South London.

[ripplestitchskein]

So if Better Than Blitz guy is Stolas’s drunken teen hookup whose name you don’t learn or remember it makes me wonder if Vassago is part of his young adult/college/entering the workforce “I’m discovering other people and experiences” phase of development where he learns about things like microaggressions and systemic racism. Bonus points if we check the “You’re actually the perfect guy but I have no passion for you like I do my fucked up mess of a gremlin ex I’ve been pining over the whole time” box of romance tropes.

I’m just so curious what will be the catalyst for Stolas’s turn at the self actualization rodeo.

He’s so oblivious to his effect on others I believe he’ll need an example of his behavior now that Blitz pointed it out to him so frankly. Is Vassago the character who provides it potentially? A sweet, well meaning royal who Stolas finds a kinship with, who also treats imps in this way without thinking about it? The only other royals we’ve met are Stella, Paimon and Andrelphus so he will assume any ill treatment from them towards imps is due to them being awful in general, but seeing a fellow royal, who is similar to him, do the same small things without malice after it’s been pointed out to him might make him see it in a new way.

Like it would also be super funny if his outfit change to cozy sweater and slacks is a combo of divorced dad energy and also “Trust Fund Kid At A Liberal Arts College Vibez”. Him and Vassago smoking badly rolled joints in his new single dad apartment in a recently gentrified part of Imp City, reading aloud from Upton Sinclair and something like “How to Be Anti-Impist” while Vassago workshops lo-fi synth beats on his keyboard.

[allthecanadianpolitics]

I think most of the followers of this account will remember the posts I made discussing the premeditated zionist attack on a Palestinian student fundraiser for Ghazzah, which occurred on November 8th at Concordia University (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7) . The student association which helped host this attack was Hillel, which many Palestinian and Jewish students across North American campuses have discussed their experiences with as what amounts to zionist lobbies on campuses attempting to masquerade as legitimate Jewish community groups. Hillel is part of a coalition called the Israel on Campus Coalition (the ICC was also founded through Hillel International's foundation). Their primary goal is stalking and harassing pro-Palestine activists with smear campaigns, which is in line with what the zionist attackers at Concordia had been doing by compiling doxx lists of Palestinians amongst each other. In the documentary that was filmed by Al-Jazeera but never formally aired, they are seen helping pro-Israel organizations host propaganda farms and training workshops, and admitting to their own racism towards Palestinians, as well as their abject islamophobia.

The members, organizers, volunteers, and especially the executives of these organizations colloquially refer to Palestinian students as 'terrorists' among each other.

Other orgs they have identified partnerships with include Chabad on Campus and StandWithUs, the closest partnership being with StandWithUs. One instance shown in the documentary went down very similarly to what happened at Concordia. StandWithUs organized an astroturf campaign aimed at harassing Palestinian student activists on the campus of George Mason University. Despite the fact the Palestinian activists refused to engage, they were called a Hamas-linked group causing trouble by the news, similarly to the reporting on the Concordia University attack as an antisemitic attack rather than an anti-Palestinian one.

- Hussein

[duelofthefatesmp3]

bo katan finally allowed to hold the darksaber after undergoing three weeks of anti racism sensitivity training workshop

[kuruk]

you people are ridiculous for trying to find something wrong with someone saying it's racist to use "um um what about my organized anti racism homestuck workshop?" to dismiss accusations of racism. Like sure okay you didn't like what Noah said. Now what? plaidos can rb this to say "See? It's them who are bad, not me" and then it's just supposed to be done lol? No "maybe I shouldn't have said that as if it would have excused racism or made it impossible for me to be racist" but pushing the fault onto other people like fucking children

[bfpnola]

Hey! We're back with part 2! Better Future Program (@bfpnola) is officially looking for youth volunteers between the ages of 14 and 25 for our Advocacy Committee. Don't see a role that fits your identity or beliefs? Don't worry! We've got SO MANY opportunities, we had to split them up across multiple posts! Feel free to check our Linktr.ee for more positions or our "Apply Now!" highlight on Instagram in the coming weeks!

And if you don’t know who we are? Welcome! BFP is Black-, queer-, and woman-owned nonprofit, entirely run by youth! Since 2016, we’ve been accepting volunteers not just from Bulbancha (so-called New Orleans, Louisiana), but WORLDWIDE! Our mission is to globally expand peer-led political education, support, and imagination for marginalized youth!

To fulfill this goal, we offer over 3,000 free resources through our Liberation Library, design and execute mutual aid-based projects, and offer the safe space young activists need to ask questions and grow. If this sounds like something you’d be interested in, check out our International Youth Leadership Positions page in our bio!

Image description below.

[ID: All slides share the same background. There is a repeating list of BFP’s guiding principles and core beliefs in translucent, all-white, capitalized letters. BFP’s guiding principles include youth-centricity, self-liberation, transparency, accountability, horizontality, community, and intersectionality. BFP’s core beliefs include the right to organize, educational equity, youth liberation, anti-racism, religious liberty, disability justice, climate action, decolonization, gender equity, queer/LGBTQ+ liberation, bodily autonomy, fat liberation, abolition, caste abolition, anti-authoritarianism, and anti-capitalism. A burnt orange to amber gradient overlays this list. A bold, white square frames the image with a white arrow pointing right in the bottom right corner.

Slide 1 reads: “LINK IN BIO. APPLY NOW! INTERNATIONAL YOUTH LEADERSHIP POSITIONS! REMOTE & IN-PERSON.” There is a BFP logo in the lefthand corner and the words “Part Two” in the righthand corner, as this is the first of multiple posts showcasing open leadership positions.

Slide 2 reads: "Advocacy Committee: Africana Advocates

Responsibilities Include:

Develop and execute your very own political education workshops related to African countries and their diasporas

Build local mutual aid networks to meet the basic needs of those of African descent

Provide consultation to other marginalized youth to promote awareness and appreciation

Time Commitment:

Other than our weekly 1.5-2 hr meeting, usually on Sundays, you're free to design your schedule around your tasks!

Requirements/Eligibility:

BFP prioritizes the leadership of marginalized communities. Tap the International Leadership Positions page in our Linktr.ee for more information! Link in bio @bfpnola :)" Slide 3 reads: "Advocacy Committee: Indigenous Advocates

Responsibilities Include:

Develop and execute your very own political education workshops related to your Indigenous community

Build local mutual aid networks to meet the basic needs of various Indigenous communities

Provide consultation to other marginalized youth to promote awareness and appreciation

Time Commitment:

Other than our weekly 1.5-2 hr meeting, usually on Sundays, you're free to design your schedule around your tasks!

Requirements/Eligibility:

BFP prioritizes the leadership of marginalized communities. Tap the International Leadership Positions page in our Linktr.ee for more information! Link in bio @bfpnola :)" Slide 4 reads: "Advocacy Committee: Pacific Islander Advocates

Responsibilities Include:

Develop and execute your very own political education workshops related to the Pacific Islands and their diasporas

Build local mutual aid networks to meet the basic needs of various Pacific Islander communities

Provide consultation to other marginalized youth to promote awareness and appreciation

Time Commitment:

Other than our weekly 1.5-2 hr meeting, usually on Sundays, you're free to design your schedule around your tasks!

Requirements/Eligibility:

BFP prioritizes the leadership of marginalized communities. Tap the International Leadership Positions page in our Linktr.ee for more information! Link in bio @bfpnola :)" Slide 5 reads: "Advocacy Committee: Central Asian Advocates

Responsibilities Include:

Develop and execute your very own political education workshops related to Central Asia and its diasporas

Build local mutual aid networks to meet the basic needs of various Central Asian communities

Provide consultation to other marginalized youth to promote awareness and appreciation

Time Commitment:

Other than our weekly 1.5-2 hr meeting, usually on Sundays, you're free to design your schedule around your tasks!

Requirements/Eligibility:

BFP prioritizes the leadership of marginalized communities. Tap the International Leadership Positions page in our Linktr.ee for more information! Link in bio @bfpnola :)" Slide 6 reads: "Advocacy Committee: East Asian Advocates

Responsibilities Include:

Develop and execute your very own political education workshops related to East Asia and its diasporas

Build local mutual aid networks to meet the basic needs of various East Asian communities

Provide consultation to other marginalized youth to promote awareness and appreciation

Time Commitment:

Other than our weekly 1.5-2 hr meeting, usually on Sundays, you're free to design your schedule around your tasks!

Requirements/Eligibility:

BFP prioritizes the leadership of marginalized communities. Tap the International Leadership Positions page in our Linktr.ee for more information! Link in bio @bfpnola :)" Slide 7 reads: "Advocacy Committee: South Asian Advocates

Responsibilities Include:

Develop and execute your very own political education workshops related to South Asia and its diasporas

Build local mutual aid networks to meet the basic needs of various South Asian communities

Provide consultation to other marginalized youth to promote awareness and appreciation

Time Commitment:

Other than our weekly 1.5-2 hr meeting, usually on Sundays, you're free to design your schedule around your tasks!

Requirements/Eligibility:

BFP prioritizes the leadership of marginalized communities. Tap the International Leadership Positions page in our Linktr.ee for more information! Link in bio @bfpnola :)" Slide 8 reads: "Advocacy Committee: Southeast Asian Advocates

Responsibilities Include:

Develop and execute your very own political education workshops related to Southeast Asia and its diasporas

Build local mutual aid networks to meet the basic needs of various Southeast Asian communities

Provide consultation to other marginalized youth to promote awareness and appreciation

Time Commitment:

Other than our weekly 1.5-2 hr meeting, usually on Sundays, you're free to design your schedule around your tasks!

Requirements/Eligibility:

BFP prioritizes the leadership of marginalized communities. Tap the International Leadership Positions page in our Linktr.ee for more information! Link in bio @bfpnola :)" Slide 9 reads: "Advocacy Committee: West Asian Advocates

Responsibilities Include:

Develop and execute your very own political education workshops related to West Asia and its diasporas

Build local mutual aid networks to meet the basic needs of various West Asian communities

Provide consultation to other marginalized youth to promote awareness and appreciation

Time Commitment:

Other than our weekly 1.5-2 hr meeting, usually on Sundays, you're free to design your schedule around your tasks!

Requirements/Eligibility:

BFP prioritizes the leadership of marginalized communities. Tap the International Leadership Positions page in our Linktr.ee for more information! Link in bio @bfpnola :)" Slide 10 reads: "Advocacy Committee: Latine Advocates

Responsibilities Include:

Develop and execute your very own political education workshops related to Latin countries and their diasporas

Build local mutual aid networks to meet the basic needs of various Latin communities

Provide consultation to other marginalized youth to promote awareness and appreciation

Time Commitment:

Other than our weekly 1.5-2 hr meeting, usually on Sundays, you're free to design your schedule around your tasks!

Requirements/Eligibility:

BFP prioritizes the leadership of marginalized communities. Tap the International Leadership Positions page in our Linktr.ee for more information! Link in bio @bfpnola :)" /End ID.]

[nefariousfool]

gonna be honest, homestuck winning that stupid ass best queer media poll against Paris is burning right after like two weeks of homestuck anti racism workshop discourse would be more shocking if this website wasn't obviously filled with a bunch of dumb bitches who think the pain of people of color is something to giggle about bc of how trivial they find it can't see a point in watching something if they can't imagine the skinny white main characters fucking. like I genuinely don't think most of you have even seen moonlight

[specialmouse]

Did she learn ANYTHING from the homestuck anti racism workshop?!

[lipid]

homestuck anti racism workshop...

[gatheringbones]

[“This conception of racism and good intentions as mutually exclusive makes it essential that white people quickly and eagerly telegraph their niceness to racialized people. Niceness in this case is conveyed through a light tone of voice, eye contact accompanied by smiling, and conjuring affinity such as a shared enjoyment of a music genre, compliments on hair or style, having travelled to the country the “other” is perceived to have come from, and knowing people from the other’s group. Smiling as we encounter racialized people also provides the bonus capital of feeling benevolent. (However, it should be noted that if they are Black and somewhere they aren’t expected to be, such as a park, coffee shop, dorm lounge, pool, or neighborhood deemed white, we forgo the thin veneer of niceness and allow the barely suppressed assumption of criminality to guide us.)

To be clear, I am distinguishing niceness from kindness. Kindness is compassionate and includes behaviors that are supportive. Kindness is driven by values that the person demonstrates in action, even—and perhaps especially—when those actions are inconvenient. For example, I am having car trouble and you stop and see if you can help. I appear upset after a work meeting and you check in and listen, asking how you can support me. Kindness, because it is active, can be one aspect of white allyship. Niceness, by contrast, is fleeting, hollow, performative, and requires no further action. Niceness is not the same as authenticity. In fact, niceness often functions as cover for a lack of authenticity.

Niceness can protect racism in several ways. First, it is difficult to get under the surface in a culture of niceness. To challenge and break through the facade requires conflict, and conflict is forbidden in a culture of niceness. How can we raise an uncomfortable and often contentious issue such as racism when niceness has been established as the procedural norm? In this way the unspoken social agreement of niceness creates a kind of protective force field around racial dynamics. If that force field is broken, white solidarity will rally to protect the status quo. If it is a white person who creates the breach, they become the outsider—deemed too shrill or combative. If a person of color dares to speak out, their outsider status is reinforced, along with the narrative that they are angry, aggressive, and threatening.

Second, the continual pull toward niceness makes it difficult to address the strong emotions anti-racist work often brings up, such as grief, pain, and anger. Left unaddressed, these emotions prevent us from moving forward. I recently co-led a three-day workshop for a group of wealthy white women. They were so nice! There was lots of head nodding, smiling, politeness, and respectful listening. The women were not debating or appearing to resist the content. Yet niceness in this context actually functioned as a passive-aggressive way to conceal difficult feelings such as anger or numbness. All of this niceness may have been more comfortable for the participants, but it also prevented them from an honest accounting and exploration of racism, which was ostensibly what they had signed up for. By the end of the second day, those tensions finally erupted, allowing us to get real and address what the group was holding. Several women were upset that they had not been called on when they raised their hands and felt silenced. Another was angry that we did not validate her claim that she grew up in Canada and so was different from the rest of the group. And while the resentment brewing under the facade of niceness was not openly expressed until the second day (and regardless of how petty the basis of that withholding was), it was still present and impacting their ability to take in and engage with the content. In this way, niceness functioned as a shield, protecting the group from the honesty and vulnerability needed for growth and change.

Writer and anti-racism educator Debby Irving, in her poignant memoir Waking Up White, describes the cost of her socialization into upper-class culture:

Like so many of the behaviors I adopted in childhood, silence and avoidance became subconscious habits. My parents didn’t silence me because they didn’t care about my ideas. They silenced me because their own childhood socializations ingrained in them a subconscious habit of steering away from conflict and authenticity and toward the more socially acceptable culture of niceness. They were passing on to me a survival skill, one that bought a place in the high-class world of comfort and gentility, even if this meant diminishing one’s capacity to plug into the circuitry of feelings, cutting oneself off from one’s own heart and soul.”]

robin diangelo, from nice racism: how progressive white people perpetuate racial harm

[beardedmrbean]

Aformer Seattle city employee has filed a federal civil rights lawsuit alleging he was a victim of anti-White discrimination due to a "racially hostile work environment."

Joshua Diemert, who worked as a program intake representative in Seattle’s Department of Human Services from 2013 to 2021, filed suit Nov. 16 against the city and its mayor, Bruce Harrell, claiming he was constantly belittled and harassed at work for being White and that he was denied advancement opportunities and retaliated against due to the color of his skin.

Diemert’s lawsuit blames the alleged anti-White culture he experienced on the city’s Race and Social Justice Initiative (RSJI), which seeks to "end institutionalized racism and race-based disparities in City government," according to the city government’s website. 

The lawsuit alleges that Diemert's race was an "albatross around his neck" throughout his career, and that the discrimination became "increasingly pervasive and hostile" as his career developed.

SEATTLE OFFICIALS PROPOSE OFFERING GIFT CARDS TO METH ADDICTS TO ENCOURAGE SOBRIETY AS DRUG OVERDOSES SURGE

"The City routinely urged Mr. Diemert to join race-based affinity groups and required him to participate in training sessions that demeaned and degraded him based on his racial and ethnic identity," the lawsuit states. "He was chastised and punished for combating racially discriminatory hiring practices by [Department of Human Services] colleagues."

"His supervisors and other colleagues continually dismissed his concerns over a period of years and claimed he could not be a victim of racism and discrimination because he possessed ‘white privilege,’" it claims. "And he was denied opportunities for advancement by the City based on his racial and ethnic identity."

As part of his RSJI training, the lawsuit alleges, Diemert was required to attend a two-day workshop in 2019 called "Undoing Institutional Racism," during which facilitators declared, "white people are like the devil," "racism is in white people’s DNA," and "white people are cannibals."

"When Mr. Diemert objected, the facilitators used their platform to belittle and attack Mr. Diemert," the lawsuit claims. "Other coworkers that were present continued the mockery in the workplace and made Mr. Diemert the office pariah. Mr. Diemert’s coworkers called him a ‘white supremacist.’"

"Mr. Diemert’s colleagues used their work emails to berate and entertain violence against him, referring to him as ‘some a--hole,’ the ‘reincarnation of the people that shot native Americans from trains, rounded up jews for the camps, hunted down gypsies in Europe and runaway slaves in America,’ noting that it was not worth addressing his concerns because he would ‘just come back with more stupidity,’ and that someone should ‘get a guy to swing by when Josh is in the restroom and beat him bloody,’" the lawsuit alleges.

$15M IN AMERICAN RESCUE PLAN FUNDS WENT TO ‘ANTI-RACISM,' ‘SOCIAL ACTIVISM’ PROGRAMS FOR KIDS

The lawsuit also claims that Diemert was required to attend racially segregated trainings for White people and meetings where supervisors forced employees to "identify their race and to stand and affirm where they ranked themselves on a defined ‘continuum of racism.’"

"In June 2020, the Office of Civil Rights emailed Mr. Diemert stating that it was hosting a training on ‘Internalized Racial Superiority,’ and that this was ‘specifically targeted for White employees,’" the lawsuit claims. "The training focused on examining white employees’ ‘complicity in the system of white

supremacy,’ and how white employees ‘internalize and reinforce’ racism."

"The goal of the training was to turn these employees into white ‘accomplices’ who would interrupt the ‘whiteness’ that they saw in their colleagues," it added.

$825K IN AMERICAN RESCUE PLAN FUNDS WENT TO ‘ORAL HISTORIANS’ RESEARCHING ANTI-RACISM, ‘LATINX’ HISTORIES

"When Mr. Diemert objected, the facilitators used their platform to belittle and attack Mr. Diemert," the lawsuit claims. "Other coworkers that were present continued the mockery in the workplace and made Mr. Diemert the office pariah. Mr. Diemert’s coworkers called him a ‘white supremacist.’"

"Mr. Diemert’s colleagues used their work emails to berate and entertain violence against him, referring to him as ‘some a--hole,’ the ‘reincarnation of the people that shot native Americans from trains, rounded up jews for the camps, hunted down gypsies in Europe and runaway slaves in America,’ noting that it was not worth addressing his concerns because he would ‘just come back with more stupidity,’ and that someone should ‘get a guy to swing by when Josh is in the restroom and beat him bloody,’" the lawsuit alleges.

$15M IN AMERICAN RESCUE PLAN FUNDS WENT TO ‘ANTI-RACISM,' ‘SOCIAL ACTIVISM’ PROGRAMS FOR KIDS

The lawsuit also claims that Diemert was required to attend racially segregated trainings for White people and meetings where supervisors forced employees to "identify their race and to stand and affirm where they ranked themselves on a defined ‘continuum of racism.’"

"In June 2020, the Office of Civil Rights emailed Mr. Diemert stating that it was hosting a training on ‘Internalized Racial Superiority,’ and that this was ‘specifically targeted for White employees,’" the lawsuit claims. "The training focused on examining white employees’ ‘complicity in the system of white

supremacy,’ and how white employees ‘internalize and reinforce’ racism."

"The goal of the training was to turn these employees into white ‘accomplices’ who would interrupt the ‘whiteness’ that they saw in their colleagues," it added.

$825K IN AMERICAN RESCUE PLAN FUNDS WENT TO ‘ORAL HISTORIANS’ RESEARCHING ANTI-RACISM, ‘LATINX’ HISTORIES

[anniekoh]

multiculturalism vs multiracial organizing & solidarity

Two from Novara Media

We Can’t Dismantle Capitalism Without Antiracist Solidarity: Cross-community organising is key.

by Sonali Bhattacharyya, Novara Media (9 August 2021)

My dad was a lecturer and a trade unionist, my mum a social worker, both from India via what is now Bangladesh. They saw no distinction between the racist abuse they experienced and that experienced by their colleagues who originated from Pakistan or the Caribbean. In their eyes, they were all being exploited under the same unjust system.

If you look at photos of iconic acts of resistance from that era – protests against the violent racism that led to the murder of Altab Ali, the police brutality faced by visitors to the Mangrove, or the picket lines in support of the strikers at Grunwick – you’ll see the working class in all its diversity.

How State-Sanctioned Multiculturalism Killed Radical Anti-Racism in Britain: Enter the rainbow nation.

by Ilyas Nagdee & Azfar Shafi, Novara Media (21 June 2022)

In this way, antiracism from above became entangled with the British state rather than presenting an opposition to it. Multiculturalism served as a means for the state to manage the contradictions of governing a racist society without meaningfully addressing them – instead enveloping them a dense vocabulary of ‘culture’, ‘ethnicity’, ‘diversity’, ‘identity’ and so on.

At worst, multiculturalism provided an alibi for racist state agencies. This contradiction was laid bare in a pamphlet by the National Convention of Black Teachers on policing and race training, highlighting how between 1981 and 1984: “[The] police training establishment implemented a number of new programmes. So that cadets, recruits and officers may now be taught multi-agency policing methods in the morning and commando work in the afternoon: multiculturalism in one course and the use of plastic bullets in the next: concepts of American-imported racism-awareness on the one hand and Northern Ireland style repression on the other.”

As multiculturalism was elevated to an ideology of governance, racism itself was emptied of its ideological substance. This was underlined by the response to policing following the 1981 uprisings, whereby the question of state racism which the police were enforcing became recast as a matter of racial attitudes among the police. More broadly, structural racism was refashioned as an issue of managing racist attitudes and interpersonal hostility. This in turn held the door open for apolitical and procedural ‘solutions’ to racism – such as the new racism awareness trainings prescribed by professional antiracists.

After the 1981 uprisings, such professionals were drawn from the ranks of organisations like the Racism Awareness Programme Unit (RAPU) to help in smoothing out the hard edges of the police force. Nearly 40 years later, their US counterparts were soothing the hearts of white America, as Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility shot to the top of bestseller lists at the height of the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests. Labour leader Keir Starmer’s warmest gesture towards the protests was to prescribe unconscious bias training for his MPs. And before the dust had settled, race consultants on both sides of the Atlantic were polishing up their portfolios and waxing lyrical about their ‘anti-oppression workshops’ and ‘antiracist dinner parties’, like shameless antiracist ambulance chasers.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Zack K. De Piero

Published: Dec 23, 2023

Looking for a job in today’s politicized job market?

Prepare to submit a résumé, cover letter, references — and a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Statement: A page-long explanation of how you intend to bring those three seemingly benign principles into the workplace.

DEI statements have become standard practice in academia, but a tide might be turning: UNC and UMass Boston recently un-required mandatory DEI statements for student admission, employee recruitment and faculty promotion. 

Here’s hoping this sets an industry precedent — a step towards reining in DEI in every sector. 

When I taught at Penn State Abington from 2018-2022 as an English professor, their obsession with DEI created a hostile work environment teeming with discrimination.

Case in point: writing faculty were subjected to a video called “White Teachers are a Problem.”

After making my opposition known, I was retaliated against.

My perceived insubordination was branded on Affirmative Action Office notices, and I was sanctioned by HR as well as on my annual performance review. 

Penn State’s stance was clear: Blind loyalty is required by the DEI machine. 

The premier job board across academia, HigherEdJobs, shows how deeply entrenched compulsory left-think has become.

Whether you want to teach French at SUNY Oswego, Dance at Chapman, Soil Science and Nutrient Management at Colorado State, or Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Syracuse, your prospective employer will expect a DEI statement, so prepare to bend the knee. 

Even if you aspire to become the Beef Center Assistant Manager at Washington State University: Yep: DEI statement.

And these are just a few random examples posted since Thanksgiving.

It’s an epidemic. 

Make no mistake, the DEI machine has always been about toeing an ideological line — never any meaningful change.

Consider the case of Dr. Tabia Lee — a former faculty member of De Anza Community College in California.

While facilitating a “Decentering Whiteness” event featuring a BLM co-founder, Lee (who’s Black) made waves by allowing students to ask unscripted follow-up questions. For doing so, her tenure was sabotaged.

Despite being “diverse,” it turns out that Lee’s actual diversity didn’t gel with De Anza’s agenda.

A commitment to actual diversity requires respecting diverse viewpoints.

But wrong-think isn’t tolerated by the DEI Industrial Complex. 

Fortunately, federal law has something to say about that: neither De Anza nor Penn State has the authority to suppress Dr. Lee or my speech, nor can they discriminate on the basis of race.

That’s why she and I — supported by the nonpartisan group, the Foundation Against Intolerance & Racism — are bringing lawsuits against our former employers. 

Pull back this sacred academic curtain, and see the emperor’s new clothes for yourself.

In 2021, Pennsylvanian’s taxes and students’ tuition went towards workshops on microaggressions, intersectional feminism, anti-racism, and white privilege led by the Penn State Abington DEI grifters.

Its leader’s Juneteenth email directed white faculty and staff to “stop talking,” “find an accountability partner,” and “stop being afraid of your own internalized white supremacy.” 

Such DEI efforts ooze with divisiveness, so yes, DEI statements are clearly a form of compelled speech, and thus, a violation of First Amendment free speech protections.

[ Dr. Tabia Lee says her tenure-track position at De Anza College in California was derailed after she failed to conform to DEI orthodoxy. ]

What’s worse, though, is the type of educational environment that DEI-ified initiatives create for students — and the culprit is the “E”: Equity. 

Here’s how “equity” played out in the misguided minds of my DEI-obsessed former colleagues. A former supervisor, who endorsed the view that “reverse racism isn’t racism,” also announced that “racist structures” exist “regardless of [anybody’s] good intentions” and that “racism is in the results if the results draw a color line.”

The apparent guiding subtext here: students should be graded on the basis of race so all achieve similar outcomes.

Suppose you deflated the grades of Asian-Americans — a group that often disproportionately excels — much like Harvard deflated their acceptance rates until the Supreme Court put a stop to race-based admissions.

That’s somehow acceptable in the name of “equity?” Of course not, but disagree with enforced equity in education and in the eyes of antiracist activists, that makes you – you guessed it — a “racist.” 

Alternatively, performative equity could be achieved by inflating everybody’s grades — straight A’s all around! 

Harvard’s almost there: in 2020-2021, 80% of all grades were A’s, according to an October article in the Harvard Crimson. 

The road to equity is paved by the soft bigotry of low expectations.

And in a world where grit, labor, and integrity win the day, academia’s obsession with “equity” breeds a “survival of the weakest” mindset. 

Nevertheless, the DEI machine continues to reign supreme.

Over a five-year span, Ohio State’s DEI annual budget bloated to $20 million with nearly 200 DEI bureaucrats who cite the leftist scripture of Ibram X. Kendi and Robin DiAngelo.

But before we can enter their church, us natural-born sinners must repent by issuing performative DEI statements?

Yeah. No thanks.

Paradoxically, the more elite institutions obnoxiously virtue-signal their allegiance to DEI, the less committed they are to actual diversity and inclusion — and the more they obscure actual equality in the process. 

These institutions aren’t hiding what they’re doing.

Even in the throes of my lawsuit, Penn State Abington has doubled down on DEI: there’s now a sister office — the Office of Inclusive Excellence — complete with its own cabinet-level director. 

Folks: this isn’t going away unless you take action.

Here’s a start: if you’re ever asked to submit a DEI statement, don’t bend the knee to their “E” — Equity.

Reframe their game, and tell them how and why you stand up for the honorable “E”: Equality. 

Zack K. DePiero (Ph.D, M.Ed) teaches writing at Northampton Community College. 

[communistkenobi]

I think a major flaw in anti-discrimination programs now, at least as I have experienced them, is that they’re usually administered to individual people as an online checklist to complete. If unions were serious about fostering an anti-discriminatory culture in the workplace, administering these programs in live group settings would be much more effective. Each person would see their peers participating in these workshops and be forced to have a conversation about racism and other bigotries in front of other people, where there is the potential for public shaming and exclusion (as well as the inverse - fostering inclusion where minorities can find solidarity in their peers). If you treat anti-discrimination the same way you would homework, no one is going to take that shit seriously