#anti-racist train the trainer corporate

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

By Tom Winter, Erik Ortiz and Rich Schapiro

As pro-Palestinian student protesters took over a building at Columbia University in New York City early Tuesday, one person in the crowd outside stood out — a gray-haired woman who delivered orders to young people helping to barricade a door.

“Tie it right to the lock,” she told two masked protesters holding zip ties, according to video posted on social media. The protesters did as they were told, using the ties on a metal table pressed against the door of Hamilton Hall. 

“Let’s give them a little cover,” the older woman told the crowd. “Cameras back. Cameras back.”

The woman was not a Columbia University student or faculty member. She, in fact, has no known affiliation to the school at all. 

She is a 63-year-old veteran activist named Lisa Fithian, whom the New York Police Department described as a “professional agitator.”

The takeover of Hamilton Hall was a significant escalation in the strategy used by students demanding that Columbia divest from corporations that could be profiting from the war in Gaza. Both New York Mayor Eric Adams and Columbia President Nemat Shafik blamed the action on outside actors with no ties to the school. 

So far, Fithian is the only outsider city officials have identified as playing a part in the seizure of the building. 

New York police officials believe Fithian could be one of the people responsible for training the protesters in the tactics they used to occupy Hamilton Hall, according to two senior city officials. The officials did not provide further details, and the full scope of Fithian’s involvement in the takeover was not clear.  

Fithian is no stranger to high-profile protests. For roughly 50 years, she has participated in demonstrations for a dizzying array of causes at home and abroad, racking up scores of arrests. “In my years as an anti-racist organizer, I have shut down the CIA, disrupted the World Trade Organization’s first major meeting during the Battle of Seattle, and helped launch Common Ground Relief, a grassroots organization that supported communities in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina,” she wrote in her book “Shut It Down: Stories From a Fierce, Loving Resistance.”

[arcticdementor]

The outdated definition of a liberal is that of a person who is tolerant of others, their thoughts, and their way of life. This traditional definition has been discarded in favour of an increasingly narrow one largely due to Karl Popper’s “Paradox of Tolerance” in which the intolerant cannot be tolerated as an ‘open society’ will eventually be seized by the intolerant. Therefore, Enlightened Despotism is the ‘proper’ way to govern a society.

It is human nature to challenge despotism and authoritarianism, especially as they fall into intellectual, spiritual, economic and personal corruption. So how are those who challenge such a system to be dealt with? Simply label them as ‘intolerant’, which makes them a de facto outlaw in society.

Christopher Rufo is one of these modern outlaws. Initally a documentary maker, his life recently has taken him down another, much more difficult route: challenging the intellectual basis of today’s American elites, that being Critical Race Theory. He has been credited with singlehandedly putting opposition to this trend on the political map by way of influencing President Trump to issue an Executive Order halting its instruction inside of federal agencies. With Biden’s reversal of Trump’s Executive Order, Rufo is now expanding the front far and wide, and winning key battles along the way.

…

All Italians are mafia so your family is definitely connected to at least one of the NYC Five Families, if not the Outfit in Chicago.  You grew up watching Goodfellas and then eventually moved on to The Sopranos.  You and your wop friends picked up the lingo, started talking like mafiosos, and came across as fucking idiots to everyone around you.  You tried to extort a guy down the block who had a pretty strong betting book but he told his mom and his mom told your mom and your dad got out his belt and told you that you're not allowed to be hardcore.  When was your first hit and why wasn't it Rod Dreher?

There is some truth to this. Like most authentic Italian-Americans, I have distant relatives in both countries who operate “family businesses.” Most of it is harmless: off-the-books car parts, bookmaking, loan collection. We had a relative in Philly who made a living hustling mobsters in golf—he would let them win just enough to keep them hooked, then empty their pockets every so often. The business had its ups and downs. Once, he was sitting with the family on a Sunday, watching the news, when his face suddenly went white. A local mob boss had been arrested. Turns out that our relative had made his living the previous few years hustling that mob boss on the golf course. “Goddammit, now I need to find a job!” he said when the news broke. Most of the time, I don’t ask questions.

…

It’s astonishing to me that as recently as the 1960s, interracial marriage was seen, correctly, as a moral cause and a sign of racial progress. Now, for some factions on the Left, interracial marriages, and mixed-race families in general, are seen as a form of oppression, domination, and false consciousness. They see interracial marriages as an expression of “white supremacy” or, for the minority spouse, as an “assimilation into whiteness.” Some lefties famously blasted Amy Coney Barrett as a “white colonizer” for adopting a Haitian orphan. We’ve gone from Loving v Virginia to Ibram X. Kendi in a single generation. And now we’re beginning to see the revival of informal social prohibitions against interracial marriage and actual racial segregation in schools, universities, and public institutions. I recently obtained photos from King County Library, which held a racially-segregated diversity training program, even hanging up signs outside the separated rooms labelled “People of Colour” and “People Who Are White.” It’s like water fountains in 1955, but in the service of 21st-century woke ideology. The new racial politics of the Left is almost parodically regressive.

…

Others have laid out different strategies in fighting CRT.  Some have suggested confronting Corporate HR Trainers either overtly or subtly so that fellow employees would 'see through' its illogic and inherent awfulness.  Why are these approaches either useless or even counterproductive?

You can’t persuade zealots with logic, facts, and clever argumentation; they only understand the language of power. That’s why the campaign to prove that you’re “the real liberal” or “more antiracist than the antiracists” is doomed to failure. Like it or not, Critical Race Theory is the driving force of the modern intellectual Left; they’re not going back to the philosophy of FDR, LBJ, or MLK. And they scrupulously follow the old dictum of “no enemies to the left”—they will dispatch the centrist liberals with even more vitriol and brutality than they dispatch the conservatives. This is also the core dilemma of the IDW crowd: many of them cannot imagine aligning with political conservatives; they operate under the delusion that they can “recapture the centre” and convince the planet of the virtue of Enlightenment values. That’s not how politics works. We live in a polarized political system—one winner, one loser. You’ll remember that the Girondins went to the guillotine. If, metaphorically speaking, the centrist liberals want to avoid the same fate, they will have to make an alliance with Trump-loving, truck-driving, gun-toting Middle Americans. That’s reality. We’ll see if they heed it.

…

Ibram X. Kendi is a human fortune cookie. His intellectual output is an endless buffet of word salad and phony wisdom: “Denial is the heartbeat of racism”; “In order to truly be anti-racist, you also have to truly be anti-capitalist”; “Whiteness is literally posing an existential threat to humanity.” In my investigative reporting, I’ve noticed something quite interesting: the core demographic of Kendi readers is liberal, white, middle-aged women who work in public institutions. On one hand, this is a surprise: Kendi embraces a radical vision of Black Power-style revolution. On the other hand, it makes perfect sense: Kendi’s politics provides a vicarious thrill, but is completely in line with conventional wisdom. It’s revolution without risk; it’s liberation without leaving the house. That’s really the best way to understand what he’s doing. He’s not a revolutionary; he’s a self-help guru for white liberals and a reputation-laundering mechanism for multinational corporations. He is an apostle of anti-whiteness, but a mouthpiece for elite white opinion. He preaches anti-capitalism, but accepts Visa, Mastercard, and American Express.

…

The dirty secret about Critical Race Theory and, to a certain extent, the New York Times, is that they are both extensions of the state. Critical Race Theory was incubated in public and publicly-subsidized universities and then operationalized in public agencies and public school systems. In reality, Critical Race Theory has very little organic support—it’s an artificial ideology that has the illusion of support because it has commandeered the public bureaucracy and prestige media. But you’ll notice that the Critical Race Theorists are regularly ratioed on Twitter, juice their book sales with institutional purchases, and collect corporate handouts to do their work. The New York Times is similarly situated. It’s the mouthpiece of the permanent state no matter who is in office. Its purpose is to manufacture the narrative and enforce ideological discipline. But here, too, the New York Times is less powerful than it appears. Its authority rests on its historical reputation and prestige, which is rapidly being squandered with each bogus story, newsroom tantrum, and Taylor Lorenz article. I’ll admit: I was momentarily frightened when the Times was putting together a piece attacking my work on Critical Race Theory. But it turned out to be a great coup for me: the Times made a sloppy accusation, so I quickly owned them on Twitter and generated 100 times more social media engagement in my rebuttal than they did in their attack. To top it off, conservatives consider it a badge of honour to get that first NYT hit piece, so I enjoyed a round of attaboys, high-fives, and small donations from my tribe.

…

How much do you shudder when you hear Capicolo pronounced "GABBAGOOL"?

The last time I heard that pronunciation, I shuddered so hard I threw out my back. It’s more than hate speech—it’s actual violence.

[96thdayofrage]

The anti-racism consulting industry does deserve both some sympathy and some credit. Its intention, to prod white Americans into more awareness of their own racism, is beneficent. And their premise that white people are often unaware of the degree to which racial privilege has enabled their success, which they can mistakenly attribute entirely to merit and effort, is correct. American society is shot through with multiple overlapping systems of racial bias — from exposure to harmful pollution to biased policing to unequal access to education to employment discrimination — that in combination sustain massive systemic inequality.

But the anti-racism trainers go beyond denying the myth of meritocracy to denying the role of individual merit altogether. Indeed, their teaching presents individuals as a racist myth. In their model, the individual is subsumed completely into racial identity.

One of DiAngelo’s favorite examples is instructive. She uses the famous story of Jackie Robinson. Rather than say “he broke through the color line,” she instructs people instead to describe him as “Jackie Robinson, the first Black man whites allowed to play major-league baseball.”

It is true, of course, that Robinson was not the first Black man who was good enough at baseball to make a major-league roster. The Brooklyn Dodgers decided, out of a combination of idealism and self-interest, to violate the norm against signing Black players. And Robinson was chosen due to a combination of his skill and extraordinary personality that allowed him to withstand the backlash in store for the first Black major leaguer. It is not an accident that DiAngelo changes the story to eliminate Robinson’s agency and obscure his heroic qualities. It’s the point. Her program treats individual merit as a myth to be debunked. Even a figure as remarkable as Robinson is reduced to a mere pawn of systemic oppression.

One way to understand this thinking is to place it on a spectrum of thought about race. On the far right is open white supremacy, which instructs white people to fight for their interests as white people. (Hence the 14-word slogan, “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.”) Moving to the left, standard-issue conservatism tends to discount the existence of racism and treat all problems in pure color-blind terms, as though racism has been banished. To the left of that is standard liberalism, which acknowledges the existence of racism as a problem that complicates simple race-neutral solutions.

The ideology of the racism-training industry is distinctively to the left of that. It collapses all identity into racial categories. “It is crucial for white people to acknowledge and recognize our collective racial experience,” writes DiAngelo, whose teachings often encourage the formation of racial affinity groups. The program does not allow any end point for the process of racial consciousness. Racism is not a problem white people need to overcome in order to see people who look different as fully human — it is totalizing and inescapable.

Of course, DiAngelo’s whites-only groups are not dreamed up in the same spirit as David Duke’s. The problem is that, at some point, the extremes begin to functionally resemble each other despite their mutual antipathy.

I want to make clear that when I compare the industry’s conscious racialism to the far right, I am not accusing it of “reverse racism” or bias against white people. In some cases its ideas literally replicate anti-Black racism.

Glenn Singleton, president of Courageous Conversation, a racial-sensitivity training firm, tells Bergner that valuing “written communication over other forms” is “a hallmark of whiteness,” as is “scientific, linear thinking. Cause and effect.”

This is not some idiosyncratic oddball notion. The African-American History Museum has a page on whiteness, which summarizes the ideas that the racism trainers have brought into relatively wide circulation.

“White” values include things like “objective, rational thinking”; “cause and effect relationships”; “hard work is the key to success”; “plan for the future”; and “delayed gratification.” The source for this chart is another, less-artistic chart written by Judith Katz in 1990. Katz has a doctorate in education and moved into the corporate consulting world in 1985, where, according to her résumé, she has “led many transformational change initiatives.” It is not clear what in Katz’s field of study allowed her to establish such sweeping conclusions about the innate culture of white people versus other groups.

One way to think through these cultural generalizations is to measure them against its most prominent avatar for racial conflict, Donald Trump. How closely does he reflect so-called white values? The president hardly even pretends to believe that “hard work” is the key to success. The Trump version of his alleged success is that he’s a genius who improvises his way to brilliant deals. The realistic version is that he’s a lazy heir who inherited and cheated his way to riches, and spends most of his time watching television. Trump is likewise incapable of delayed gratification, planning for the future, and regards “objective rational thinking” with distrust. On the other hand, Barack Obama is deeply devoted to all those values.

Now, every rule has its exceptions. Perhaps the current (white) president happens to be alienated from the white values that the previous (Black) president identified with strongly. But attaching the values in question to real names brings to life a point the racism trainers seem to elide: These values are not neutral at all. Hard work, rational thought, and careful planning are virtues. White racists traditionally project the opposite of these traits onto Black people and present them as immutable flaws. Jane Coaston, who has reported extensively on the white-nationalist movement, summarizes it, “The idea that white people are just good at things, or are better inherently, more clean, harder working, more likely to be on time, etc.”

In his profile, Bergner asked DiAngelo how she could reject “rationalism” as a criteria for hiring teachers, on the grounds that it supposedly favors white candidates. Don’t poor children need teachers to impart skills like that so they have a chance to work in a high-paying profession employing reasoning skills?

DiAngelo’s answer seems to imply that she would abolish these high-paying professions altogether:

“Capitalism is so bound up with racism. I avoid critiquing capitalism — I don’t need to give people reasons to dismiss me. But capitalism is dependent on inequality, on an underclass. If the model is profit over everything else, you’re not going to look at your policies to see what is most racially equitable.”

(Presumably DiAngelo’s ideal socialist economy would keep in place at least some well-paid professions — say, “diversity consultant,” which earns her a comfortable seven-figure income.)

Singleton, likewise, proposed evolutionary social changes to the economy that would render it unnecessary to teach writing and linear thought to minority children. Bergner writes:

I asked whether guiding administrators and teachers to put less value, in the classroom, on capacities like written communication and linear thinking might result in leaving Black kids less ready for college and competition in the labor market. “If you hold that white people are always going to be in charge of everything,” he said, “then that makes sense.” He invoked, instead, a journey toward “a new world, a world, first and foremost, where we have elevated the consciousness, where we pay attention to the human being.”

Whether or not a world along these lines will ever exist, or is even possible to design, is at best uncertain. What is unquestionably true is that these revolutionary changes will not be completed within the lifetime of anybody currently alive. Which is to say, a program to deny the value of teaching so-called white values to Black children is to condemn them to poverty. Unsurprisingly, Bergner’s story shows two educators exposed to the program and rebelling against it. One of them, Leslie Chislett, had to endure some ten anti-racism training sessions before eventually snapping at the irrationality of a program that denigrates learning. “The city has tens of millions invested in A.P. for All, so my team can give kids access to A.P. classes and help them prepare for A.P. exams that will help them get college degrees,” she says, “and we’re all supposed to think that writing and data are white values?”

Ibram X. Kendi, another successful entrepreneur in the anti-racism field, has a more frontal response to this problem. The achievement gap — the long-standing difference in academic performance between Black and white children — is a myth, he argues. The supposed gap merely reflects badly designed tests, he argues. It does not matter to him how many different kinds of measures of academic performance show this to be true. Nor does he seem receptive to the possibility that the achievement gap reflects environmental factors (mainly worse schools, but also access to nutrition, health care, outside learning, and so on) rather than any innate differences.

Kendi, like DiAngelo, argues that racism must be defined objectively. Intent does not matter, only effect. Their own intentions are surely admirable. But the fact is that their insistence on denying that America provides its Black children worse educations inhibits working toward a solution. Denying the achievement gap, like denying the gap in how police treat white and Black people, seems to objectively entrench racism.

It’s easy enough to see why executives and school administrators look around at a country exploding in righteous indignation at racism, and see the class of consultants selling their program of mystical healing as something that looks vaguely like a solution. But one day DiAngelo’s legions of customers will look back with embarrassment at the time when a moment of awakening to the depth of American racism drove them to embrace something very much like racism itself.

[tasia-reader]

(link to doc)

                                                10 Calls to Action

1. CBC/Radio-Canada must institute a zero-tolerance policy on racism and/or anti-Black racism in the Code of Conduct.

2. Each of CBC/Radio-Canada’s foundational policies must be reviewed through the lens of diversity, inclusion, anti-Black racism and anti-oppression. This includes, but is not limited to, CBC’s Code of Conduct, Journalistic Standards and Practices, Language and Style Guide and Programming Policies, among others.

3. Each of CBC/Radio-Canada’s training courses must be reviewed through the lens of diversity, inclusion, anti-Black racism and anti-oppression. This includes, but is not limited to, all Train the Trainer, Professional Skills and Leadership courses.

4. CBC/Radio-Canada must appoint a person of colour to the next available position on the Senior Executive Team.

5. CBC Radio-Canada must explore accelerating the appointment of currently qualified Black employees into leadership positions by January 2021.

6. CBC/Radio-Canada must create a Black content unit, similar to CBC Indigenous. This new unit will be connected at the outset with all content creation units within the corporation (E.g. News, Current Affairs, Music, Sports, Kids, etc.). This unit must be led by and comprised solely of Black employees.

7. CBC/Radio-Canada must commission an independent audit of all employees’ salaries across the country, by position and race to identify any discrepancies in the initial salaries between Black and non-Black new hires.

8. CBC/Radio-Canada must commission an independent audit/investigation into systemic racism within the corporation with a focus on two main categories:

a) Looking into HR practices and the systemic barriers in hiring, promotion, retention.

b) Looking into the mechanisms for reporting racism and the barriers to BIPOC employees who experience racism in the workplace.

9. CBC/Radio-Canada must establish an independent office to track and thoroughly investigate complaints of racist incidents/language usage in the workplace. 

10. CBC/Radio-Canada must publicly release all race-based data/reports currently available and those to come in the future, including, but not limited to, the current retention and promotion rates of non-white employees.

All of the actions above must be in consultation with Black people throughout the entire process.

[olgagarmash]

During their senior year of high school, Ahmad, Kahlil and Malik Jones posted their first workout video on YouTube.

Seven years later, the identical triplets own a successful personal training company, Triyo Fitness, and are prominent members of the boutique fitness community in Philadelphia.

While studying at the University of Pennsylvania, they went from creating workout videos to training students on campus. “We really started to grow the business doing bootcamps, training clients and making a name for ourselves as the fitness guys on campus,” Ahmad told TODAY.

After graduation, the triplets decided to take a risk and focus on Triyo Fitness full-time. “It wasn’t a group decision, but it was a decision that would not have worked if all three of us had not come to the same conclusion individually,” said Ahmad.

For Khalil, it was a conversation with his father that convinced him to take a risk. “I said I was going to get a marketing job and do Triyo Fitness on the side and (my dad) said, ‘Why would you do that if your goal is to do Triyo Fitness full-time? … You all should go all in if you want to do it.’ That was one of the most reassuring things my dad ever said to me. That was a really important experience: This is where you choose to take the risk.”

Malik came to the decision after experiencing corporate life firsthand. “I came to realize that I was more exhausted after being in the office from 8:30 a.m. – 6:30 p.m. than I ever was teaching classes or interacting with clients. That energizes me and gives me the fulfillment I need, knowing that I’m helping someone and doing it on my own terms,” he said.

Once they were all on board, they hustled to build a network in Philadelphia. “Beginning of 2020 is really when people started to take note,” said Ahmad.

Ahmad, Kahlil and Malik Jones want to help people associate positive experiences with fitness.Triyo Fitness

‘Lit and Fit’: The trio’s approach to fitness

An active lifestyle was ingrained in the brothers from an early age, playing almost every sport among the three of them. “It was always very much an active household we lived in, whether it was riding bikes with our parents or going on hikes,” said Malik. “In high school we got serious with track and field. That’s really where we started to understand training principles.”

“In the beginning it was more about enjoying fitness and having fun. Our parents always wanted us to find something that we could do together that we really enjoyed,” said Ahmad. “It wasn’t necessarily about having a business, but about having something that was ours; that was a good representation of who we were.”

And fun is an important component of their training style, as well as the content they post on social media.

“From the beginning, our motto has been ‘lit and fit.’ We want people to enjoy themselves, to be social, to have a good time, and associate positive experiences with fitness,” said Ahmad. “That’s how we try and curate our content and the behavior we exhibit when we teach classes and interact with clients. We want people to feel good when they’re around us.”

Related

Divide and conquer: Calling on their individual strengths

The identical triplets may have used their “sameness” to build a brand, but keeping it running successfully requires calling on their individual strengths.

Ahmad handles all tech, production and content creation. Malik handles the finances and business tasks, like taxes and pricing. Khalil handles marketing and overall brand direction.

And the same divide-and-conquer mentality applies to their training.

“In our in-person events Khalil does boxing, I do strength training, and Malik ends it with HIIT cardio,” said Ahmad, who also teaches at Barry’s Bootcamp. You can find Khalil on the schedule at Rumble boxing, and Malik teaches classes at Unite Fitness.

Their diverse skill sets — and the fact that there are three of them — allows them to create inclusive fitness programs that have “something for everybody,” said Ahmad.

“We have the ability to make sure each one of us is showing something that most, if not everybody, in the class can relate to,” he added. “We recently did a private event; there were around 2,000 people on the stream, between 12 and 80 years old. The goal was to make sure everybody had something they could do. So we had modifications, chair exercises and progressions to ensure that everybody felt comfortable and we met them where they were.”

Rolling with the punches

While gyms were especially hard hit by the pandemic, Triyo Fitness used it as motivation to launch new programs and expand their business. They all transitioned to virtual one-on-one training and group fitness classes on Zoom, which allowed them to reach a new audience outside of Philadelphia.

“I have a client that lives in California, but now we train together because of Zoom, which is super cool. I never would’ve met her if it wasn’t for the pandemic,” said Khalil.

This led to a shift in priorities. “We really embraced remote training; we can connect with anybody anywhere, and that’s what we want to continue to do,” said Malik. So they pressed pause on their goal to open up brick and mortar locations, and instead focused their efforts on developing an app.

“A lot of people want to be able to connect more online because of the pandemic, so it’s opened up a new avenue for us,” said Malik. “That’s the next thing: growing the community, being able to connect with people everywhere — creating a space where fitness is social, fitness is fun; that makes it more enjoyable to work out.”

Related

‘We’re not just trainers’

“Anyone can show you how to do a bicep curl, but we also want to show you how to have fun and maybe we turn that bicep curl into a cool dance video and then in the next post we tell you how you can be anti-racist with your friends who are experiencing Asian hate,” said Khalil. “These things set us apart because we’re not just trainers. I think that’s part of the reason people are drawn to us because they are getting a look into what we are beyond working out.”

A big piece of who they are is advocates for social change. When social unrest peaked this summer, the brothers used their platform to educate and to support causes they felt passionate about, like the Black Lives Matter movement.

They hosted Zoom workouts as fundraisers for different causes. “We were able to make a serious impact,” said Khalil. “That was huge in terms of talking action. Education is good, but we were able to then take people who we just educated and wanted to do something about it and help them do something about it by doing this sweat for a good cause.”

These personal values also informed their business decisions. “We decided to start really picking and choosing what brands we were going to work with and making sure every single collaboration had some sort of positive social impact,” said Ahmad. “By defining those goals, it gave us the confidence to say ‘these are our standards, if these aren’t the values you’re aligned with, this isn’t a collaboration that’s for us.’ It helped us really define our image and how we want to be seen, and also helped us make that positive impact.”

A 12-minute cardio workout

Want a little taste of what Triyo Fitness has to offer? Get your heart rate up with this sample workout from their new bodyweight program, “Be Anywhere, Be Greater” — no equipment necessary.

Heisman shuffle

Skaters

Squat & twist

Steam engine toe touch

This circuit is meant to improve your balance and agility. Complete 45 seconds of work followed by 15 seconds of rest for each exercise. Run through all four exercises in a circuit format and complete a total of three rounds. Modify exercises to your skill level and have fun with it!

via Wealth Health

[sethshead]

“White” values include things like “objective, rational thinking”; “cause and effect relationships”; “hard work is the key to success”; “plan for the future”; and “delayed gratification.” The source for this chart is another, less-artistic chart written by Judith Katz in 1990. Katz has a doctorate in education and moved into the corporate consulting world in 1985, where, according to her résumé, she has “led many transformational change initiatives.” It is not clear what in Katz’s field of study allowed her to establish such sweeping conclusions about the innate culture of white people versus other groups.

One way to think through these cultural generalizations is to measure them against its most prominent avatar for racial conflict, Donald Trump. How closely does he reflect so-called white values? The president hardly even pretends to believe that “hard work” is the key to success. The Trump version of his alleged success is that he’s a genius who improvises his way to brilliant deals. The realistic version is that he’s a lazy heir who inherited and cheated his way to riches, and spends most of his time watching television. Trump is likewise incapable of delayed gratification, planning for the future, and regards “objective rational thinking” with distrust. On the other hand, Barack Obama is deeply devoted to all those values.

Now, every rule has its exceptions. Perhaps the current (white) president happens to be alienated from the white values that the previous (Black) president identified with strongly. But attaching the values in question to real names brings to life a point the racism trainers seem to elide: These values are not neutral at all. Hard work, rational thought, and careful planning are virtues. White racists traditionally project the opposite of these traits onto Black people and present them as immutable flaws. Jane Coaston, who has reported extensively on the white-nationalist movement, summarizes it, “The idea that white people are just good at things, or are better inherently, more clean, harder working, more likely to be on time, etc.”

My issue with DiAngelo has always been the degree to which she subsumes ALAANA agency and autonomy to an overwhelming, incapacitating white supremacy. She obliterates the capacity of nonwhites to preserve their authenticity when interacting with whiteness, as though all members of all groups exist in static, monolithic group dynamics. Her worldview is reductive, the opposite of intersectional. She flatters the white ego by aggrandizing it and by minimizing, infantilizing the capacity of nonwhites to consent, to self-seek, despite the systemic disadvantages and personal enmity they do face. In doing so, she diminishes the strength and perseverence and ingenuity ALAANA people ought not need, yet demonstrate daily.

Add to that the hostility she demonstrates toward the benefits of a modern world, of the literate world, of the scientific method and rejection of superstition - one for which whites may take credit but which are compilations of contributions from all peoples from around the globe - and you see a classic sentimental nostalgia for a noble savage to whom she wishes to appear as benefactor: a position which itself is inextricable from her own assumed superiority.

[khalilhumam]

Teachers are people too: Racial bias among American educators

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New Post has been published on http://khalilhumam.com/teachers-are-people-too-racial-bias-among-american-educators/

Teachers are people too: Racial bias among American educators

By Jordan G. Starck, Travis Riddle, Stacey Sinclair, Natasha Warikoo The recent protests in the wake of George Floyd’s killing at the hands of police have led to growing awareness, especially among non-Black Americans, of the lived experiences of African Americans and ongoing racism and racial inequality. School districts, nonprofits, and even corporate firms have released statements to both staff and the public about their alliance with the movement to end racism. When Americans envision a country without racism and racial inequality, many look to schools. We imagine that schools can and should build interracial understanding and teach children not to be racist, believing that this will end racism in the long run. Many teachers are indeed on board with this vision. But there’s a problem with this vision. Schools and the teachers in them are embedded in our racist society. Decades of writing, hand-wringing, and attempts to address the racial inequality produced in schools have only been minimally successful. Why? In a recent study, we hypothesized that one piece of this puzzle is the racial bias that many teachers hold. We directly tested teachers’ levels of bias–general attitudes or feelings toward different racial groups–and compared their biases to those of other Americans. We wanted to know, given their dedication to learning and for many, dedication to racial equity, would teachers less frequently show racial bias than other Americans? We found that that teachers are people too. That is, teachers hold, on average, pro-white/anti-Black bias at levels comparable to those of the general population. To assess the magnitude of racial bias among teachers, we conducted two studies: one with a large sample of 68,930 teachers (and over 1.5 million non-teachers) who visited Project Implicit—a large-scale effort to evaluate implicit bias through self-administered, web-based tests—and the other with a sample of teachers and non-teachers from a smaller, nationally representative dataset. Our most precise raw estimates showed that about 30% of respondents (including both teachers and non-teachers) expressed explicit pro-white/anti-Black bias and 77% expressed implicit pro-white/anti-Black bias. In both studies, we statistically compared teachers to non-teachers with similar characteristics, including age, level of education, and political identity. We found statistically discernible differences between teachers and non-teachers in only two of the five bias measures we utilized across our studies. However, even those differences were negligible, dwarfed by the differences between white and Black respondents (74 times larger) and between conservative and liberal respondents (46 times larger). In other words, teachers’ biases very much mirror those of non-teachers. These biases matter. Other research shows that teachers’ implicit racial/ethnic biases are associated with lower expectations of students, worse instruction quality and pedagogical choices, and less concern for fostering mutually respectful classroom environments. These factors negatively impact the academic achievement of minority students. There is also evidence suggesting bias contributes to the documented disparities in how minority students are disciplined. Not only do these biases directly impact students’ educational experiences, but students’ perceptions that their teachers hold biases against them can adversely affect their academic engagement. Teachers need to be supported and assisted in contending with their racial biases. Failing to do so and attempting a colorblind approach will only further perpetuate racial disparities in education. So, what are some possible strategies to contend with racial bias in schools? One oft-used approach is to educate our teachers about bias and methods for reducing bias. Academics, educators, and diversity professionals have created abundant educational materials and trainings to that end. The former diversity trainer among this post’s authors can attest to the fact that raising people’s awareness, concern, and pronounced commitment to diversity is imminently doable. But the research literature also clearly indicates that we should not expect awareness-raising programming to be a silver bullet. To the contrary, bias training alone can also contribute to stereotyping and can make people overconfident that organizations are fair and equitable. Some may also respond to programs to address racial inequality with perceptions of reverse discrimination. Overall, we simply do not yet have good data about how to substantially, reliably, and enduringly reduce people’s biases in a way that can be implemented at scale. The limits of these trainings point to the importance of understanding racial bias as produced by social systems, not just individuals. Racial inequality is built into American society through social policies, the criminal justice system, residential segregation, and indeed, our education system. These biased systems and the inequalities they produce in turn instill and sustain bias within individuals. So long as the labels “poor,” “Black,” “inner city,” and “failing” connote a largely overlapping subset of schools in our society, Black students will continue to be associated with troublemaking, academic underperformance, and criminality in our society. Neither a diversity training nor an individual school alone will be able to change these societal biases that express themselves in our teaching force. Rather, policies targeted at the root causes of racial inequality are necessary to mitigate racial bias effectively over time. So what can schools do in the meantime? The most promising approach for schools seeking to address bias is to better manage the bias we know exists in the teaching force. Decades of research have shown how and when people’s biases “leak out” and affect their judgments and behaviors. For example, we know that biases are most likely to impact judgment and behavior when a situation is ambiguous or lacking in accountability, or when an individual is cognitively taxed (e.g., fatigued, distracted). These insights, paired with the cautions contained in the research literature, can point to practices that can reduce the extent to which teachers’ biases affect student outcomes. For example, providing teachers more time to grade assignments, encouraging them to utilize clear rubrics, and asking them to provide explanations for students’ grades might all work to reduce the extent to which teachers’ biases affect the grades students receive. These sorts of research-based recommendations may take considerable skill and expertise to implement in effective ways, and they will need to be evaluated in real-world contexts in order to assess their efficacy. As such, educators, researchers, and policymakers must work more closely together if we are to identify and execute scalable practices to break the links between teacher biases and student outcomes.

[dailykhaleej]

Hackers’ new target during COVID-19 pandemic: video conference calls

Picture Credit score: Pexels

Ceri Weber had simply begun to defend her dissertation when the chaos started: Echoes and voices interrupted her. Somebody parroted her phrases. Then Britney Spears music got here on, and somebody informed Weber to close up. Somebody threatened to rape her.

Hackers had focused the assembly on the video conference platform Zoom whereas Weber was finishing the ultimate step of her doctoral diploma at Duke College. The harassment lasted 10 minutes – the results of an more and more widespread type of cyber assault referred to as “Zoom bombing.”

As tens of hundreds of thousands of individuals flip to video conferencing to remain linked during the coronavirus pandemic, many have reported uninvited company who make threats, interject racist, anti-gay or anti-Semitic messages, or present pornographic photos. The assaults have drawn the eye of the FBI and different regulation enforcement companies.

“It seemed like someone was just being silly,” however then the intrusions “started to get more serious and threatening,” Weber recalled. “I was really in the zone and kept presenting.” She stated she was extra involved about others within the chat who might have been scared. She was interrupted regardless of having chosen “mute all” within the settings for the assembly she carried out from her house in Durham, North Carolina.

A Massachusetts highschool reported that somebody interrupted a digital class on Zoom, yelled profanity and revealed the trainer’s house tackle. One other college in that state reported an individual who accessed a gathering and confirmed swastika tattoos, in response to the FBI.

The company’s subject workplace in Boston beneficial that customers of video-teleconference platforms prioritize their safety by making certain that hosts have sole management over screen-sharing options and assembly invites.

In New York, Lawyer Normal Letitia James despatched a letter to Zoom with questions on how customers’ privateness and safety are being protected. In a separate later, Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut sought details about how the corporate handles customers’ private knowledge and guards towards safety threats and abuse.

Zoom has referred to trolls as “party crashers,” which some critics have taken as an indication the corporate is downplaying the assaults.

In a press release issued final week, the corporate informed The Related Press it takes the safety of conferences significantly and encourages customers to report any incidents on to Zoom. The corporate urged that folks internet hosting massive, public conferences affirm that they’re the one ones who can share their display and use options like mute controls.

“For those hosting private meetings, password protections are on by default, and we recommend that users keep those protections on to prevent uninvited users from joining,” the corporate stated. Zoom just lately up to date the default screen-sharing settings for schooling customers in order that academics are by default the one ones who can share content material.

Regardless of the replace, Nevada’s Clark County Faculty District, which incorporates all public colleges in Las Vegas, and the New York Metropolis Division of Training, which is accountable for the most important college district within the U.S., have informed academics to cease utilizing Zoom.

Zoom-bombing was at all times a risk given how the video conferencing app was configured – geared extra towards user-friendliness than privateness, stated Justin Brookman, director of privateness and expertise coverage at Shopper Experiences.

When shelter-at-home mandates abruptly transformed Zoom right into a lifeline for tens of hundreds of thousands of households, it grew to become a juicy target for mischief, he stated.

For years, “the usability issues outweighed the potential security issues because society was less reliant on them. Obviously, that has changed dramatically over the last month,” Brookman added.

Some Zoom-bombers have been in a position to randomly guess assembly IDs and crash conferences not configured to maintain out interlopers, he stated.

In different instances, inexperienced customers have uncovered assembly IDs on-line, together with U.Okay. Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who tweeted a screenshot of a Zoom Cupboard assembly that confirmed the ID and everybody’s display identify.

Brookman stated Zoom can do extra to spice up privateness protections for an enormous consumer base that now ranges from elementary college kids to senior residents discussing their wills with attorneys.

“A lot of people, including us, are critical of how they enable hosts to surveil users to make sure they are paying attention to the screen, or reading DMs or recording the call when it’s not entirely clear,” Brookman stated.

A mom in Georgia informed a neighborhood TV station that her son was “embarrassed and a little hysterical” after somebody hacked into his on-line class and confirmed pornography to the youngsters and trainer.

The Rev. Jason Wells was holding a publicly marketed discussion board just lately on Zoom when a troll entered and used the chat field to publish a racial slur so many occasions that it made the function unusable for different individuals.

“I would not say this was a random vandal hoping to interrupt somebody,” stated Wells, who’s government director of the New Hampshire Council of Church buildings in Harmony and co-chair of a state chapter of the Poor Individuals’s Marketing campaign, a part of a motion pioneered by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. The intruder was finally eliminated and blocked.

Because the Rev. Laura Everett delivered a sermon by way of Zoom for Boston’s First Baptist Church, a consumer who had seen the church service marketed entered the video conferencing session and shouted homophobic and racist slurs. Everett stated she had tweeted the hyperlink to the sermon as a result of she wished “the doors of the church to be open to every weary soul who is looking for a word of comfort.”

“This was, for all intents and purposes, a house of worship that was violated,” she stated. “Zoom and every other business bears the primary responsibility for users’ safety.”

In Oakland, California, Malachi Garza reported an assault on a Zoom conference she hosted for roughly 200 individuals, together with previously incarcerated individuals who have expertise with solitary confinement and are battling the pandemic’s stay-home orders.

The conference organized by the philanthropic Solidare Community was interrupted by racist, anti-transgender language, and pornographic photos have been flashed on a shared display.

Zoom must “tell the truth and call this what it really is,” Garza stated. “It’s racial terror, not party crashers.”

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[olgagarmash]

12-minute workout by the triplet trainers of Philly’s Triyo Fitness – TODAY

During their senior year of high school, Ahmad, Kahlil and Malik Jones posted their first workout video on YouTube.

Seven years later, the identical triplets own a successful personal training company, Triyo Fitness, and are prominent members of the boutique fitness community in Philadelphia.

While studying at the University of Pennsylvania, they went from creating workout videos to training students on campus. “We really started to grow the business doing bootcamps, training clients and making a name for ourselves as the fitness guys on campus,” Ahmad told TODAY.

After graduation, the triplets decided to take a risk and focus on Triyo Fitness full-time. “It wasn’t a group decision, but it was a decision that would not have worked if all three of us had not come to the same conclusion individually,” said Ahmad.

For Khalil, it was a conversation with his father that convinced him to take a risk. “I said I was going to get a marketing job and do Triyo Fitness on the side and (my dad) said, ‘Why would you do that if your goal is to do Triyo Fitness full-time? … You all should go all in if you want to do it.’ That was one of the most reassuring things my dad ever said to me. That was a really important experience: This is where you choose to take the risk.”

Malik came to the decision after experiencing corporate life firsthand. “I came to realize that I was more exhausted after being in the office from 8:30 a.m. – 6:30 p.m. than I ever was teaching classes or interacting with clients. That energizes me and gives me the fulfillment I need, knowing that I’m helping someone and doing it on my own terms,” he said.

Once they were all on board, they hustled to build a network in Philadelphia. “Beginning of 2020 is really when people started to take note,” said Ahmad.

Ahmad, Kahlil and Malik Jones want to help people associate positive experiences with fitness.Triyo Fitness

‘Lit and Fit’: The trio’s approach to fitness

An active lifestyle was ingrained in the brothers from an early age, playing almost every sport among the three of them. “It was always very much an active household we lived in, whether it was riding bikes with our parents or going on hikes,” said Malik. “In high school we got serious with track and field. That’s really where we started to understand training principles.”

“In the beginning it was more about enjoying fitness and having fun. Our parents always wanted us to find something that we could do together that we really enjoyed,” said Ahmad. “It wasn’t necessarily about having a business, but about having something that was ours; that was a good representation of who we were.”

And fun is an important component of their training style, as well as the content they post on social media.

“From the beginning, our motto has been ‘lit and fit.’ We want people to enjoy themselves, to be social, to have a good time, and associate positive experiences with fitness,” said Ahmad. “That’s how we try and curate our content and the behavior we exhibit when we teach classes and interact with clients. We want people to feel good when they’re around us.”

Related

Divide and conquer: Calling on their individual strengths

The identical triplets may have used their “sameness” to build a brand, but keeping it running successfully requires calling on their individual strengths.

Ahmad handles all tech, production and content creation. Malik handles the finances and business tasks, like taxes and pricing. Khalil handles marketing and overall brand direction.

And the same divide-and-conquer mentality applies to their training.

“In our in-person events Khalil does boxing, I do strength training, and Malik ends it with HIIT cardio,” said Ahmad, who also teaches at Barry’s Bootcamp. You can find Khalil on the schedule at Rumble boxing, and Malik teaches classes at Unite Fitness.

Their diverse skill sets — and the fact that there are three of them — allows them to create inclusive fitness programs that have “something for everybody,” said Ahmad.

“We have the ability to make sure each one of us is showing something that most, if not everybody, in the class can relate to,” he added. “We recently did a private event; there were around 2,000 people on the stream, between 12 and 80 years old. The goal was to make sure everybody had something they could do. So we had modifications, chair exercises and progressions to ensure that everybody felt comfortable and we met them where they were.”

Rolling with the punches

While gyms were especially hard hit by the pandemic, Triyo Fitness used it as motivation to launch new programs and expand their business. They all transitioned to virtual one-on-one training and group fitness classes on Zoom, which allowed them to reach a new audience outside of Philadelphia.

“I have a client that lives in California, but now we train together because of Zoom, which is super cool. I never would’ve met her if it wasn’t for the pandemic,” said Khalil.

This led to a shift in priorities. “We really embraced remote training; we can connect with anybody anywhere, and that’s what we want to continue to do,” said Malik. So they pressed pause on their goal to open up brick and mortar locations, and instead focused their efforts on developing an app.

“A lot of people want to be able to connect more online because of the pandemic, so it’s opened up a new avenue for us,” said Malik. “That’s the next thing: growing the community, being able to connect with people everywhere — creating a space where fitness is social, fitness is fun; that makes it more enjoyable to work out.”

Related

‘We’re not just trainers’

“Anyone can show you how to do a bicep curl, but we also want to show you how to have fun and maybe we turn that bicep curl into a cool dance video and then in the next post we tell you how you can be anti-racist with your friends who are experiencing Asian hate,” said Khalil. “These things set us apart because we’re not just trainers. I think that’s part of the reason people are drawn to us because they are getting a look into what we are beyond working out.”

A big piece of who they are is advocates for social change. When social unrest peaked this summer, the brothers used their platform to educate and to support causes they felt passionate about, like the Black Lives Matter movement.

They hosted Zoom workouts as fundraisers for different causes. “We were able to make a serious impact,” said Khalil. “That was huge in terms of talking action. Education is good, but we were able to then take people who we just educated and wanted to do something about it and help them do something about it by doing this sweat for a good cause.”

These personal values also informed their business decisions. “We decided to start really picking and choosing what brands we were going to work with and making sure every single collaboration had some sort of positive social impact,” said Ahmad. “By defining those goals, it gave us the confidence to say ‘these are our standards, if these aren’t the values you’re aligned with, this isn’t a collaboration that’s for us.’ It helped us really define our image and how we want to be seen, and also helped us make that positive impact.”

A 12-minute cardio workout

Want a little taste of what Triyo Fitness has to offer? Get your heart rate up with this sample workout from their new bodyweight program, “Be Anywhere, Be Greater” — no equipment necessary.

Heisman shuffle

Skaters

Squat & twist

Steam engine toe touch

This circuit is meant to improve your balance and agility. Complete 45 seconds of work followed by 15 seconds of rest for each exercise. Run through all four exercises in a circuit format and complete a total of three rounds. Modify exercises to your skill level and have fun with it!

source https://wealthch.com/12-minute-workout-by-the-triplet-trainers-of-phillys-triyo-fitness-today/