And by ‘Progressive Broflakes’, tonight, I mean “Bret Weinstein”.
Although I first encountered the species back in the mid-1970s, on a midwestern state university campus, where an earlier generation of More Feminist Than You Ladies men decided to “liberate” the women’s lounge in the Student Union, a room with some battered couches and tables adjacent to the bathroom, which had for many years been a place where female students could study, talk, or even nap without getting harassed. Like newly-politicized college students, aging “progressive” men attempting to show off their leadership skills are an endlessly renewable resource.
Some context to Cole’s post below, from Inside Higher Ed:
… For many years at Evergreen State, minority students and faculty members have observed a Day of Absence in which they meet off campus to discuss campus issues and how to make the college more supportive of all students. Later a Day of Presence reunites various campus groups. Weinstein said he’s been aware of the tradition for some time, and never objected to it. But this year, organizers said that on the Day of Absence, they wanted white people to stay off campus. Weinstein opposed this shift, and he posted a message on a campus email list in which he objected to the proposal to ask white people to stay off campus.
“There is a huge difference between a group or coalition deciding to voluntarily absent themselves from a shared space in order to highlight their vital and underappreciated roles (the theme of the Douglas Turner Ward play Day of Absence, as well as the recent Women’s Day walkout), and a group encouraging another group to go away,” Weinstein wrote. “The first is a forceful call to consciousness, which is, of course, crippling to the logic of oppression. The second is a show of force, and an act of oppression in and of itself.”
Weinstein went on to say he would be on campus on the Day of Absence and would encourage a similar stance by white people being asked to stay away. People should “put phenotype aside,” he said. “On a college campus, one’s right to speak — or to be — must never be based on skin color.”
That email is one of the reasons Weinstein is being called racist, with students saying his tone belittled the people behind the idea of having a Day of Absence without white people on campus. The other reason cited against Weinstein is that he has come out against a recommendation on faculty hiring by the college’s Equity and Inclusion Council. That recommendation, currently under consideration by college leaders, would require an “equity justification/explanation” for all faculty hires…
In other words, Weinstein was perfectly okay with those pesky “inclusive” groups as long as they stayed on the margins and didn’t affect his daily life in any way, shape or form. The instant the argument went from “We should let some of those people in, if it’s not too much trouble” to “We should proactively demonstrate what actually having a ‘minority’ group as the standard would look like”, Professor Weinstein’s all BUT WHAT ABOUT *MY* RIGHTS?!?
And when those uppity students chose to get all up in his grille, he finally got the chance to fly his I’m-the-Real-Victim flag — first on campus, and now (hi, ma!) on Fox News. If he decides not to go back to Evergreen (anyone wanna take bets?), he’s all set to start a nice second career. Churn out a high-advance instabook for Regnery Press, do an all-expenses paid speaking tour of the better wingnut-incubator universities, maybe even a permanent position at The Federalist, if not the National Review. Nice gig, if you can stomach it!
Much more context, from local-ish Seattle Paper The Stranger — “’Go Back to the Zoo’: How Evergreen State College Became a Target For Right-Wing Trolls”:
… The maelstrom of national attention on Evergreen State College didn’t appear out of nowhere, according to Rashida Love, Evergreen’s Director of First Peoples Multicultural Advising Services. Rather, the campus shutdown marked a chilling climax to a series of events beginning with students’ activism and growing discontent over what they view as inattention from administrators to issues of race at the college. Love, who has worked at Evergreen for about nine years, says the protests at Evergreen fit in a wave of campus uprisings across the country.
“Our country is going through some growing pains right now and race and equity are at the forefront, unfortunately,” she said. “I think all of that plays into how things have happened on our campus.”
The police shooting of Andre Thompson and Bryson Chaplin during a response to a shoplifting and assault call in May 2015 marked a turning point for racial tensions in Olympia. The shooting left Chaplin partially paralyzed. The men were later found guilty and the white police officer was not criminally charged. Some Evergreen student activists rallied around the two men during court proceedings and protests, said Love.
In the following years, students repeatedly called on Evergreen administrators to address longstanding equity issues on campus. Student protests began last September when two student activists stood before the podium at the college’s convocation ceremony with a sign reading, “Evergreen cashes diversity checks but doesn’t care about blacks,” reported student newspaper The Cooper Point Journal. Subsequent demonstrations asked campus administrators to address racial profiling by campus police, implement cultural competency training, hire more diverse and representative staff, among other demands. Despite President Bridges’ promise that he’d meet with activists after the event, the promise went unfulfilled for months, even as other demonstrations took place, according to the Journal.
In November, Evergreen’s Equity & Inclusion Panel, a committee of 27 faculty and students, published a strategic plan, which called for creating equity-driven curriculum, hiring more diverse faculty and staff, and hiring a Vice President of Equity and Inclusion, among other goals. As of June, someone “will soon be hired and assume a senior role on campus” to oversee the Equity and Inclusion office, said Zach Powers, communications and public relations manager for the college…
…. aaand that’s when WokeMaster Bret perked up his pearly little ears and cried out against the violence inherent in the system. Which Vice and Fox News are only too happy to amplify, for reasons.
So he’s got a gig (and a precious, precious Grievance); meanwhile, every ‘neo’-Nazi and white supremacist on the northwest coast has a new target. Mission accomplished, big guy!
Circularreasoning
Wait, so I am probably confused. You are pissed off that the white guy wouldn’t stay off campus because the minority group changed the traditional protest? The protest which said white guy appears to endorse the purpose of?
Jerzy Russian
I wish someone would tell me to stay away from work for a day.
efgoldman
@Jerzy Russian:
Meh. I’ll be retired two years on July 1. Not all it’s cracked up to be.
frosty
@efgoldman:
I’ve got 2 1/2 years to go and I’m a bit worried about it. I’m an introvert and my wife is moreso. Shooting the shit with the kids (fresh graduates up to 50s) at work appears to be my only social life. I’m going to miss it a lot, I’m afraid.
TheMightyTrowel
Speaking as an academic, Weinstein comes across as a total shithead and the worst sort of smug self-congratulatory white male prof. I have one in my dept who thinks he’s super left and accessible and anti-racist because he works with Indigenous people. This semester I had to double mark one of his essays after a pacific islander student of his wrote her entire research essay about how white australian archaeologists are using the language of anti-racism whilst reproducing racist and colonialist power structures and research results. She’s totally right and particularly correct about this guy, but he flipped out and couldn’t believe that she had SO TOTALLY MISSED the strong community engagement part of his work/the class. I’ve had a quiet talk with 2 other colleagues and they’re going to start teaching decolonisation in their classes now because clearly someone (other than me ffs. I work in bloody europe!) has to.
Anyhow, the point is, there are a lot of entitled racist white men in academia and the whole system is set up to make them feel like they’re doing the lord’s work whilst actually not improving much of anything at all (except their citation rate) and when POC or other marginalised people confront them about this they all flip the fuck out and show their true colours. Assholes.
ArchTeryx
Reposted from thread downstairs into a proper open thread.
Yeah, I’m just one person on the interwebs, but I got pretty heavily tone-policed over at Lawyers, Guns, and Money in comparing the silent slaughter the Republican Congress is about to foist on us to Nazi death camps. (Out of sight, out of mind, pretty much).
Until people (who didn’t yet know I have a job and health insurance through it now) did point out that it was my own ox about to get slaughtered. They also pointed out that the Jews weren’t the first ones shipped to the death camps – that would be the disabled and the intellectuals, of which I am both. That finally shut up the tone policemen.
The thing is, I am no less enraged if it ISN’T my ox about to get gored. It just replaced naked, blind fear with HULK SMASH! Mass murder is mass murder, whether it’s being committed by the Nazis, the Khmer Rouge, Mao’s Red Guard, Stalin’s KGB, or the Republican party.
We’re way too outraged about OTHER regimes’ mass murder and willfully blind about our own. That’s why Black Lives Matter got started in the first place. I wonder what movement will arise in the face of hundreds of thousands of deaths from lack of health care?
(And yeah, I DO have a job now. It’s with the State of New York, which means cheap and very good health insurance. It also is a secretary job, which is about $60K less then a PhD here would normally make. But right now, it’s my seat on a lifeboat and I’m rowing for all I am worth. Eventually I’ll find another ship. It certainly goddamn beats drowning alone.)
Omnes Omnibus
I think that students announcing that that they have no interest in hearing a contrary opinion is disturbing. Isn’t that the point of an education? Hearing and resolving those things? Or Is the liberal arts idea dead?
David Spikes
He’s a villain because he supports the Day of Absence but doesn’t think they have any right to ban whites from the campus that day?
He’s right and you am a moran on this one.
Masterful non sequitur first paragraph segue into balance of post. One is exactly nothing like the other.
efgoldman
@Omnes Omnibus:
I think in a lot of places it’s on life support.
Between PC and safe spaces and triggering and what passes for alleged conservatism now, it’s easier just to avoid uncomfortable ideas.
ETA: Also, the profs who went to school when I did (the 60s) either are retired or on their way to it. The next generation, or at least a lot of it, treats college as a kind of vocational school. Plus there’s no money in the liberal arts. All the big gifts are for science and/or business centers.
Omnes Omnibus
@efgoldman: It popped up at my alma mater recently. I hope the university resolves it in favor of free speech. If you can’t be dumb and foolish at a LAC, where can you?
NotMax
Open thread – neglected to welcome Canada (culturally) into the 21st century the other day.
efgoldman
@Omnes Omnibus:
You’d be surprised (or maybe you wouldn’t) how much foolishness goes on at MIT.
Earl
I was kind of with Bret on group X encouraging group Y to go away, but seriously, running straight to Fox news? That’s not something a person who is sincere does.
Omnes Omnibus
@efgoldman: I wouldn’t.
efgoldman
@Earl:
If he’s sincerely crazy, or sincerely an asshole, of course he does.
Splitting Image
@Earl:
This suggests that Weinstein is a libertarian rather than a brogressive. Makes perfect sense for exactly 5 minutes. At 5:01 he’s a cross between Richard Spencer and Sean Hannity.
shortribs
Bret isn’t a “progressive” he’s a self-obsessed libertarian “bro”. He was on the Joe Rogan podcast awhile back and he comes across as a holier than thou righteous prick who thinks he’s gods gift to modern thought. He has a few progressive stances as I recall but mostly he exists to challenge people who don’t think exactly like him. Shitting on liberals and higher ed is how he promotes himself…if he hasn’t already, I assume he has a book or speaking circuit plan in his near future.
NotMax
@Omnes Omnibus
Opportunity to be sophomoric, in the truest sense.
hellslittlestangel
I have to admit that what I really enjoyed about the video clip posted in the previous thread was disliking every single person in it.
FlipYrWhig
@TheMightyTrowel:
Say, any chance they might also be fans of Bernie Sanders? :P
CaseyL
@ArchTeryx: You may have mentioned the new job before this. If so, I missed it, so let me say YAY and CONGRATS. I’ve been worried about you, and for you, and am delighted to hear you found a lifeboat!
On Topic: I’m not sure there’s any diff between Brogressives and Glibertarians. They’re all putzes, and a major fucking reason We Can’t Have Nice Things.
m0nty
On one hand, it’s a dick move to try to make a Day of Absence all about the feelings of an entitled white man.
On the other hand, it is an excellent illustration of the problem.
I’m conflicted.
SgrAstar
@ArchTeryx: great news about your new job! What a relief it must be to finally get into a situation where you can actually see the fabled light at the end of the tunnel. Yay!
TheMightyTrowel
@FlipYrWhig:…I live in Australia…
@efgoldman: “Between PC and safe spaces and triggering and what passes for alleged conservatism now” – way to keep the old man shaking slipper at clouds meme alive, EFG! This millennial (i’m 34, yo!) university prof would like you to know that PC language, safe spaces, trigger warnings, etc. are all hyped up terms for (a) not being an asshole; (b) recognising that student populations are increasingly diverse and some students have experienced things I never have and never will which might impact on their ability to participate in class; and (c) planning my teaching so that I don’treproduce the structural inequalities which kept these students out of higher ed for so many generations.
Karmus
@m0nty:
I, too. I think I need to look at this afresh tomorrow. I see too much that troubles me on all sides of this rift.
Amaranthine RBG
Yeah, that jewish dude needs to sit down and shut up and listen to all the fuckin’ white bread liberals tell him what’s what.
Patricia Kayden
Hate to say this, but I don’t understand the purpose of “The Day of Absence” protest by minority students or the switching around to demand that White students absent themselves from college this time around.
But carry on.
JWR
@efgoldman:
Tell me about it. I’ve been on SDI since 2007, (aged 49), and I can say without a doubt that not having a job, (while being in excruciating foot pain), really really sucks! Sucks worse when I really liked my job!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Amaranthine RBG: Steve….
LesGS
@Patricia Kayden: Having read the link John provided in the up-date to his Grow Out of It” post, it seems to have its origin in a play from 1965 called “Day of Absence,” where all the Black people disappear from a Southern town. Think of our more recent “A Day Without Immigrants” and “A Day Without Women” events. How would day-to-day life be different without those particular people around?
I don’t know enough to comment on what was supposed to be demonstrated by having Whites absent themselves from the Evergreen campus for a day.
kbuttle
Academia’s a fking minefield.
AnotherBruce
@Patricia Kayden: Me either, maybe it’s because I really don’t understand The Day of Absence. And maybe it’s because I’m a white male and I like days of absence from my job. So what’s the problem white people? Maybe Bret Stephens could explain it to me.
Bostonian
Seems like it’s dicks all around on this one.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Y_zuh8SjY0
cokane
the tell that you have a trash argument, is the use of bold text here, Anne. Even you know your words arent quite up to the job.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@Bostonian:
So a bunch of folks are yelling at others to “go home”… and then the next day they all get along again, forget how they were yelling or being yelled at? If you tell me on Wednesday I’m not welcome, are you going to smile at me on Thursday, and we all forget how the day before I was an asshole?
It’s late and I’m having back pain. I just find the whole thing strange.
RealityBites
@ArchTeryx: haven’t been able to follow all the threads for a while, but i am so glad you found a job with insurance. I agree with you 100%. The Republicans are essentially doing murder for hire. They will be killing at least 3x the deaths of 911 each year, and causing terrible suffering to the health and economy of the entire country.
I also have health care through my job, and so I am safe- for the moment. It won’t be long before employer based insurance will be screwed up, too. And Medicaid and Medicare. So none of us is truly safe. And I plan to retire next year.
I cannot understand at all why the media is not on a rampage calling out McConnell and his rethugs. I cannot understand why the Dem leadership is not screaming and running about with their hair on fire.
This is a national Emergency.
McConnell is about to truly gorsuch the entire country, and once it happens, it will be a hard task to restore a good health care plan, even if there is a Democratic wave in the next two election cycles.
A lot of people will be dead. A lot of people will have their lives ruined.
I don’t understand the complacency I’m seeing now. I’m so angry and depressed it’s affecting my whole life.
Anne Laurie
@Omnes Omnibus:
They’re kids, and they feel like they’ve just been told “YOUR opinions have no value, because we’re older and more experienced and we just plain KNOW BETTER.”
And they might even agree, when they’re more experienced (or at least have calmed down). But nothing’s guaranteed to put them into “refuse to listen” mode faster than being lectured by a dick — whether that dick is a self-proclaimed “ally” or the stereotypical old conservative fart.
Bostonian
@West of the Rockies (been a while): No. And strange doesn’t cut it.
I wonder what my old classmate John has to say about this… Oh, here he is:
https://bloggingheads.tv/videos/46391
Glenn and John start talking about Evergreen at around 2:36. Some interesting things to say, including drawing a parallel between the student activists and European jihadis.
“Am I the only person who is seeing a parallel between this kind of aggressively policed groupthink behavior – and of course there’s a difference in degree – but between this and the sort of thing we’re now seeing every week that is done in the name of Islam, mostly in Europe, this idea that there’s this grievance that requires us to stop thinking logically, you must think of it this way, and this is worth doing violence…”
Spider-Dan
I think the following two positions are not at all contradictory:
1) it is a bad idea to try to coerce other people to stay away as part of your protest
2) Bret Weinstein is a tone-deaf “brogressive” who is making the matter worse
I doubt every single minority stayed away from campus on previous instances of the Day of Absence; some of them disagree with the protest, or simply don’t care. If you’re a white person and you would like to stay away from campus because this is a meaningful issue for you, then you should do so, but you shouldn’t try to shame (or otherwise “intimidate”) white people into staying away, and the same applies for when the protest is for minorities to stay away.
Protests should generally be carried out by the people who care about an issue, not the people who don’t.
Anne Laurie
@Patricia Kayden:
I think it’s meant to be, well, “selfish”: to give the not-white students and faculty one glorious day when they’re just being, not forever prepping for the next ‘micro-aggression’ where some — usually well-meaning! — white person asks if they have ‘the right’ to be on campus, or demands they defend some random other person of color in the news (all ‘you people’ know each other, right?), or wants them to be their but-I’m-not-a-racist Black Friend.
I’m perceiving it as analogous to a women-only event: it’s not that we want to immediately embrace lesbianism / burn our bras / get group abortions, it’s just nice to have the occasional space where you’re not always hunching your metaphorical shoulders in preparation for another dose of mansplaining.
Wokeness aside, I suspect the reaction of 80% of the first-year White undergrads was WOO-HOO NO CLASSES DAY, but maybe that’s because I’m old & cynical.
fuckwit
@efgoldman: College is a vocational school, full stop, end of story. That $200k student debt ain’t gonna pay itself off. You’d damn well better have job training. And forget about employers providing it; you’re expected to show up first day of work knowing what the fuck you’re doing.
Earl
@Anne Laurie:
You’re still conflating “this is our place for us” (women-only event) and “group X leave our (no-longer) common place”.
Anne Laurie
@Earl: I doubt that one day of (voluntary) exclusion — an event — will completely destroy the “common place”. And, yes, I think it’s instructive that the thought of one day where White People would not be the “common denominator” in that place caused some White People to go into total meltdown…
jmw
Here’s a good summary of the situation from a prof at Evergreen that clears up a couple of things regarding the alleged exclusion part of the day of absence:
http://econospeak.blogspot.com/2017/05/the-protests-at-evergreen-state-college.html
Temporarily Max McGee (Phase II)
So, uhh, at the risk of seeming stupid, just what statement are the students trying to make by asking the white students and faculty- and is it only the white students and faculty, or is it the white students and faculty along with the minority students and faculty?- to stay off of campus for a day?
Mnemosyne
@Earl:
Minorities and women are frequently told they need to leave a common place. The only difference here is that it’s the majority group being asked to leave.
I’m not totally on board with the concept, but it seems quite interesting to me that the people here who are freaked out at the very idea of white people being excluded from anything, even voluntarily, seem to almost all be white men. ?
Mnemosyne
@Bostonian:
I’m sorry, did you just quote this approvingly? Because that’s a huge pile of horseshit.
AFAICT, what happened is that minority students thought it might be interesting and instructive for white students and faculty to feel excluded from society for one (1) day, and white people freaked the fuck out at the very notion of being excluded from anything, anywhere, even for a single day. Which is quite instructive, I have to say, but probably not in the way they intended.
And if anyone is unclear, I am a middle-aged white woman.
remima
@jmw: THIS!
ETA: The idea that the kids were demanding a Day Without Whites is a right-wing distortion/lie.
wvng
@David Spikes: I agree with you completely. And it’s the kind of protest that is tailor made for right wing agit-prop… “So you’re saying that if I don’t join your protest ” voluntarily ” I’ll get targeted for removal and swarmed on social media?”
My daughter obsesses over these kinds of displays and the unwillingness of the left to criticise them as an important factor driving people away from liberals.
Barbara
@jmw: The accounts of what happened have a Rashomon quality, with individuals seeming to generalize excessively based on their own particular experience and how they interpret it.
Saurs
@Omnes Omnibus:
@efgoldman
These remarks presuppose that the students of color concerned here are otherwise immune to, ignorant of, or not regularly the explicit targets of “uncomfortable” ideas about race, which defies known reality. This the typical talking point of bigots, that people interested in advancing the civil rights of an oppressed minority are not reacting against anything, that they themselves are the troublemakers and that if only, in this case, they’d engage with and listen to more tedious racist speech, they’d… the end-result, beyond allowing white people more opportunities to bloviate, is never particularly clear, but apparently you both think university is the first chance black students have been afforded to see and interact with a real racist up close and personal. Bless both your hearts. It’s cute you think neo Nazis have something fresh and exciting to offer the world, beyond memes and violence.
Barbara
@wvng:Although perhaps not reassuring in and of itself, one reason this happens is the perception that gains are so contingent, never permanent, and battles have to be fought over the same territory again and again. It is a desire for a common understanding of some truths. Of course it seems overbearing when these truths are not existential for you, and as you suggest it can ultimately be counterproductive for enlarging one’s sphere of influence.
lowtechcyclist
I feel like more backstory would be helpful here. Did the Day of Absence folks try to get buy-in* from groups representing the rest of the community beforehand (e.g. student government, faculty senate), or did they just make an announcement the day before and expect everyone to go along, or what?
Because if the latter, then I too would be going “WTF?!” But if the faculty senate voted to recognize and abide by this new version of the Day of Absence, then Weinstein had his opportunity to speak against it in that forum, he lost, and he should abide by the result of the vote by, at the very least, not going on campus with the goal of monkeywrenching the event and making it all about him. (Plenty of other times and places to exercise his free speech rights about the Day of Absence.)
If something in between…well, kinda depends on what that something was.
*Sorry about the corporate-speak, couldn’t think of a better term
weaselone
@remima:
Yeah. Reading the post cleared up some things. That this was supposed to be a voluntary flipping of the usual roles seems like a good idea to me, although I’m not surprised that it caused a shitstorm. It’s tailor made for Fox to exploit. Just a little slicing, dicing and some of Fox’s patented propaganda sauce and presto red meat for the base.
I would have to say that reading this summary makes it pretty clear that ultimately both sides didn’t cover themselves in much glory. Weinstein’s dickery notwithstanding, forcing him into exile giving lectures to students off campus who may or may not have received death threats isn’t a good look. Weinstein also doesn’t strike me so much as brogressive, as just a common libertarian dudebro.
geg6
Wow, the white mansplaining in this thread is truly, truly epic. And hilariously makes the point AL was illustrating.
If white men had endure a quarter of the bullshit people of color and women do every single day, they’d wilt under the onslaught within about five minutes.
Bostonian
@Mnemosyne: It seems likely to me that you haven’t watched a single video that came out of these events. In every one I’ve seen, it’s a handful of white people in authority trying to be compassionate and conciliatory while people of color freak the fuck out at the very notionthat the white people would not jump and do every damn thing they say – leave, resign, get out of the room, whatever – the moment they say to. The only white people freaking the fuck out – before the outsiders got there – were the “allies” bending over backward to speak for the mob in the okay way.
Example one: this white guy is just chalking band names on walls and these other folks just come up and start screaming and throwing things at him.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-SPKdLZBs0
Example two: Naima Lowe, a professor at the institution, screaming her head off at some white faculty, who are just standing there trying to be conciliatory.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Y_zuh8SjY0
Example three: this poor woman is just calmly standing there trapped while people scream at her. And then they start screaming at the president of the college. They do this bizarre nitpicking about where he is allowed to put his hands while he’s talking. They throw out a professor while screaming and swearing at him. The white people freaking out? No, the other way around.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bO1agIlLlhg
Example four: Here is the professor who you would like to claim is freaking the fuck out, calmly facing a large group of students, several of whom who actually are freaking the fuck out, and trying to get the rest to follow them.
“Pile of horseshit” is exactly how I would characterize the conviction repeatedly expressed by the students that their right to speak necessitates preventing the right of others to speak. This is the violent idea at the heart of the mob. This is the idea that caused the campus to be shut down. The violence only escalated to screaming, yelling, throwing things, and physically preventing the movement of other people. It’s a good thing for all of us that they didn’t get to the point of actually hurting or killing anybody. That’s what the state police were sent in to prevent. That’s why graduation had to be moved thirty miles off campus.
I won’t be surprised if the school doesn’t open in the fall, or if enrollment just peters out so much that it closes for good five years on.
Cheryl Rofer
@TheMightyTrowel: Thank you. Milennials will save us yet.
geg6
@Bostonian:
Because white people never make people of color uncomfortable or scream at them or issue ridiculous commands at them or threaten them with violence, amirite?
Humdog
@geg6: yep. Juicers are not covering themselves in glory in this thread.
I know I am fuzzing the numbers here, but Mr. Castillo in MSP was pulled over by police some 46 times in the 7 or so years he was a driver. Only 6 times were for something visible to police outside the car, like broken taillight or failure to signal. 40 times in 7 years for driving while black. Protestors inMSP are blocking traffic once or twice. White peoples’ reactions to one time being stopped in their travels for something out of their control is to freak the fuck out, threaten the lives of protestors and lecture them that you are only alienating people from your cause. Rarely is anyone taking a moment to compare the scale of inconvenience. We white people cannot handle one episode of discomfort (and caught in protest traffic does not equal the fear of being pulled over by a cop who may be itching to hurt yo for no reason) but we sure can lecture others on how they ought to act.
One day to not be present is just too much to ask white people to suffer, I guess.
Barbara
@geg6: I am avoiding saying much because as I said above even the basic facts seem to be highly disputed (as in, were white people supposed to stay away on a given day) but I do know that when people with less power try to turn tools of oppression on the oppressor they almost always lose, even assuming the chosen target is a good exemplar of oppression. Just look at what happens to women who kill their abusers. Other students and professors do not necessarily constitute proxies for every injustice perpetrated on campus. Let’s all scream at each other does not seem like much of a solution.
Eolirin
@geg6: Or shoot them dead and pay absolutely no price for it for that matter.
Jumbo76
@ArchTeryx:
LGM is pretty terrible these days. If you don’t agree with the letter and word of every Lemieux post, you get ostracized. They are developing their own narrative over there that is, in some ways, disconnected from facts. They’re replicating the right wing’s close-mindedness with left wing views dressed up in a veneer of academia. Farley can be interesting, but he’s skippable too. Don’t let it get to you. I don’t want to insult the guy too much, but Lemieux doesn’t have a job anywhere. Or at least it’s not apparent that he does. LGM’s website lists him as being a professor somewhere in Canada, but that college doesn’t list him on the faculty. When I figured that out, I realized how pathetic he is.
Anyhoo . . .
sdhays
@jmw: Thanks for this. This narrative makes a lot more sense than what was provided in the previous thread. The idea behind the updated Day of Absence now totally makes sense to me (I was having trouble wrapping my mind around the logic of it before), and this description makes Weinstein’s stand more stupid – white participants were invited to symbolically meet off campus while the minority participants met on campus and then they all would later meet on campus together. It’s actually a more inclusive way of conducting the event. Calling that “oppressive” was just trolling, and if he wasn’t looking for an angry response, he was just stupid. Even if he had a point, using that language was unprofessional (deeply insulting to his colleagues), and going on Confederate Pravda really suggests that he’s a myopic showboat at best and something closer to what his critics call him at his worst.
This narrative also includes important context regarding racial tension on the campus and the build up to this situation that the other reports didn’t seem to feel was worth providing.
It sounds like the situation has devolved to the point where no one is covering themselves in glory, which is unfortunate. The students and faculty conducting themselves in somewhat mob-like fashion isn’t doing their cause many favors, but it’s interesting how we have all of this handwringing over some drama on a campus in eastern Washington over a single day of “hippie activism” while places like Liberty University, whose graduation ceremony the President of the United States spoke at, will expel/refuse to admit huge swaths of people who don’t subscribe to Jerry Falwell’s teachings…
Bostonian
@geg6: geg, you posit an interesting argument. You seem to be saying that because members of a group of people behaved poorly in one time and place, it’s okay to behave poorly towards other members of that group in another time and place.
I agree with you that this is the moral argument being made by the mob. However, that argument of yours could be (and has been) used to justify a whole lot of evil. In this case, a group of people is behaving violently and abusively with this justification. Are there limits to their legitimate use of violence?
It’s undeniably true that white people have unjustifiably murdered black people. The case of Philando Castile is one such. Are you arguing that it would therefore be legitimate for one of the Evergreen mob to murder a white professor?
Barbara
@sdhays: Sure, but fwiw Evergreen is a public university. More relevant are things like hanging nooses around statues at public universities in the south, like U. Miss., or all but de facto segregation of university endorsed fraternities and sororitie, which basically perpetuate segregation and racial privilege.
sdhays
@Barbara: Good point.
smintheus
The argument presented here by AL is about as incoherent as possible. It also turns the facts on their head. Here’s a clue: The Civil Rights Act governs job hiring, and except in the most narrow of circumstances it prohibits hiring whose purpose or effect is to discriminate based upon gender, ethnicity, or race. It sounds like the Evergreen proposal is a blatant violation of the law.
As for the idea that people of certain race(s) should stay away from campus just because somebody of another race decided they should, that’s about as f^kked up as possible. Who in the world would advocate such an idea, much less mock anyone who spoke out against it?
lethargytartare
@Bostonian:
this is a lie. He’s clearly mocking protest graffiti by writing over the words with his own. He’s literally effacing the voices of others, and yucking it up the whole time. This is classic antagonistic behavior, similar to an 8 year old brother putting his hand 1 inch from his sibling’s face while saying “I’m not touching you.” The intent is to inflame and elicit a response, and then claim no culpability for the response. I wonder why you felt you needed to misrepresent this.
actually, I really don’t.
sdhays
@smintheus:
This is the right-wing description of an actually much more benign event. From @jmw‘s link above:
No one was telling the white students and faculty to empty the campus for a day. For those who were interested in participating, the plan was to reorganize things symbolically. That’s it. Anyone flipping out over this has something else going on.
Sloegin
Nobody’s a hero here
Voluntary invite of whites to leave campus for a day (to a venue that holds a couple hundred reserved for it, out of a campus that has thousands of whites portrayed by others as minorities groups saying ‘please GTFO to all the whites.’
White prof posting a note saying ‘hey, don’t harsh the mellow by pushing your agenda on me, man’ – who then has the minority student groups screaming for his head.
Same white prof (an adjunct) deciding ‘hey, time to see if I can get a gig on the angry white Fox conservative gravy train’.
And now, campus has been shut down regularly by death threats, bomb threats, and groups of alt-right wankers showing up on campus with their mob scrum cosplay kits.
StringInAStick
@ArchTeryx: Tone policing at LGM is why I no longer read the comments there and don’t visit nearly as much as I used to. You aren’t the only one who has experienced that there; I’ve lost my password for commenting there and don’t miss it.
Gelfling 545
@Omnes Omnibus: Pretty much. It’s all about which major will bring you the big bucks. Those of us who still value the liberal arts are looked upon as dinosaurs.
The Red Pen
How did we get to the point where declining to participate in someone else’s speech was itself hate speech?
I love a good protest, but this is Orwellian.
Davey C
@Sloegin:
So, basically, America in a nut shell.
TTT
When that Jew heard “Jews out!” he shouldn’t have responded so uppitily.
Sunny Raines
Minorities are going to lose a lot of white support if they push grouping all whites together as racist. All people need to be color blind, no exceptions.
George
@Mnemosyne: “Minorities and women are frequently told they need to leave a common space”?
When and where, and by whom?
And a general comment after reading this thread: I’ve never met Weinstein, so in person he may really be an asshole or he may be a saint. But calling him names on a random blog to devalue him even if the name-caller agrees with his point, is childish.
Gelfling 545
So for a day white people were asked to experiece being barred from a place they wanted access to. And they didn’t like it. Huh.
Callisto
The idea of telling white people to stay away from campus is pretty stupid. And I definitely agree that it’s more likely to inflame (as it seems to have done here), and thus seems to have a more negative than positive effect.
Oh, and before any accusations, I am neither white nor male.
Barbara
@lethargytartare: Having the right to belittle others and have your “mistakes” viewed as harmless and without legal consequence is the ultimate kind of privilege. And while there is probably a better response there is nothing less appealing than a fucktard like this screaming for help after doing his best to make sure he would need it. Gathering around him in a big circle and singing while he tries to figure how to escape without committing assault is my offhand suggestion.
Bostonian
@TTT:
I’m glad to see that I’m not the only person not surprised that the person who refused to stop talking or leave his place because someone else tried to force him to is a Jew. People all bring different experiences and histories to this sort of … event.
At a college I went to, a group of … assholes (sorry, couldn’t think of a better word) decided they were the Defense Guard and would right the wrongs of the world by backing a little gay Hispanic professor into a corner and screaming at him about sexual harassment. One of the guys yelling at him because he supposedly said something suggestive was over six feet tall, and the professor must have been around 5’2″. He was terrified.
It seems to me that the question of who qualifies as a minority is up to the group that has the power in the moment. I guess intersectionality only matters if the group occupying the intersection says it does.
Barbara
@Bostonian: All I can say is that everything I can find makes it highly questionable that people were asked to leave (allowing for individual interactions that were not so friendly). The disruption to the prof’s class was more than a month after the DOA, which maybe suggests to me that people were upset by how he characterized it in retrospect. My understanding is that no one was storming his class the day of. Whether that makes a diffetence to you, it suggests to me that people perhaps seized on this day for its symbolism more than its actual effect. Others became upset with their reaction and inaccurate characterization and in some cases reacted in ways that escalated the tension. Married couples who fight will recognize this dynamic on a personal level. Loss of good will and trust are hard to reestablish.
WarMunchkin
@Mnemosyne:
And we’ve spent millenia trying to reverse that make sure that we can all coexist in a common place. Dear lord, when did the litmus test for being pro-civil rights be that shitty Milgram experiment with the prison? And I’m not white either.
If you feel uncomfortable with someone different to your race, gender or sexual orientation being in a large public space, such as an entire college campus, go fuck yourself.
Yeah, microagressions suck, and being around people who look like you, have the same experiences as you do or love like you do is a validating experience that can help build a sense of community and solidarity – and the confidence to live in a world where not everyone will have the tools or willingness to empathize with you. But shit, hurting other individuals because of their majority status isn’t ever the way I’d want to build something better.
neldob
@TheMightyTrowel: Thank you. Seems like these are just being polite. Should be called CP for Common Politeness.
neldob
@Mnemosyne: Looks like the right wing white guys need their safe space.
JDM
@Circularreasoning:
Because so much of the news surrounding this has depended on Bret Weinstein’s account, there’s a lot of inaccurate noptions about what was entailed. Peter Dorman, from the Econospeak blog, is a prof there and posted a corrective account on May 29. Chief among the inaccuracies is the notion that any group of people was asked (much demanded) to not be on campus that day. It’s basically that there has been a tradition of one day a year having a meeting off-campus of people of color; this year they thought it’d be nice to flip it:
geg6
@Bostonian:
Oh Jeezus Christ. You are an utter asshole. This doesn’t even deserve a thoughtful response.
Mnemosyne
@Bostonian:
@Sunny Raines:
@WarMunchkin:
It sure would be nice if you guys would read the ACTUAL FACTS of what happened rather than assuming that the guy who ran to Fox News with his story was telling the whole truth.
geg6
@George:
Talk to Kamala Harris. I’m sure she can tell you.
Mnemosyne
@WarMunchkin:
Thought I’m sure it feels otherwise to you, it’s only been about 60 years since the modern Civil Rights Movement began, not “millennia.”
My Truth Hurts
You are not a very good thinker.
Mnemosyne
@Sunny Raines:
Whites are just going to make themselves look like assholes if they fall for stories like these and assume that the guy on Fox News is giving them an objective, accurate story about a racial dispute.
Mnemosyne
@George:
I’m just going to let this one hang here, because I honestly can’t tell if you’re trolling or if you’re genuinely this stupid.
I’m sure the Black teenagers who were beaten by police last year for allegedly making too much noise at a public pool deserved it, amirite?
George
@Mnemosyne: And I can’t tell if you are being a halfwit or merely trying to start a fight.
See how much fun it is to call people names and make baseless insinuations?
You named one example. Racism and the violence it spawns is deplorable. That does not equate to “frequently” by any means. Do you mean “common space” such as roads on which African American drivers have been profiled? The facts are beyond dispute there, even if your point about being “told to leave” would be lessened, given the topic of this thread. If “common space” means “everywhere,” and “told to leave” means “subject to discriminatory treatment based on race,” then yeah, racial discrimination is a problem that remains to this day. A bunch of students at ESC won’t change that one bit.
You left completely unanswered your comment about women–apparently white ones who are not people of color–who are asked to leave a common space because of their gender. When are white women frequently asked to leave a common space? Especially in any way analogous to the topic of this thread?
In all honesty, here is your invitation to tell your story. When have you been asked to leave a common space, by whom, and why?
Just spare me any “womansplaining” about how white guys “just don’t get it” and so forth if white guys happen to raise points that cannot be answered without tossing out invectives.
Frankly I don’t give a damn about the demographics of people who get excluded. I care about anyone who has a legal right to be anywhere, going about their lives as they choose, being told/coerced/cajoled to leave.
Mnemosyne
@George:
So I’m only allowed to point out straight white women who have been forced to leave public spaces because we’re supposed to pretend that there was no sexism involved when a lesbian was told she couldn’t use the women’s bathroom because she looked “too masculine” and must be a transman?
And yet here you are, fiercely defending the right of white men to go wherever they want, whenever they want, and to tell other people to fuck off if they even suggest doing something different on a voluntary basis.
Let me guess — when your college campus held a “Take Back The Night” anti-rape rally, you insisted on being there to counter-protest, because men shouldn’t be excluded from an anti-rape rally just for being men.
Mnemosyne
@George:
Also, too, the link for the second story. Don’t be confused by the Snopes debunking, which is about a written story from a fake news site, not the video.
Bostonian
@geg6: If you meet someone who would be qualified to give a thoughtful response to something, please encourage him to post here.
Bostonian
@lethargytartare: Lethargy, your hyperbole here demonstrates the seriousness with which you take this. Taking a voice away? Like shoving your hand in another kid’s face? Such exaggeration is sophomoric.
If I drew something with chalk, and then you came up and drew something with chalk, then you have neither performed a physical aggression against me, nor taken my voice away. If you want my kitten to be a bunny instead, I might get really mad if I’m six. But if you believe that kind of poutrage is appropriate in someone the age of a college student, then you are helping society to become lousier than it is.
3am
I’ll strike common cause with people I agree with, but deliberately excluding people is bullshit and I really dislike it. These people might as well be evangelicals, just a different side of the same coin. Not trying to troll, perhaps I’m just simple. If you exclude people, it makes them feel badly. Don’t make people feel badly.
Jack the Second
The more I think about it, the more brilliant the (voluntary!) flip becomes. In addition to the parts mentioned above (analogy to the women’s only conferences, experience of being “denied” access for the majority), given that the event was voluntary, and assuming a large enough number participated, you would *also* give the whites who came to campus anyway the experience of being in the minority! And if the conversations which took place off campus in previous years took place on campus instead, they’d also be exposed to discussions they’d otherwise never be.
cokane
@geg6: you’re not capable of one anyway
Bostonian
@JDM: Hi JDM. In terms of ‘the truth’ of what actually happened, I tend to assume there is a way to reconcile differing accounts, like Barbara suggests. He says, she says, and there’s a way in which they’re both kind of true.
Which is to say the “corrective account” is just another perspective, with no greater inherent truth; as seen from the appended comments, Mr. Dorman’s account is also disputed. I suspect that Professor Weinstein exaggerated some aspects and downplayed others. I also suspect that Mr. Dorman is doing the same. I suspect that Weinstein, specifically, is puffing a suggestion that white people stay off campus that Day of Absence into a demand. On the other hand, nobody seems to be denying that a demand was made of him later to leave the campus, under threat of violence.
What can’t be easily hand-waved off as a semantic dispute or a difference of perspective is the behavior apparent in the several videos available on the internet. It is violent, aggressive, abusive behavior, and there is no way to engage in such behavior without increasing the amount of violence, aggression, and abuse in the world.
Mnemosyne
@Bostonian:
Wow. The passive-aggression is strong in this one. I didn’t write over your work, I just wrote what I wanted to and your work happened to be in the way!
lethargytartare
@Bostonian:
and again, you’re lying about what happened. If you write something in chalk, and then I write over it, it’s pretty clear what my intent is.
I know the world changing for the better scares you, but you’re just gonna have to learn to live with it.
lethargytartare
@Bostonian:
lol. I guess that would be a compelling argument if I just took your dishonest account of the videos at face value. Unfortunately for you, I watched them, so I understand the underhanded stunt you’re trying to pull.
Mnemosyne
@Jack the Second:
Yup. And the fact that a request for a VOLUNTARY flip of what was standard in previous years caused a freakout by white Broflakes, followed by other people reacting to their overreaction, followed by the Broflakes freaking out even more that they didn’t immediately get their way and had other people — gasp! — get publicly angry with them, is unfortunately quite instructive about where we stand right now.
geg6
@cokane:
Stupid woman that I am, amirite?
Mnemosyne
@lethargytartare:
Not surprisingly, this is also the complaint about Black Lives Matter and every other situation where angry Black people protest. Sure, it was bad when Michael Brown was shot and his body was left to lay in the street for 6 hours, but the real problem was the people who overreacted and got so darn angry that he was shot dead.
Bostonian
@lethargytartare: Lethargy, it’s clear to me at least that if you’re involved in changing the world, it’s not for the better.
cokane
@geg6: you’ve failed to actually make a non ad hominem case in these threads. it’s clear you’ve given it your best effort though.
Mad as Hell
Did I really just read an argument about people writing with chalk? :-(
lethargytartare
@Bostonian:
maybe, maybe not. you’re still lying about the videos.
Bostonian
@lethargytartare: Anybody else here can watch the videos and come to their own conclusions.
You seem to believe that writing something in chalk where somebody else wrote something in chalk before is a sufficient justification for assault. I don’t.
Call me all the names you want. I don’t think that makes your argument any stronger.
JDM
@Bostonian: There’s a huge difference between a request and a demand, and that this has not been generally recognized in this case is what I wanted to provide a corrective for, as was also Dorman’s intention. And we’re not talking about everyone white. When I first saw accounts of this case, that wasn’t clear, and it looks like Weinstein went out of his way to help make it unclear. Fox News certainly helped in that regard. As for everything that happened afterward, that’s being talked about and that’s good, but such talk has to start with facts, and it generally has not been.
geg6
@cokane:
Fuck off, you fuckng asshole. Is that ad hominem enough for you?
Bitter Scribe
@Jumbo76: Yeah, Lemieux doesn’t suffer fools gladly, and he basically thinks everyone who doesn’t agree with him is a fool.
BTW, I think the college he pretends to have a job at is in upstate New York, not Canada.
cokane
@geg6: your inability to produce any argument is evidence of the kind of intellectual atrophy that devotees of identity politics suffer from
geg6
@cokane:
It’s not that I have the inability. I lack the inclination. And your condescending attitude is just the typical overcompensation that reflects the inadequacy of a threatened white male.
Get over yourself, honey. We all know you ain’t all that, so just stop before you embarrass yourself.
lethargytartare
@Bostonian:
why do you insist on lying abut this? he wasn’t “writing where somebody else wrote” he was writing OVER what somebody else wrote. I don’t condone “assault” but I do think the kid who was giddily laughing while mocking people and writing over their words got exactly the reaction he was hoping to get. And dupe that your are, you fell for it.
Bostonian
@lethargytartare: Anybody can watch the video and see the truth; few rational people would follow your hair-splitting about writing and drawing and voices and hands in faces all the way to your bizarre conclusions.
The boy wrote where someone else had written before, in chalk, on a wall. Yes, to write where someone else had written before, sometimes he wrote next to what was previously written, sometimes he crossed out what was previously written, sometimes he appended what was previously written, sometimes he wrote over what was previously written, and sometimes he wrote on blank space. With chalk, on a wall. And, elsewhere, on the ground.
It’s possible this kid is kind of a dick. From what I can see in other videos, I expect that if I met him I would think that of him. He’s clearly making fun of somebody else in a very oblique fashion in this video, and in others. But the response to someone being kind of a dick is to say “Hey, you’re being kind of a dick, can you stop?” It’s not to shout at him, push him, pour water on him, or take his glasses off his face and throw them on the ground. Nobody has to take my word for it. All of this can be seen in the video. This is assault (fourth deg.), minimum, and possibly malicious harassment, per WA state law.
You persist in your argument that an appropriate response to someone writing on a wall with chalk where someone else had written before is assault. That is a bad and dangerous argument. Increasing the amount of violence in the world is a process – increased violence is met with further violence.
In other videos and pictures of the same individuals, it can be seen that the violence of the group that assaulted this kid escalated; they chased this kid around campus, armed with baseball bats in a pack of twenty. They caused him to receive threats from others, and to fear for his safety. They also caused, apparently, about $10,000.00 in property damage, according to the local Sheriff, while roaming around with those bats randomly smashing things.
As anybody sufficiently worldly could have predicted, this increased violence did lead directly to further escalation, though not from the individual targeted – instead, from right-wing creeps from off campus. This is the process those kids chose to be part of, a process that you seem not to understand. Maybe you’re just kinda young and haven’t been around much, but escalation of violence almost always leads to further escalation of violence. If that’s what you want in our society, be prepared to reap what you sow. It’s not what I want, nor is it what I practice.
This kid was threatened with violence and actually assaulted, for his act of speech. He did not respond to this violence with further violence. He might be kind of a dick, but it’s clear he’s a better person than you are.
Dmbeaster
I really dont care if the loud mouthed white guy is a crass spokesman for the objections to the reverse Day of Absence proposal. The proposal itself is blatantly objectionable, and cannot be defended on the merits. Undermining the objections to the proposal by attacking the personality traits or other obnoxious behaviors of this particular white guy is nothing more than ad hominem.
This really is a terrible post. Can you articulate a justification for any group, whether a minority or not, to insist that another racial group absent themselves from the College for the day? Hmm, didn’t think so.
Then again, this is Evergreen State College.