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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   29353 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 6, 2023

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I have little sympathy for the professor because he was too complacent; he didn't bother imposing his authority (under the guise of letting it all be student-led learning and democratic and whatnot) because he never imagined a real challenge to it. He has been a male Keisha in his time, running anti-racism workshops and getting used to being deferred to (especially by white liberals) as the authority on what it is all about:

I am a black professor, I directed my university’s black-studies program, I lead anti-racism and transformative-justice workshops, and I have published books on anti-black racism and prison abolition.

...In 2014, I taught “Race and the Limits of Law” for Telluride’s Ithaca location. ...(W)ith excitement at the prospect of revisiting thorny questions about race after the national conversation had changed so much because of Black Lives Matter I reached out to Telluride to explore teaching the seminar again. (Telluride seminars are co-taught; my seminar was taught with my wife, a lawyer and indigenous-studies professor.)

...In this, Telluride continued a pattern of tracking liberal values as they evolved. It offered courses on race since the 1950s, and the Ithaca house was known as “the most liberal living unit on campus” in the 1970s because of its relatively early acceptance of Jewish, black, and female students. In 1993, at the height of US multiculturalism, Telluride began offering a new stream of seminars focusing on race and difference and aimed at underrepresented students.

So he's been happily going along teaching about the evils of whiteness (even if he didn't phrase it or even think of it like that). Then the new generation of sharper, greedier Keishas come along, he's a big fat prime target, and he has no idea that he's being marked to be brought down and replaced. So he lets Keisha play her little games and take over under his nose, rather than stepping in and smacking her down about over-reaching her authority, then he's shocked when the mob turns on him.

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