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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 6, 2023

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A Black Professor Trapped in Anti-Racist Hell

Very interesting longform article about how a professor had a summer seminar for high school students taken over by his radical TA, in a course focusing primarily on anti-blackness - this despite Dr. Vincent Lloyd's confused self description:

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. I live in a predominantly black neighborhood of Philadelphia, my daughter went to an Afrocentric school, and I am on the board of our local black cultural organization.

What's striking about this is how miserable it seems to have made everyone involved:

Furthermore, in the 2022 community, afternoons and evenings would no longer be spent having fun and doing homework. Two college-age students called “factotums” (led by one I will call “Keisha”) were assigned to create anti-racism workshops to fill the afternoons. There were workshops on white supremacy, on privilege, on African independence movements, on the thought and activism of Angela Davis, and more, all of which followed an initial, day-long workshop on “transformative justice.” Students described the workshops as emotionally draining, forcing the high schoolers to confront tough issues and to be challenged in ways they had never been challenged before.

From the initial “transformative-justice” workshop, students learned to snap their fingers when they agreed with what a classmate was saying. This practice immediately entered the seminar and was weaponized. One student would try out a controversial (or just unusual) view. Silence. Then another student would repeat a piece of anti-racist dogma, and the room would be filled with the click-clack of snapping fingers.

hilariously, two of the asian students ended up being 'expelled' from the program, for reasons that were not shared with the professor.

During our discussion of incarceration, an Asian-American student cited federal inmate demographics: About 60 percent of those incarcerated are white. The black students said they were harmed. They had learned, in one of their workshops, that objective facts are a tool of white supremacy. Outside of the seminar, I was told, the black students had to devote a great deal of time to making right the harm that was inflicted on them by hearing prison statistics that were not about blacks. A few days later, the Asian-American student was expelled from the program.

Finally, about halfway through the seminar, the TA led a struggle session where all the students accused the professor of doing a lot of anti black harm to them, and then they all did their own thing without his involvement.

I emailed the students and Keisha with this decision, and with an offer to read and respond to any written work the students produced—and I never heard back. No one sent written work. None indicated a desire to attend a meeting where I would be a “guest speaker.” The students had almost two weeks left. With the seminar canceled, did they go home? Did they tell their parents? Did Keisha lecture to them all day? I don’t know. I had extricated myself from the abusive relationship, but nine students remained captive.

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. I live in a predominantly black neighborhood of Philadelphia, my daughter went to an Afrocentric school, and I am on the board of our local black cultural organization.

On the sunny first day of seminar, I sat at the end of a pair of picnic tables with nervous, excited 17-year-olds. Twelve high-school students had been chosen by the Telluride Association through a rigorous application process—the acceptance rate is reportedly around 3 percent—to spend six weeks together taking a college-level course, all expenses paid.

These people live in such a bubble even by 'blue tribe' standards. He preaches inclusion yet the program has a a 3% acceptance rate. There is so much material abundance and prosperity that elites have to invent scarcity. Being a professional victim confers more status than inclusive equality and is easier than having to actually accomplish something useful.

He preaches inclusion yet the program has a a 3% acceptance rate.

I don't think that's a bad thing at all. What percent of highschool students do you really think would get a lot of value from a summer sociology seminar series? And larger class sizes make teaching harder to, it's a lot easier to try to bring 3 shy students in a class of 12 out of their shells than 20 shy students in a class of 80.

And it's not like the actual knowledge is particularly restricted. Tons of lectures are available on YouTube. It's just the time of experienced of teachers that's limited, which is still a scarce resource even today.

It's just another form of invented scarcity.

And it's not like the actual knowledge is particularly restricted.

That is the whole point of inventing scarcity. Because knowledge is so abundant that status is one of the few things that resists the trend of commodification seen everywhere else in life, whether it's knowledge or luxury goods.

So do you think the non-profit Telluride Society should just accept every student that applies for a summer class, and end up with class sizes in the hundreds? Or pay for 30x as many teachers to keep class sizes the same?

one possibility could be to make it an online seminar