Cadets Establish Equality And Inclusion Committee

[George Dixon]

7 minutes ago, N.E. Brigand said:

They might be fiction. That might be fantastic. They might be both or neither.

The point is that no one should be going around trying to ban books. That's as clear an attack on free speech as anything you're upset about.

or tear down statues which is much like burning books / did I state somewhere that I believed these money-makers should be banned???

i do not.

[N.E. Brigand]

Let me try to bring this back toward the original topic: the Cadets' recognition that, like just about every organization and company out there, their history almost inevitably includes some aspects of white supremacy, albeit almost all of it will have been based on unconscious biases.

As it happens, I actually think that some of the anti-racist training can get off course. Here's what I think is a worthwhile new column about Robin DiAngelo's book White Fragility, which shot up the best-seller lists in response to the events of late May and early June. The columnist notes that he agrees with the general goals of recent activism:

"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 he also sees some risks, and after laying out his concerns, he concludes:

"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."

And I think he has a point, BUT having gone through some of this sort of training myself, I also think the dangers are limited. The discussions I've participated in allowed for plenty of disagreement. And most organizations will follow the guidance in these anti-racist trainings so far as they seem reasonable, and will disregard the rest.

I will say this: sometimes it does feel a little uncomfortable when you're asked to really dig into your unspoken assumptions and your family history and the advantages you got that a person of color might not. But that's how many people of color feel on their jobs (and elsewhere) all the time.

[Continental]

13 minutes ago, GUARDLING said:

lol.....mine coming is more of a horror

Something by HP Lovecraft?

Or is it even scarier than something like "At the Mountains of Madness?"

Edited July 17, 2020 by Continental

[N.E. Brigand]

Just now, George Dixon said:

or tear down statues which is much like burning books / did I state somewhere that I believed these money-makers should be banned???

i do not.

Statues to traitors, a large number of which were put up in the Jim Crow era specifically as part of a program meant to intimidate Black Americans, should be removed via proper local procedures rather than being torn down by mobs. (Vandalism and other destruction of property are deplorable, unless you're stealing a company's tea and dumping it in the harbor because the taxes imposed by the government are too low, undercutting you and preventing you from making a profit on the tea you've been smuggling.) And yeah, there were some dumb examples of over-exuberance, with even statues of people like Grant being knocked over.

As for banning books, you said you were worried about free speech. I pointed out some very egregious recent examples of attacks on free speech. I'm glad to hear that you agree with me. And I imagine that when you were talking to others about your free speech concerns, you mentioned such lawsuits as examples of the kind of thing that bothered you.

[N.E. Brigand]

15 minutes ago, Continental said:

Green Eggs and Ham is fiction.

I think.

Or is it a secret retelling of the "Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit" chapter in The Lord of the Rings?

[E3D]

1 hour ago, N.E. Brigand said:

Look up the billboards of Martin Luther King in "training school" that were put up around the south in the 1960s.

You may think what you're doing is different, but is it?

Martin Luther King Never claimed to be a Marxist. In fact those two founders of BLM organization do not deserve to be mentioned in the same place as a real leader like MLK. 
they used the description Marxist on themselves I quoted their own words. 

[JohnZ]

closing