Tag: Critical Race Theory

Kwanzaa

HershbloggerLeave a comment

This is a public service update.

The first Umoja (Unity) candle was lit by Kwanzaa’s inventor in a lightly attended celebration (family and close comrades) on December 26, 1966.

This time of year there’s always an uptick in searches for information about Kwanzaa. I know this simply from observing the search engine hits on this TOC post: Nguzo Saba The 7 Principles of Blackness

Noting a few of those hits today, I reread that 2008 post. I wasn’t surprised that links have rotted. Most notably the Lansing State Journal article which prompted it, and a reference to The Dartmouth Review. The relevant portions of the LSJ piece are quoted in my post, but the Dartmouth article was the source of much of the Kwanzaa founder’s (Ron Karenga) biographical content.

My Nguzo Saba post hasn’t attracted a comment in a long while, but there are some interesting ones from earlier times should you wish to read it. One of those comments:

So, what the commentor [sic] above me is implying is that, we, as a community or race, need to rely on the white community to survive? You are suggesting that the white community is superior, that they “feed” us, and in todays society that is just wrong, no matter who you are. Nobody is above another just because of the circumstances of their birth.

How times have changed. That commenter had the concept right. But, now it’s a few very vocal, white, snake oil barkers convincing a few black people that unless ‘Black’ is capitalized (and white is NOT) everyone should riot, loot, burn.

And, it should be noted, Ron Karenga thought some people were more admirable than others because of the circumstances of their birth.

IAC there still seems to be Kwanzaa interest, so for latter day internet searchers I unearthed an archive of the Dartmouth article. You should read the whole thing. It’s not long.

I saw a number of things in it that register differently now than they did in 2008. The atavistic tribalism that is BLM has its ‘Roots’ here, and you’ll see predicates for CRT and racialist apologists such as Ibram X. Kendi and Robin D’Angelo.

The 7 Principles, Nguzo Saba, of Ron Karenga’s contrivance are noted in my earlier post. But there are 7 other principles listed in his book The Quotable Karenga. “The sevenfold path of blackness is think black, talk black, act black, create black, buy black, vote black, and live black.”

OK. But define “black.” Right now it’s being done mostly by white people.

That was the challenge to Kendi and, especially, D’Angelo. How can we make more money off this and achieve more privilege than Karenga did?

IAC, here are 2 snippets from that Dartmouth piece:

Initially, Kwanzaa proceeded from Karenga’s hostility toward Western religion, which, he wrote in his 1980 book, Kawaida Theory, “denies and diminishes human worth, capacity, potential and achievement. In Christian and Jewish mythology, humans are born in sin, cursed with mythical ancestors who’ve sinned and brought the wrath of an angry God on every generation’s head.” He similarly opposed belief in God and other “spooks who threaten us if we don’t worship them and demand we turn over our destiny and daily lives.”

In Critical Race Theology, white “humans are born in sin, cursed with mythical ancestors who’ve sinned and brought the wrath of an angry God on every generation’s head.” You might object that the slave owning ancestors are not mythical. Well, for the vast majority of non-black people and at least a large plurality of black people, they are entirely mythical. And those “spooks?” They’re white Progressives.

James Coleman, a former Black Panther, argues, “By only stressing the unity of black people, Kwanzaa separates black people from the rest of Americans. Americans must unify on whatever principles ensure we live in a safe, prosperous, God-loving country, with the race and ethnicity of any American seeking to abide by those principles being of no consequence.”

Yeah. That’s a passé MLK thingy. On his journey to anathema (statue destruction) MLK is now solidly in the objectionable phase. Because to say “All Lives Matter” is racist.

Will Karenga’s fanciful 1960s inventiveness see a revival among the newly faithful? In 2008 it was seen to be in decline.

Does anyone remember that back in the early 1990s, AT&T ran television ads suggesting that blacks call their families during Kwanzaa using their telephone service? That stores stocked Kwanzaa candles and kente clothes? That student unions were festooned with Marcus Garvey’s pan-African flag? In 1995, a local activist triumphantly told The Boston Globe, “We’re at the point now where Kwanzaa has gotten so big that we feel like Santa Claus is really on the way out.”

That short 2008 post from Reason is also worth a read. How has the “culture war is over” prediciton turned out?

I guess we’ll be able to tell based on the number of Kwanzaa candles sold. If anyone can tell.

A Kranzaa resurgence would be a mixed blessing for the black isolationists. By numbers most of the Kwanzaa forelock tuggers to this intensely African theme park are Progressive white women, or Jamaican/East Indian politicians.

The Waters method

HershbloggerLeave a comment

That’s Maxine “you create a crowd, and you push back on them, and you tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere,” Waters.
_______________________________________________________________________________

So?

Trespass and then stalk a United States Senator into the bathroom, yelling at her because she opposes illegal immigration? That’s, “Part of the process.” says Joe Biden, surrounded by the Secret Service.

Yell at your local school board, in a public meeting, about their secret racist curricula? That’s Domestic Terrorism, requiring a Federal “task force”.

Because, as Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe says, “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.”

This is more consistent than it appears. When Progressives say, “our democracy“, they mean they own it. Voters’ opinions to the contrary are not welcome anymore, anywhere. When Progressives say, “for the children“, they mean the own the children.

Critical PR Theory

HershbloggerLeave a comment

Teachers’ union sues Rhode Island mom over requests for CRT curriculum info

“The lawsuit filed Monday in Bristol County Superior Court requests that a judge block the release of “non-public records” and implement “a balancing test that properly assesses the public interest in the records at issue measured against the teacher’s individual privacy rights.””

You may well wonder what records regarding curriculum, stored on school email servers, would be “non-public.” I think we are going to find out.

““Given the circumstances of the requests,” the lawsuit states, “it is likely that any teachers who are identifiable and have engaged in discussions about things like critical race theory will then be the subject of teacher harassment by national conservative groups opposed to critical race theory.””

Let me fix that for you: “Public employees’ preparations to teach white five year olds that they are irredeemable racists may expose such public employees to public criticism.”

Some legal analysis:
Gigantic Teachers’ Union Sues Mom for Asking What the Local Public School Is Teaching Her Daughter

“It’s worth noting that the South Kingstown NEA previously targeted Solas, as we reported, by holding a special membership meeting singling her out as a danger.”

Harassment is OUR job.
Update: Smear of Mom Nicole Solas Was Prepared By Public Relations Firm Hired By South Kingstown (RI) School Committee

The chairwoman of the South Kingstown School Committee resigned from the board. The vice chairwoman of the board resigned from that position. The school district’s superintendent resigned.

Now the NEA is on the case. We can be sure the NEA is sincere in their belief that the 1619 curriculum is a model for teaching American history.

I also think this is about much more than that: The NEA is defending their right to run the public schools they way they see fit. For example, if they had to actually pay attention to parents the next time there’s a pandemic they wouldn’t be able to keep the schools closed.

I was invited,

HershbloggerLeave a comment

… via my junk mail folder, to take a test to see if I am racist.

I didn’t see why. Since I’m white, it’s a given that I’m racist. Should have been the first question.

Still, I was curious about the questions. There were only 5.

1. Name three Black journalists you read or three Black websites you follow.
Journalists: John McWhorter, Larry Elder, Glenn Loury, Candace Owens, Charles Payne, Thomas Sowell, Jason L. Riley, Walter Williams, Star Parker, and more. Do I get extra credit?

Websites: Black Man with a Gun, Loury, McWhorter, Ayan Hirsi Ali have their name (or skin tone) on sites. These are integrated websites, though, so white people also appear and many are referenced. Does that still count? I’ve got more, if needed.

2. Name three Black authors whose books have influenced your life – and while you’re at it, three people you’ve shared those books with.
Authors: Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams, Larry Elder, Ayan Hirsi Ali, Shelby Steele, Octavia Butler, Frederick Douglass, Jason L. Riley, Clarence Thomas, John McWhorter, Herman Cain, Allen West, Ben Carson, Alan Keyes, Booker T. Washington, Samuel R. Delany.

Shared: Way too many to count. I didn’t just talk about or lend the books (for one definition of ’shared’), quite a few were given away.

3. Name three tenets of the Black Lives Matter movement.
1-‘All lives matter’ is a racist statement.
2-‘White lives matter’ is a racist, Nazi, colonialist, patriarchal, homophobic, climate change denier statement.
3-All funding for police should be stopped.
4-Individualism is racist.
5-As is over acheivement in answering these questions.

4. Name three aspects of Black culture that you have had to learn and adapt to in order to succeed at your job.
For the (missing) definition of black culture, I’m excluding music, cuisine, arts, and sports since those are not directly related to any job I’ve, or most people, ever held.

In a water cooler gathering I could express an opinion on the cultural value of Billie Holiday’s rendition of Summertime vs Cardi B’s Wet Ass Pussy. I could declare collard greens are less objectionable than kale because greens are less bitter. I know Clementine Hunter’s first name is pronounced ‘Clementeen.’ I could say whether I’d prefer to have a beer with Herschel Walker or LeBron James.

I could decribe my favorite Harriet Tubman $20 bill design:

None of this has much to do with career success. Oh, maybe a bit of team building, but these days such conversations are least as likely to trigger some charge of microagression as to promote camaraderie. What if someone said Colin Kaepernick should become head coach at your Alma Mater?

Perhaps a job relevant definition of black culture could be found at some ‘acceptable’ authority. Say the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. Alas, I skimmed 124 blog posts containing ‘black culture,’ and couldn’t find a chart comparable to their critique of white culture. Here’s their summary of white cultural characteristics.

Among many other ‘white’ characteristics, the SNMAAHC thinks these behaviors typify “white privilege, and anti-blackness” “woven into the very fabric of American society”:
1-Objective, rational, linear thinking
2-Delayed gratification
3-Self reliance
4-Time imposing its own objective rigidity (For example, show up on time. And see 2.)

Rejecting those those ideas never helped anyone succeed in a job outside of university _________ Studies programs, BLM organizing, Soros funded arson and looting claques, or Presidential Press Secretary.

My general adaptation to those who didn’t display those ‘white’ characteristics was to explain the benefits of logical thinking, being on time, saving money, and personal responsibility no matter the melanin content of the person who seemed unaware.

Let me anticipate the objection that I have abused the Smithsonian definition. One of the intellectuals I listed earlier, Thomas Sowell, is in apparent agreement with me:

In his collection of essays, Black Rednecks and White Liberals, Sowell applied these ideas for understanding various groups. He showed, for instance, that what often passes for “black culture” in the United States, with its particular language, customs, behavioral characteristics, and attitudes toward work and leisure, is in fact a collection of traits adopted from earlier white southern culture.

Sowell traces this culture to several generations of mostly Scotsmen and northern Englishmen who migrated to many of the southern American colonies in the 18th century. The outstanding features of this redneck culture, or “cracker” culture as it was called in Great Britain at that time, included “an aversion to work, proneness to violence, neglect of education, sexual promiscuity, improvidence, drunkenness, lack of entrepreneurship, reckless searches for excitement, lively music and dance, and a style of religious oratory marked by rhetoric, unbridled emotions, and abeyant imagery.” It also included “touchy pride, vanity, and boastful self-dramatization.”

Any commercial industriousness and innovation introduced in the southern states in the 19th and early part of the 20th centuries, Sowell demonstrated, primarily came from businessmen, merchants, and educators who moved there from the northern and especially the New England states. The north generally had a different culture of work, savings, personal responsibility, and forethought – that resulted in the southern United States lagging far behind much of the rest of the country – a contrast often highlighted by 19th century European visitors.

The great tragedy for much of the black population, concentrated as it was in the southern states, was that it absorbed a good deal of this white southern redneck culture, and retained it longer than the descendants of those Scottish and English immigrants. Sowell explains that in the decades following the Civil War, black schools and colleges in the south were mostly manned by white administrators and teachers from New England who, with noticeable success, worked to instill “Yankee” virtues of hard work, discipline, education, and self-reliance.

In spite of racial prejudice and legal discrimination, especially in the southern states, by the middle decades of the 20th century a growing number of black Americans were slowly but surely catching up with white Americans in terms of education, skills, and income. One of the great perversities of the second part of the 20th century, Sowell showed, is that this advancement decelerated following the enactment of the civil-rights laws of the 1960s, with the accompanying affirmative action and emphasis on respecting the “diversity” of black culture. This has delayed the movement of more black Americans into the mainstream under the false belief that “black culture” is somehow distinct and unique, when in reality it is the residue of an earlier failed white culture that retarded the south for almost 200 years.

That’s an unfortunate cultural appropriation. It can be blamed partly on whites, though. So there’s that.

And, seriously, were I to have actually adapted to that ‘black culture,’ would that not have been cultural appropriation? Would I not have had to show up late for the meeting I called with my subordinates to set an example for all the white people racists? Yeah, I know ’subordinate’ is badspeak. That programmer trainee should have had an equal vote – three votes if xir identified as black. I can see my 40 years of experience was ‘privilege.’

5. Name three racist remarks that you remember hearing, challenging, and you corrected.
1-‘All white people are racists.’
Robin D’Angelo can’t write more than one paragraph without mentioning it.
2-‘New York is Hymietown’.
-Jesse Jackson. Who may have been an inspiration for:
3-Ilhan Omar – “Israel has hypnotized the world, may Allah awaken the people and help them see the evil doings of Israel.”

I have thoroughly castigated them all.

I’m looking forward to my score.

The content of CDC’s character

HershbloggerLeave a comment

I shared this article regarding CDC vaccine distribution decisions with some friends:
Why I’m Losing Trust in the Institutions – Persuasion

RTWT, but here’s the key:

[There are] some bedrock principles on which virtually all moral philosophers have long agreed.

The first is that we should avoid “leveling down” everyone’s quality of life for the purpose of achieving equality… The second is that we should not use ascriptive characteristics like race or ethnicity to allocate medical resources… The Centers for Disease Control have just thrown both of these principles overboard in the name of social justice.

In one of the most shocking moral misjudgments by a public body I have ever seen, the CDC invoked considerations of “social justice” to recommend providing vaccinations to essential workers before older Americans even though this would, according to its own models, lead to a much greater death toll. After a massive public outcry, the agency has adopted revised recommendations. But though these are a clear improvement, they still violate the two bedrock principles of allocative justice—and are likely to cause unnecessary suffering on a significant scale…

On November 23rd, Kathleen Dooling, a public health official at the CDC, gave a presentation to the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices … on who should first get access to the vaccine against Covid… Dooling recommended that 87 million essential workers—a very broad category including bankers and movie crews as well as teachers or supermarket cashiers—should get the vaccine before older Americans, even though the elderly are much more likely to die from the disease. The committee unanimously accepted the recommendations.

Dooling’s presentation laid out three different metrics for evaluating whether 87 million “essential workers” or Americans over the age of 65 should be next in line: feasibility, science, and ethics…

According to the CDC’s model, prioritizing essential workers over the elderly would … likely result in the preventable deaths of thousands of Americans.

And yet, the presentation concluded that science does not provide a reason to prioritize the elderly. For, as Kathleen Dooling wrote in one of the most jaw-dropping sentences I have ever seen in a document written by a public official, differences in expected consequences that could amount to thousands of additional deaths are “minimal.”

This allowed Dooling to focus on “ethical” principles in selecting the best course of action. Highlighting the most important consideration in red, Dooling emphasized that “racial and ethnic minority groups are underrepresented among adults > 65.” In other words, America’s elderly are too white to be considered a top priority for the distribution of the vaccine against Covid.

My emailed comment was:
Whatever your opinion of the politicization of CCP virus treatments, Hydroxychloroquine for example, the CDC decision outlined in the link is an example of callous disregard for human life in the service of Critical Race Theory. Unlike HCQ, where reasonable people could a raise cautionary hand, this was a conscious decision to increase the death toll from the CCP virus. A decision based on skin color and, probably, pressure from unions – especially the American Federation of Teachers. It is disgusting that institutions we set up and pay for have so little regard for anything beyond woke virtue signaling.

The policy undoubtedly led to more black deaths, more elderly deaths, and more black elderly deaths.

One of the email recipients asked this:
Is murder too strong a word? Worse, perhaps, than Benghazi.

To which I replied:
Benghazi was amoral indifference followed by cynical coverup. You could argue that bold faced lies told over the caskets of the people she put in harm’s way was merely another demonstration of Hillary’s horrible character. What did they expect, after all? But she had left the deaths to chance. The deaths were possible, a vile betrayal, would be embarrassing, but were not assured. A reasonable gamble for the soulless if you can get away with it.

On the other hand, CDC’s decision to withhold vaccines from the most vulnerable on the basis of race was contrary to their charter, a moral perversion of their own knowledge, but also premeditated. Excess deaths were what they approved. They thought wokeness would not only let them get away with it, but that it was a praiseworthy moral principle.

Worse than Benghazi.

Murder is not too strong a word. More specifically, geronticide.

Nguzo Saba The 7 Principles of Blackness

Hershblogger14 Comments

Kwanzaa may be fading into obscurity, but the Lansing State Journal apparently didn’t get the memo: African-American celebration brings community together

Lansing resident Lucy Stevenson was introduced to Kwanzaa when she joined St. Stephen’s Community Church five years ago.

Since then, she’s learned about the holiday’s principles of responsibility and unity.

Stevenson said she considers Kwanzaa’s message a lifestyle.

“It’s about loving one another,” she said. “Love covers it all.”

…Kwanzaa is a seven-day observance that begins the day after Christmas.

…Kwanzaa was created in 1966 by Ron Karenga, an African-American scholar.

That African-American scholar, aka Ron Everett and Maulana Karenga, served 4 years in California State Prison for felony sexual assault and false imprisonment. While leader of the racist “United Slaves” organization he and his friends assaulted and tortured Deborah Jones and Gail Davis for two days. The Los Angeles Times reported that, “Deborah Jones, who once was given the title of an African queen, said she and Gail Davis were whipped with an electrical cord and beaten with a karate baton after being ordered to remove their clothes. She testified that a hot soldering iron was placed in Miss Davis’ mouth and placed against Miss Davis’ face and that one of her own big toes was tightened in a vice. Karenga, head of US, also put detergent and running hoses in their mouths, she said”.

Not precisely what you’d expect from a moralist exhorting blacks to “leave our community more beautiful and beneficial than we inherited it”. Some people can look past this, however,

“We stress the seven principles of Kwanzaa. It’s not just an event, but a way of life,” said Renee Boyd of Lansing. “Things are definitely improving.”

When Kalenga founded Kwanzaa he called these principles “The 7 Principles of Blackness.” Here’s the complete list:

  1. Umoja (Unity): “to strive for and maintain unity in the family, community, nation and race”
  2. Kujichagulia (Self-Determination): “to define ourselves, name ourselves, create for ourselves and speak for ourselves”
  3. Ujima (Collective Work and Responsibility): “to build and maintain our community together and make our brother’s and sister’s problems our problems and to solve them together”
  4. Ujamaa (Cooperative Economics): “to build and maintain our own stores, shops and other businesses and to profit from them together”
  5. Nia (Purpose): “to make our collective vocation the building and development of our community in order to restore our people to their traditional greatness”
  6. Kuumba (Creativity): “to do always as much as we can, in the way we can, in order to leave our community more beautiful and beneficial than we inherited it”
  7. Imani (Faith): “to believe with all our heart in our people, our parents, our teachers, our leaders and the righteousness and victory of our struggle”

Here’s how principle number 4 is perceived in Lansing:

Bennie Boyd said one of Kwanzaa’s principles, cooperative economics, is a vital cog for the black community.

“If black people don’t support black businesses, there won’t be any,” he said.

In fact, Ujamaa is what Julius Nyerere, the socialist leader of Tanzania, called his disastrous policy of putting tens of thousands of Tanzanians on collective farms. By following that principle there wouldn’t be any black owned businesses to support, they’d all belong to the government.

So, celebrate any set of principles you want, but let’s not pretend Karenga’s “7 Principles of Blackness” are about loving one another. Nor as

Karenga explained in his 1977 Kwanzaa: Origin, Concepts, Practice, ‘Kwanzaa is not an imitation, but an alternative, in fact, an oppositional alternative to the spookism, mysticism and non-earth based practices which plague us as a people and encourage our withdrawal from social life rather than our bold confrontation with it.’

…appropriate for celebration in a Christian church.

Copyright 2005-2019