We have seen in recent years that public attestations of being a racist have become more common among academics. Last year, we discussed the controversy over the acting Northwestern Law Dean declaring publicly to “I am James Speta and I am a racist.” He was followed by Emily Mullin, executive director of major gifts, who announced, “I am a racist and a gatekeeper of white supremacy. I will work to be better.” Recently, Brandeis’ Assistant Deans, Kate Slater, has triggered a similar controversy after declaring “all white people are racists.” Some have gone further. At CUNY, the Law Dean Mary Lou Bilek cancelled herself for once referring to herself as a “slaveholder” in a meeting in arguing for greater protections for minority students. Now, an Oklahoma State PhD student and teacher Jessica Bridges has cancelled herself from teaching Spanish because she is white.
Bridges’ testimonial on Instagram was picked up by a couple conservative sites after she participated in a conference at Southern Connecticut State University’s “Virtual Women’s and Gender Studies Conference” in April. A “White Accountability & Anti-Racist Education” workshop had a session on “White Women’s Work: Lessons from Engaging in Antiracist Work.” Bridges used the occasion to read a statement of self-cancellation due to her race:
“Learning Spanish from a white woman … I wish I could go back and tell my students not to learn power or correctness from this white woman. I would tell them to stand in their own power. White isn’t right.”
I’m holding myself accountable to this journey. Part of my accountability is to continue to struggle and grapple with my internalized white supremacy. Dismantling white supremacy in society looks like dismantling in my heart, first. It means I’m not going to teach Spanish. Accountability is ongoing because there is not end to the process.”
Under this theory, no white person should teach Spanish, a European language, to minority students.
Bridges also described how she corrected her “Latinx” students not to call themselves Hispanics because it was “the colonizers’ term” and they are not from Spain.
Another teacher at the conference declared that white teachers should only teach in white schools.
The import of these comments is that we should return to a type of segregation of teachers by race with minority teachers teaching minority students or at schools with a majority of minority students. These views were received with approval from others at the conference.
While Bridges and the other teachers were discussing what sounded like voluntary acts of self-cancelled or selection, any such policy at a public school would violate the Constitution under the Fourteenth Amendment. It also contradicts the vision of Martin Luther King who famously declared “I look to a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”
Obviously, any teacher can self-cancel as an unqualified or inappropriate choice for a given subject or a given student population. However, the use of race as such a determinative criteria (without reference to the teacher’s other qualifications or skills) is deeply troubling.
The question is how far this theory extends. Should white teachers self-cancel in teaching any other language to minority students? How about teaching race issues in law school or anthropology classes? We have seen similar calls being made at universities.
We need to have a real discussion of the use of such racial classifications to bar (either by mandate or choice) professors from teaching in these areas. These are faculty who spent their lives researching and writing in areas due to a deep personal and intellectual connection. A high school teacher may be White but also be an extraordinary teacher of Spanish.
These teachers clearly feel deeply about correcting what they see as the hold of racism and white privilege in education. That would make for a wonderful and informative debate at universities, which should value a diversity of viewpoints. However, these conferences often seem to exclude opposing viewpoints on these issues. They often seem like echo chambers for the participants. I do not mean to make that assumption about all of the participants or sessions at this conference. However, this particular session would have benefited from greater diversity in viewpoints and an exploration of the implications of such racial classifications for education on the high school and university levels.
No one but an hysterical, self-loathing left-wing American would think it’s a bad thing to be able to communicate in a second language.
First of all, Spanish are white. Second, my daughter, who is white American of mixed European descent, took 4 yrs of Spanish language in high school and was extremely proficient. She can read, write and speak Spanish better than some native Spanish people. Let’s not be so woke that we discriminate against any race or color.
“Hispanic” people must stop speaking english.
The woman has obviously never been to Spain. If she had, she’d know Spanish is a white man’s language. Spanish is not exclusive to American Hispanics. The language was brought here by WHITE Spaniards. This is a good example of the outright stupidity of the antiracists.
More over…it is one of the 5 Romance languages. Based on Latin and considered to be part of the foundation of Europe and western civilization..or whiteness as the wokes would know it.
Want to really show us…start speaking Mayan or Aztec or Sioux, or Cherokee…..
The Left is pushing for total segregation.
If you are white, you are not to buy fashion influenced by any other culture than European. You may eat in restaurants with cultural themes, but you may never open one yourself, no matter how expert you may become in any cuisine. You may not comment on foreign nations. You may not share dorm space or graduation space with any other race. You may not be treated equally as other races in college or job applications. Your very birth is a sin.
God forbid you learn a foreign language from anyone other than a resident of that country. I guess Latin should no longer be taught at all, as there are no ancient Romans conversant in it to teach it to us.
Definitely don’t learn Spanish if you’re white. If you do speak Spanish, just stand there blinking stupidly if someone speaks it to you, as it would be most terribly racist and rude to reply.
This is Brown Shirt, Red Army, mob behavior. There is no critical reasoning involved whatsoever. It’s the dutiful repeating of propaganda. It’s stupid.
There used to be a time when it was considered worthwhile to learn as much as possible about other cultures, their languages, cuisine, and traditions.
This rhetoric sounds very similar to that which has led up to the rise of various Leftist dictatorships. History is quite clear as to the consequences.
Don’t be stupid and repeat history.
People who have committed crimes very often say their sorry but they still must pay the price. This teacher says she’s sorry and expects to be forgiven. Why should she be exempt from repercussions. Why shouldn’t her punishment be her firing from her position. The answer is because she has fallen into the woke lockstep.
Fire, remove, decertify, dismantle, abrogate, criminalize and vaporize every last antithetical, anti-freedom-and-self-reliance, anti-American, anti-Constitution, communist (liberal, progressive, socialist, democrat, RINO) teachers union throughout the 50 free American states, after closing the wholly unconstitutional, communist (liberal, progressive, socialist, democrat, RINO) Department of Education.
Then, perhaps, you could fire her.
“REPARATIONS”
Reparations for displaced Africans and their spawn can only come from the African tribal leaders who abducted and sold their countrymen to Arab slave traders who transferred them to British shippers who delivered them to British planters in the British West Indies.
Imagine.
Were it not for the, aforementioned, African tribal leaders, who sold their countrymen to Arab slave traders who transferred them to British shippers who delivered them to British planters in the British West Indies, there would be no Africans in America and there would be no attendant, relentless caterwauling, and demands for “free stuff and cash, aka reparations.
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“Just the facts, ma’am!”
– Sergeant Joe Friday
NBC is now reporting the resignation of the entire staff of the Texas Pete hot sauce company, which is based in Winston-Salem, NC. The chastened Texas Pete CEO plans to liquidate the company’s assets and send the proceeds from an unnamed bank in North Carolina to the Texas State Treasury.
Race not mentioned in this article but this looks like homeschooling, ghetto style.
https://nypost.com/2021/06/02/florida-boy-10-shot-after-dad-took-him-on-paintball-drive-by
Segregating by race for formal schooling may not be the best idea.
Freedom of assembly and its inverse, freedom of segregation, are constitutional and legal.
If Americans cannot discriminate, Americans cannot be free, the erroneous and malicious conflation with violence notwithstanding.
@george
There will come in a time in the future when Whites as a group come to realize that no matter what is done to benefit this parasitic race, it will never be enough and yes, “good whites” they hate you too.
I derive some comfort out of the fact that the Hispanic – Asian dominated society of 2070 will not tolerate their shenanigans.
antonio
I’ve decided to take these White self-haters at their word. Originally we assumed they were the ultimate poltroons, but think about it. We have all known that many positioned people are a##@(&^s so why shouldn’t we believe them that they have always been racists as well?
What I won’t take lying down is powerful, practicing racists with clear histories of their own words as well as egregious actions that actually affected the Black community, pointing their fingers at ordinary Americans like myself and telling me to own it.
The two that come to mind are Biden and Harris. I guess if they want to try and reform themselves, it’s never too late, but seems a shame they were permitted to have such a huge platform during a period when folks like them should have demonstrated by example and canceled themselves, or at least subjected themselves to a good old public shaming. I just don’t remember either of them doing a public “denouncement” of their alleged former selves. Their denial of their racist past and their failure to flagellate themselves publicly makes the entire exercise seem like a farce.
@anonymous
A credible case can be made that there were numerous election irregularities in November 2020, maybe enough to have changed the result. Why would I believe that Trump will return in August 2020?
Why are you asking this? To provide another reason for you to make fun of or hate people like me even more?
BTW – your opinion of me or others similarly situated is irrelevant.
antion
Your generous use of the word “maybe” shows that you don’t have what it takes to be an infowarrior — i.e., there is still hope for you to aggressively sort out fact from fiction — to become a truth-warrior….maybe. There is real alternative to competing for political power with truth-warfare. If we were to win political power using falsehoods, we would be corrupt and undeserving.
Who says a credible case can be made? Where do you go to obtain credible when the Courts have tossed all the process queries? It would take testimony that opens up to perjury possibilities…, even Giuliani and Powell weren’t willing to go there.
eb
And as someone who is truly interested in moments when mass hysteria has great effect on perception of reality, I’m just curious about how many here believe trump will be reinstated in August.
eb
BLACK RACISM
“There Will Come a Time When We Will Kill Everything White in Sight”
Black activists from the New Black Panther Party and other groups staged an armed march in Tulsa, Oklahoma on Saturday. Organizers held a Second Amendment “March for Reparations” and marched through downtown Tulsa.
“The struggle for Reparations must be escalated,” a news release from organizers read. “We must fight on every front to achieve redress and Reparations for the atrocities committed upon Tulsa Massacre descendants; and we must intensify the fight to achieve Reparations for all 40-million Blacks still grossly affected by racism, inequality, wealth disparity, police brutality and the like. Tulsa will mark a new beginning in the upgraded fight for Reparations for Black people.” Activists shouted, “Black power! Black power!” Another supremacist threatened white people and said, “Because that time will come when there’s a rat-a-tat-tat… black Americans will kill everything white in sight.”
– Cristina Laila, May 30, 2021
I’ll bet Egypt is ecstatic that the Israelite slaves were out of Egypt before the ink was dry on their release papers.
Egypt hasn’t suffered for millennia, and doesn’t suffer now, a caterwauling, ineffectual and dependent minority which is relentlessly begging for “free stuff,” in all its multitudinous forms, including compulsory free social acceptance, free money, free food, free housing, free matriculation, free grade inflation, free hiring, free mortgage assistance, free healthcare insurance, free immunity from culpability, etc.
The communists (liberals, progressives, socialists, democrats, RINOs) in America have made Karl Marx proud.
No freedom and self-reliance for them;
simply class “untouchability,” dependence and entitlement.
(1) The event in Tulsa was 100 years ago. That is history – over and done with. Look ahead, not backwards to improve the matters about which these and others complain. (If the people who are descendants of slaves and/or the event 100 years ago want to improve such matters, choose leaders and nominees for office who have worked in the “real world” – not those whose occupation is community organizer.) (2) As for reparations … There is so much of what I describe as “corporate reparations” out there. Look at content of magazines, tv ads (especially those of drug companies), circulars and catalogs advertising retail businesses, the casts of tv programs, ads in magazines, recent changes to the content of so many tv series, corporate and foundation contributions, etc etc. There is such a focus on employing those who are described usually as “black” or “African American.” the foregoing no longer portray the population of the USA – and probably not their markets; all due to the “white guilt” fostered by the likes of bLM and those who would fundamentally change the USA into a socialist nation.
@mespo727272
I appreciate what you are saying but the 1st Amendment does not prevent the speech police from advocating for even more censorship and restrictions and the 2nd does not stop the gun grabbers.
Wait until this generation of law graduates in running things and these amendments are interpreted through the lens of “Critical Race Theory”.
The America that we know and love is gone and we aren’t going to “vote” our way out of these problems.
antonio
Why not begin to call these flakes “neo-racists”?
It’s one thing to become more self-aware of how social instincts can bias one’s thoughts and behavior — that’s a sign of maturity and a commitment to character development.
It’s also a virtue for a person who has earned a position of leadership and trust (power over other people) to self-surveil for impulses that would abuse their power, knowing that it is human nature to receive those impulses (re: Phil Zimbardo’s Prisoner Experiment at Stanford).
But the kind of public self-flagellation demonstrated by this teacher is neurotic and compulsive. It’s neo-racist. It’s only going to make things worse, not better.
Just curious how many of you believe Trump will be returned to the Oval in August? Show of hands, please…
Turley – “A high school teacher may be White but also be an extraordinary teacher of Spanish.”
***
She might also be a Spaniard.
Academia has become an insanity ward.
And Jew, Hutu, Tutsi, etc. privilege before that. They’re correct that diversity [dogma] (i.e. color judgment), not limited to race-ism, sex-ism, age-ism (e.g. one-child, selective-child, planned parent/hood, life deemed inconvenient, profitable, or unprofitable), and gender-ism (e.g. genderphobia), captured under the Rainbow banner of inclusive exclusion, is a progressive condition, that denies individual dignity, individual conscience, intrinsic value, and normalizes color blocs (e.g. the racist designation “people of color”), color quotas, and affirmative discrimination. Lose your Pro-Choice, selective, opportunistic (e.g. politically congruent), relativistic (e.g. ethical), nominally secular religion.
Learning Spanish from a white woman … I wish I could go back and tell my students not to learn power or correctness from this white woman. I would tell them to stand in their own power. White isn’t right.”
I’m holding myself accountable to this journey. Part of my accountability is to continue to struggle and grapple with my internalized white supremacy. Dismantling white supremacy in society looks like dismantling in my heart, first. It means I’m not going to teach Spanish. Accountability is ongoing because there is not end to the process.
I’ll bet there is an end to the process. It will end the moment she finds herself locked up for confessing to being a white supremacist fraud that culturally appropriated a language. When she’s ordered to repay all the salary she’s earned, give up all her white privilege possessions and loses her retirement benefits.
If she is truly mentally ill, she’ll accept the punishment.
As an avowed sadomasochist, a subscriber to the wicked solution, she will take a knee, beg, and self-flagellate until she resembles the Rainbow spectrum, with the black and brown colors not included, and, if feminine female with a viable womb, seek impregnation and sacrifice a baby “burden” to appease the mortal gods and goddesses that bray diversity [dogma] (e.g. race-ism, sex-ism, age-ism). So the psychos have written, so it shall be done. In Stork They Trust
@mespo727272
I am afraid they are “taking it too far”. What you are witnessing is America’s version of the Chinese Cultural Revolution and the result will not be pretty.
antonio
You’re spot on, antonio. The difference is the First and Second Amendments.
Not quite. The indoctrination and mind-control techniques are similar, but they are not backed up with guns and killing of detractors.
Conservatives are called upon to compete intellectually with woke-thought. A forfeit (refusal to compete) is pathetic.
Disagree — this is definitely Cultural Revolution time in America — the mass murders and executions aren’t that far in the future!
The singular American failure has been and continues to be the judicial branch, with emphasis on the Supreme Court, which is sworn to SUPPORT the literal “manifest tenor” of the Constitution, and not legislate or modify legislation by “interpretation.”
The judicial branch must be impeached, convicted and reoriented to the “manifest tenor” of the Constitution, its sworn duty.
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“…courts…must…declare all acts contrary to the manifest tenor of the Constitution void.”
“men…[will] do…what their powers do not authorize,…[and] what they forbid.”
“[A] limited Constitution … can be preserved in practice no other way than through the medium of courts of justice, whose duty it must be to declare all acts contrary to the manifest tenor of the Constitution void. Without this, all the reservations of particular rights or privileges would amount to nothing … To deny this would be to affirm … that men acting by virtue of powers may do not only what their powers do not authorize, but what they forbid.”
– Alexander Hamilton
@svelaz
You bet it is a problem. It exists because people with your belief system tend to praise such individuals and provide positive feedback. It’s called “virtue signaling”, a way to show the world “I am a good person and you are not”.
antonio
This is about a simple realization that she took too far. This is not a widespread problem. It’s silly for sure, but iIts also more of a personal issue than a societal one.
Sevvy:
I wish all the libs would “take it too far” so I could open up a sleazy motel with a revolver in every nightstand on every block in Dim-erica. Do we really need these emotional cripples around to breed?
The internet is a great thing isn’t it, Attorney Mespo? You can id right on it and not have to worry bout nuthin.
Spain in a European country and the language is Indo-European; and in fact, is my first language. This teacher’s actions are what is known as virtual signaling, not to be confused with true virtue. And while this lady might receive praise from her leftist friends and colleagues, I’m afraid her actions would not make a difference if she were to encounter someone like a MS-13 gang member in his element. He wouldn’t care how progressive or how often she “canceled” herself. And I feel absolutely no sympathy for anglo, white leftists when their sacred pets bite them.
I know her type and particularly detest when these same people attempt to tell me what I am allowed or should think on any particular issue. And I say this as an American of Latin origin.
antonio
Not a 1/2 or fractional American. A full American, with history, welcome. This is the way to mitigate progressive liberalism (i.e. monotonic divergence).
Pro-Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. Diversity of individuals, minority of one. Baby Lives Matter