We have long discussed the increasing speech regulations and restrictions sweeping across universities in the United States, including mandating the use of pronouns and barring the use of other terms. The latest example comes from the University of Southern California’s Suzanne Dworek-Peck School of Social Work which has declared that the term “field” is racist and “anti-Black.” Thus, you cannot say that you are going to do “field work.” “Field” will be replaced with “practicum,” according to the January 9 memo. The announcement was made by the office not of “field education” but the non-racist “Office of Practicum Education.” The School explained:
“In solidarity with universities across the nation, our goal is not just to change language but to honor and acknowledge inclusion and reject white supremacy, anti-immigrant and anti-blackness ideologies. Language can be powerful, and phrases such as ‘going into the field’ or ‘field work’ may have connotations for descendants of slavery and immigrant workers that are not benign…This change supports anti-racist social work practice by replacing language that could be considered anti-Black or anti-immigrant in favor of inclusive language.”
Houman David Hemmati, a board-certified MD Ophthalmologist and PhD research scientist, was obviously perplexed to learn that he has been spewing racist speech for years in discussing field work and exercises. He tweeted: “Today, @uscsocialwork sent out this letter announcing that they will no longer use the word ‘field’ (as in ‘conducting field work’) because it’s perceived as racist. Is this with merit or empty virtue signaling?”
Interim Dean of the USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work, Vassilios Papadopoulos, rushed to add the obvious without adding any further explanation. He told Fox News that the decision was made by the Office of Practicum Education “out of a desire to more accurately describe its work.”
Conversely, Elizabeth A. Graddy, Interim Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs, seemed eager to distance her department from this latest woke controversy: “The university does not maintain a list of banned or discouraged words. We will continue to use words – including “field” – that accurately encompass and describe our work and research.”
However, the School of Social Work continues to herald its replacement of the word “field” as another triumph in the fight for “dismantling oppressive and discriminating systems.”
Of course, here may have to be some changes, including in this soon to be renamed movie “Practicum of Dreams.”
Although mostly good and well-intentioned public servants, all governing officials (local, state, federal) gravitate towards “totalitarianism”. The U.S. Constitution [a wartime governing charter] was designed to “restrain” these impulses by these mostly well-meaning servants.
One of the very best ways for a political party to lose voters, of both parties, is to start acting as a “Thought Police”!
Most voters are fine if you disagree with them, but once you tell us how to think, how to speak and what words to use – that form of “totalitarianism” will ultimately lose elections.
As for the term “field” this is totally ridiculous. The continent of Africa has many agricultural “fields” and sports “fields” that in no way shape or form is meant to be disparaging or demeaning to anyone.
Most of us are all for teaching about America’s past of racial discrimination but this is ridiculous.
A quick search of the faculty at the university shows that Dan Sheldon Field is a Part Time Professor at the School of Social Work. What’s he going to do about this?
The School of Social Work is a communist re-education center, propaganda distribution hub and indoctrination facility.
And “Crazy Abe” Lincoln was Karl Marx’s “earnest of the epoch” leading American toward “the reconstruction of a SOCIAL world.”
The deceit of “socialism” is its goal, communism.
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“The goal of Socialism is Communism.”
– Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
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Marx has achieved his goal in America.
Once each 4 years the international mathematics society selects four of the most significant advances in abstract mathematics for the Practicum Medals.
Why didn’t USC School of Social Work include the term ‘House’ ?
Malcolm definitely associated both terms Field and House with connotations for descendants of slavery and immigrant workers that are not benign.
Ms. Dworek-Peck has only addressed half of the benign population.
Obviously Those of us whom toil away in an Office day by day are House-N.
Until she does address this, I for one will feel disenfranchised.
Until the Office-N is free there will be no “Simple Justice”.
Re:
Malcolm tells the parable of “house Negro.”
King Solomon Baptist Church, Detroit. 10 November 1963.
To understand this, you have to go back to what the young brother here referred to as the house Negro and the field Negro back during slavery. There were two kinds of slaves, the house Negro and the field Negro. The house Negroes–they lived in the house with master, they dressed pretty good, they ate good because they ate his food–what he left. They lived in the attic or the basement, but still they lived near their master; and they loved their master more than their master loved himself. They would give their life to save their master’s house–quicker than the master would. If the master said, “We got a good house here,” the house Negro would say, “Yeah, we got a good house here.” Whenever the master said “we,” he said “we.” That’s how you can tell a house Negro.
If the master’s house caught on fire, the house Negro would fight harder to put the blaze out than the master would. If the master go sick, the house Negro would say, “What’s the matter, boss, we sick?” We sick! He identified himself with his master, more than his master identified with himself. And if you came to the house Negro and said, “Let’s run away, let’s escape, let’s separate.” The house Negro would look at you and say, “Man, you crazy. What you mean, separate? Where is there a better house than this? Where can I wear better clothes than this? Where can I eat better food than this?” That was that house Negro. In those days he was called a “house nigger.” And that’s what we call them today, because we’ve still got some house niggers running around here.
This modern house Negro loves his master. He wants to live near him. He’ll pay three times as much as the house is worth just to live near his master, and then brag about “I’m the only Negro out here.” “I’m the only one on my job.” “I’m the only one in this school.” You’re nothing but a house Negro. And if someone comes to you right now and says, “Let’s separate,” you say the same thing that the house Negro said on the plantation. “What you mean, separate? From America, this good white man? Where you going to get a better job than you get here?” I mean, this is what you say. “I ain’t left nothing in Africa,” that’s what you say. Why, you left your mind in Africa.
X, Malcolm. “Message to the Grass Roots.” Northern Negro Grass Roots Leadership Conference. Group on Advanced Leadership. King Solomon Baptist Church, Detroit. 10 November 1963.
Further affirmation that a College is not a reliable Guarantor of Higher Education or Enlightenment. Choose wisely. Buyer beware.
They should nominate the Lemming as their school mascot.
Shall we ban the use of the words cotton, plantation, master etc. When is this ridiculousness going to be called for what it is?
My favorite quote from “Practicum of Dreams”: If you build it, somebody will call it racist and tear it down.
FJB – that’s a good one. Plus I love your screen name.
FJB- You didn’t build that. But it is still racist.
What is racist is that liberals insist that American blacks be narrowly defined by slavery to the exclusion of everything else. I’m Irish but I don’t find the word “potato” racist. Yes, the Famine was a horrible chapter in our history, but there’s a lot more to us than that.
What is racist is that the Left always ignores the largest racial group in the country, Hispanics (19% of the US population) and the third largest group, Asians (6%). It is called pandering. Not even blacks (13%) buy these racist Left wing generalizations which is why all racial groups are abandoning the Democrats.
Latinx my 🦵🏽
Our Church members will not understand why the sign leaving the parking lot reads: You are now entering the Mission Practicum.
It’s fallen into silliness of the extreme where any word can signify racism! This insanity must stop.
Fields of Study: Department of Economics – Northwestern University
Chicago Field Studies < Northwestern University
Fields of Study | Undergraduate Advising Resources and Support (harvard.edu)
Graduate Fields of Study | UCLA History
Fields of Study (columbia.edu)
Strawberry Fields in Central Park
Strawberry Field in Liverpool
James Bond Character Strawberry Fields
The Fields Medal is awarded in recognition of outstanding achievement in the field of rabid diversity (e.g. racism)? Say it ain’t so, Joe. That said, throw another baby… fetal-baby on the barbie, it’s over.
You can leave out the “fetal” part of that. In the House 210 Democrats just voted not to give basic medical care to a struggling newborn child, if that child survived an attempt at abortion and is born alive. Out of 212 Democrats, exactly 1 voted yes, 1 voted present, and the rest said to the babies: drop dead. The Democrats of today are a cruel and heartless political party.
Is there such a disease as the cancerous, uncontrolled-cum-incoherent growth of thought?
Americans are not bound to hear, comprehend or assimilate the idiocy of Karl Marx.
Americans are not bound to hear, comprehend or assimilate the idiocy of USC.
At what point do we understand that otherwise intelligent people have lost their ability to cogitate properly and accurately?
At what point do we understand that otherwise intelligent people have been subsumed by unconstrained “vision,” theory and ideology?
Marx is a god… mortal god, anyway, unto men, women, and other, in the field of class-disordered religions.
I’m sure you meant ‘in the practicum of class-disordered religions’.
This entire incident is highlighting the harm and violence inherent in USC’s mascot.
Trojans evoke hurtful images of petroleum based prophylactics that contribute to climate change on an unprecedented scale. That wash into the ocean. Pollute our beaches. A degrading symbol that perpetuates sexual subjugation.
The University is doing great work to eliminate structural racism, misogyny, and homo/transphobia from the USC campus, but there is still more work to be done. There are more opportunities for positive change.
The Washington Redskins changed their names to the Commanders. Surely USC can find the will.
How about something more inclusive like the USC Progressives?
Epstein, I think women object.
Back in my day at UCLA, some students would wear “Trojans Burst Under Pressure” buttons before the big football game with USC. Somehow, I don’t think that would fly today.
“USC Progressives”
No good.
“Progress” (and its derivates) is racist. America’s material progress was built on the backs of slaves (“structural racism”).
People were enslaved by conservatives. Liberals came down to the South to give blacks the vote.
Maybe you forgot.
Progressiveness comes from the South.
Actual liberalism from the north.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/23515038
Mississippi Burning
Woodrow Wilson. Huey Long. George Wallase.
Since you like Literary references try Robert Penn Warren’s “All the Kings men”
That is an excellent description of southern progressiveness decades ago.
They were Southern Democrats, conservatives who would be thrown out of the Democratic Party.
“They were Southern Democrats,”
They who ? The people I listed ? Absolutely.
“conservatives”
Woodrow Wilson was conservative ? Huey Long ? Seriously ?
“who would be thrown out of the Democratic Party.”
Today probably. Marget Sanger would be thrown out of the democratic party today.
Democrats are very good at throwing their own heros under the bus.
Regardless, they were southern Progressives and Progressiveness was the predominant ideology of the South through atleast the first 3/4 of the 20th century.
The so called southern strategy – rather than a “racist” strategy – the VRA and CRA passed with nearly all republican votes, was a realization that the south was changing and that conservatives could take votes from southern progressives.
Which over the next several decades they slowly did. Today parts of the south are moving blue again. While the rust belt is slowly turning red.
So in physics we will have ‘quantum practicums’ while in mathematics we will have ‘real practicums’ and even ‘complex practicums’. The textbooi writers will be overjoyed to provide ‘practical’ editions.
You forgot to mention that electric fields, magnetic fields, and gravitational fields are just so racist.
Let’s take some good advice from experts in the field. Always be careful when straying far afield from one’s field of expertise. Field work is essential for broadening one’s field of view, making it possible to field ever more difficult questions. Wisdom gained in the battle field serves as a magnetic field that draws in the positive experience of field mates, making it possible to inspire and field ever stronger teams. Lessons learned in the field of play, like fielding passes in the soccer pitch, adds fields to one’s personal database, with deepening insight like stars in the field of a flag. Time spent plowing the field to clear it of undergrowth not only prepares the fields for field crops, but builds character and resilience, like the cleansing action of a septic field. And often, the people we respect most are the one who leave it all on the field.
Brilliant.
W.C. Fields=W.C. Practicuma
Sally Field=Sally Practicum
Field Marshall Montgomery=Practicum Marshall Montgomery
And the list goes on.
Guest they gotta change the title of “Field of Dreams.” We’re starting to circle the toilet bowl.
So, what’s next? We will call baseball racist because it has left, center and right fields positions? Are we supposed to call them left, center and right practicamos now?
Francisco: Mucho Grande Chistoso!
(please excuse translation errors)