Tag: critical race theory

Founder of LGBT Youth Support Group Discusses ‘White Terror,’ Says There is ‘No Such Thing’ as a ‘Good’ White Person

Marlene Pray, the founder of a Planned Parenthood-backed LGBT youth sex education group in Bucks County, PA, discussed “white terror” and stated that there is “no such thing” as a “good” white person during a Zoom meeting. Pray is the founder of the Rainbow Room, an “LGBTQIA youth program that provides a supportive and empowering environment for youth ages 14-21.”

During a zoom meeting on the topic of “systemic racism,” Pray, a white woman, was asked if she herself was a racist. “Yes, absolutely. I am a racist. I participate and function and benefit from a system of racism,” the Rainbow Room founder replied enthusiastically. “Whether we call it white supremacy, although we are in no way supreme, so white terrorism is sometimes a more appropriate term for this system that we live in.”

Pray went on to say that “white folks traded our humanity in order to gain white terror and supremacy and white superiority. That’s part of the history of the founding United States.”

“And I have inherited this white privilege that is totally unearned, that is… it’s also dehumanizing, that is the piece I was adding,” she continued. “But it’s, for me, it’s, as well as oppressive as well as oppressive, and damaging, and violent, and lethal to people of color,” Pray continued. “I can do what I can to minimize harm all the time. I am never free of harm as a white person, I am never a completely safe white person.”

The far-left activist went on to praise author Patrice Jackson, stating that there is “no such thing as a good person,” only that they can “minimize the harm” that they do.

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‘1619 Project’ author receives $29K in taxpayer funds from public library for 1-hour speaking event

The Fairfax County Public Library doled out $29,350 in taxpayer funds to “1619 Project” author Nikole Hannah-Jones for an upcoming one-hour speaking event, the New York Post reported.

Hannah-Jones authored the controversial New York Times Magazine series “The 1619 Project,” which aimed to reframe the United States as a system built on racism. Earlier this month, Hulu released a docuseries adaptation of Hannah-Jones’ project.

Northern Virginia residents were enraged that a local public library wrote a $33,350 check to Hannah-Jones, $29,350 of which was covered by taxpayers’ dollars. For the one-hour speaking engagement at McLean Community Center next month, Hannah-Jones will rake in approximately $589 per minute.

Fairfax County Times reported that Hannah-Jones’ contract with the Virginia library also included “non-stop, direct” first-class plane tickets, hotel accommodations, ground transportation, and “$350.00 to cover speaker’s out of pocket expenses.”

Last month, Virginia taxpayers were fuming when they discovered Fairfax County Public Library shelled out $22,500 to another divisive author, Ibram X. Kendi, for a one-hour virtual talk.

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Is White Paint Racist?

I’ve just spent a week in a very white place. The snow fell solidly for two days, and everything was white – the air, the ground, the trees, the streets. And to complete the picture, the houses, in the little seaside town south of Oslo, blended in perfectly, being painted pure, brilliant white. When I got back to a green(ish) Scotland, I didn’t sigh with relief, “Thank goodness, I’m finally out of that racist hellhole.” But perhaps I should have.

According to Norwegian academics, “whiteness” and “white supremacy” are terms to take literally, and the colour white, in particular the white paint that is so commonly used on Norwegian houses, equals racism. Had it been the first of April, I would have assumed this was a hoax, but alas this is serious, state-funded stuff.

From the research project ‘How Norway Made the World Whiter (NorWhite)’ co-authored by Ingrid Haland, an associate professor at the University of Bergen, we learn that:

Whiteness is one of today’s key societal and political concerns. Within and beyond academia worldwide, actions of revolt and regret seek to cope with our racial past. In the pivotal works in whiteness studies within art and architecture history, whiteness is understood as cultural and visual structures of privilege. The new research project ‘How Norway Made the World Whiter’ (NorWhite) funded by the Research Council of Norway (12 million NOK), addresses a distinctively different battleground for politics of whiteness in art and architecture. Two core premises underpin the project: Whiteness is not only a cultural and societal condition tied to skin colour, privileges, and systematic exclusion, but materialise everywhere around us. Second, one cannot understand this materialisation without understanding the societal, technological and aesthetic conditions of the colour itself.

Following this inane logic, I should be ashamed at owning a white house, but perhaps pleased that my parents’ cabin in the mountains is painted brown? Or is that cultural appropriation?

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Prince Harry and the snootiness of modern ‘anti-racism’

Since Prince Harry left the royal family he’s been casting about for a new role, a new calling, beyond talking mournfully about himself to the highest bidder. Going by his bombshell memoir, Spare, and the cascade of interviews surrounding it, an obvious vocation presents itself: diversity trainer.

It’s a lucrative industry, after all. And if Harry’s recent media blitz is anything to go by, he’s taken to all the woke mantras with the zeal of a convert. He’s suggested that the royals need to confront their ‘unconscious bias’ if the monarchy is to have any chance of surviving. Harry even told CBS that he himself was ‘probably bigoted’ before he met his mixed-race wife, Meghan Markle. By which he seems to mean he was blissfully unaware of the scale of racism in society.

In his book, Harry blames his own racial indiscretions as a young man – such as dressing up as a Nazi and referring to a fellow cadet at Sandhurst as a ‘Paki’ – on his ‘unconscious bias’ and the privilege he was raised in. So sheltered was this carrot-topped prince, Harry improbably claims, that aged 21 he genuinely thought ‘Paki’ was as inoffensive as ‘Yankee’.

Unconscious bias – also known as implicit bias – is a concept that has been curdling in academia for almost three decades, first developed by psychologists Mahzarin Banaji and Anthony Greenwald in the mid-Nineties. They designed the Implicit Association Test (IAT), which has been used millions of times to measure the prejudices people allegedly hold without realising.

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Race to the Bottom: High School Withholds Academic Awards for the Sake of ‘Equity’

It’s almost funny how when it comes to the American education system, leftist indoctrination and pandering has paved the way for “equity” to be a good trait or quality.

We all know that simply isn’t the case…

The Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Alexandria, Virginia, has come under intense scrutiny and fire after it was revealed that the school had intentionally delayed notifying students of national academic honors in the name of “equity.”

A Fairfax County parent, Asra Nomani, joined “Fox and Friends First” to lament the award delays and the philosophy backing up such decision-making.

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The DEI industrial complex

In the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, chief diversity officer hires tripled among the largest publicly traded companies. American companies paid an estimated $3.4 billion to firms for diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, programs, according to Princeton professor Betsy Levy Paluck in an op-ed at the Washington Post.

And yet, moans Paluck, there is practically no research evaluating the results of these DEI initiatives.

DEI practitioner (and profiteer) Lily Zheng made a similar observation in a Harvard Business Review article earlier this month : “Despite the increase in organizations adopting DEI initiatives and the proliferation of DEI firms and practitioners, the big, poorly kept secret is that the majority of these initiatives are less effective than many make them out to be.” This, argues Zheng, is for two reasons. “On the one hand, there is a lack of standards, consistency, and accountability among DEI practitioners. And on the other, organizations keep asking for, and funding, interventions that don’t work.”

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California will enact series of woke new laws from January 1 including ban on sale of new fur, and laws which effectively decriminalize jaywalking and loitering for prostitution

California is set to implement a series of new woke laws, including banning the sale of fur, decriminalizing jaywalking and prostitution-based loitering. 

Governor Gavin Newson signed about 1,000 bills into law this year, including some woke controversial laws.

Officials warn the laws, which will be enacted in early 2023, will harm state residents, including a prostitution law that will make it more difficult for law enforcement to identify victims of human trafficking. 

Meanwhile, other laws create new holidays and increase the state’s minimum wage.

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DOT hands out $1.5 billion in grants for ‘woke’ transportation projects 

The Golden Horseshoe is a weekly designation from Just The News intended to highlight egregious examples of wasteful taxpayer spending by the government. The award is named for the horseshoe-shaped toilet seats for military airplanes that cost the Pentagon a whopping $640 each back in the 1980s.

This week’s Golden Horseshoe is awarded to the Department of Transportation for $1.5 billion in grants for “woke” projects to promote “racial equity,” “environmental justice” and union jobs in transportation.

Part of President Biden’s $1 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the grants will be administered under DOT’s Rebuilding American Infrastructure with Sustainability and Equity (RAISE) Program, the department said in a press release accompanying its Notice of Funding Opportunity. 

The DOT is “encouraging applicants to consider how their projects can address climate change, ensure racial equity, and remove barriers to opportunity,” the department said. “The Department also intends to use the RAISE program to support wealth creation and the creation of good-paying jobs with the free and fair choice to join a union, the incorporation of strong labor standards, and training and placement programs, especially registered apprenticeships.”

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UChicago Announces ‘The Problem With Whiteness’ Course

The University of Chicago (UChicago) is offering a course to students titled “The Problem Of Whiteness” during the Spring 2023 semester, according to the school’s course catalog. 

The course was originally supposed to on start January 3rd but in response to backlash from students it has been moved to March 20, according to The Washington Times. 

The course is being offered under the college’s Critical Race and Ethnic Studies (CRES) program and the description names whiteness as “a conspicuous problem within liberal political discourse” that has “worldmaking (and razing) effects.” 

The course will examine material through the lens of critical race theory. 

“Critical race theorists have shown that whiteness has long functioned as an ‘unmarked’ racial category, saturating a default surround against which non-white or ‘not quite’ other appear as aberrant,” the description reads. “This saturation has had wide-ranging effects, coloring everything from the consolidation of wealth, power and property to the distribution of environmental health hazards.”

UChicago administration told Campus Reform, “The University works to foster an inclusive climate on campus, so all may participate fully in the distinctive open and questioning environment that has always defined the University of Chicago.”

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Nationwide survey finds most medical schools have embedded DEI into their programs

A new survey completed by dozens of medical schools found they are committed to making DEI part of virtually every aspect of their programs, from promoting staff to treating patients.

More than 100 institutions took part in the Association of American Medical Colleges’ “Diversity, Inclusion, Culture, & Equity Inventory,” the first-ever report on DEI policies and practices at U.S. and Canadian medical schools, according to a November 10 AAMC news release.

“Major highlights” of the report include the finding that 100 percent of medical schools surveyed have admissions “that support a diverse class of students.”

Additional highlights are that 97 percent of schools have senior leaders “who show commitment to DEI in their personal actions” and communication, and 89 percent of medical schools say DEI is central to their school’s mission statement, the news release stated.

The AAMC is a nonprofit organization that lists as members 170 accredited medical schools, more than 400 teaching hospitals and health systems, and more than 70 faculty and academic societies, according to its website.

Report co-author and medical doctor Malika Fair stated the findings confirmed that existing DEI policies are effective and “doing well” and identified targets to integrate DEI deeper into the institutions, the group stated in its release.

However, Dr. Stanley Goldfarb, board chair of Do No Harm, an organization of medical professionals opposed to identity politics in medicine, criticized the AAMC’s priorities as “a real risk for the American people.”

“The AAMC has made it clear that they value diversity and the elements of critical race theory, including assuming that any deficits in educational attainment or disparities in health outcomes are the result of oppression of minorities,” Goldfarb told The College Fix in an email Wednesday.

“The public can now see how misguided the leadership of American medical education has become. Merit and complete commitment to caring for patients as individuals has given way to a focus on social justice, group identity, and diversity of the physician workforce. This emphasis poses a real risk for the American people,” he said.

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