Tag: political correctness

Book burning at Ontario francophone schools as ‘gesture of reconciliation’ denounced

A book burning held by an Ontario francophone school board as an act of reconciliation with Indigenous people has received sharp condemnation from Canadian political leaders and the board itself now says it regrets its symbolic gesture.

The “flame purification” ceremony, first reported by Radio Canada , was held in 2019 by the Conseil scolaire catholique Providence, which oversees elementary and secondary schools in southwestern Ontario. Some 30 books, the national broadcaster reported, were burned for “educational purposes” and then the ashes were used as fertilizer to plant a tree.

“We bury the ashes of racism, discrimination and stereotypes in the hope that we will grow up in an inclusive country where all can live in prosperity and security,” says a video prepared for students about the book burning, Radio Canada reported.

In total, more than 4,700 books were removed from library shelves at 30 schools across the school board, and they have since been destroyed or are in the process of being recycled, Radio Canada reported.

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Portland State University Professor Resigns, Says School Is a ‘Social Justice Factory’

Portland State University professor Peter Boghossian said he’s resigned from his position in an open letter and accused the college administration of creating an environment that imperils dissent.

“I never once believed—nor do I now—that the purpose of instruction was to lead my students to a particular conclusion,” Boghossian, a philosophy professor, wrote in the letter. “Rather, I sought to create the conditions for rigorous thought; to help them gain the tools to hunt and furrow for their own conclusions. This is why I became a teacher and why I love teaching.”

But over time, he argued, Portland State University—a publicly-funded college—made “intellectual exploration impossible” and has transformed itself into a “social justice factory” with a primary focus on race, victimhood, and gender.

“Students at Portland State are not being taught to think. Rather, they are being trained to mimic the moral certainty of ideologues,” said the letter, which was published on Bari Weiss’s Substack page. Weiss herself previously worked for the New York Times until 2020 when she resigned, accusing her Times colleagues of bullying, and argued that the paper capitulated to Twitter-based pressure campaigns.

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Constitution, Declaration Of Independence Now Have ‘Trigger Warnings’ On National Archives Site

Digital copies of America’s founding documents — as well as other historical documents in the National Archives’ online catalog — now feature “trigger warnings” alerting readers that they may contain “harmful language,” and the change appears to follow the release of a “little-noticed” report from a National Archives racism task force that suggested the agency provide “context” for its historical materials.

Digital copies of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, most notably, now feature a “Harmful Language Alert,” which appears at the top of the page, and directs users to a National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) statement on “potentially harmful content.”

The NARA does not specify why the Constitution, Declaration, or Bill of Rights received the warning, but the NARA statement indicates that documents and historical materials are marked as having “harmful language” when they:

  • reflect racist, sexist, ableist, misogynistic/misogynoir, and xenophobic opinions and attitudes;
  • be discriminatory towards or exclude diverse views on sexuality, gender, religion, and more;
  • include graphic content of historical events such as violent death, medical procedures, crime, wars/terrorist acts, natural disasters and more;
  • demonstrate bias and exclusion in institutional collecting and digitization policies.

Trigger warnings are listed as just one of a number of solutions to the problem of providing historical documents to an increasingly “diverse community,” the NARA notes, and are part of an “institutional commitment” to “diversity, equity, and inclusion.”

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CDC’s new ‘inclusive’ health equity guide tackles anti-vaxxers, smokers

The Health Equity Guiding Principles for Inclusive Communication suggest new descriptive terms for everyone from smokers, to anti-vaxxers, to criminals, according to a report.

Those who puff on cancer-sticks should no longer be called “smokers,” according to the CDC, but “people who smoke.”

The disabled shouldn’t be referred to as “differently abled,” but simply as “people with disabilities.”

And using the word “homosexual” is out in favor of a variety of alphabet soup terms, including “LGBTQ (or LGBTQIA or LGBTQ+ or LGBTQIA2),” according to the guide.

“The way people’s social identities overlap should be considered to better understand, interpret, and communicate health outcomes,” the agency said.

Poor people should be referred to as “with self-reported income in the lowest income bracket (if income brackets are defined).”

And don’t say “the black community.”

“If you are creating an image, do not illustrate the patient as a minority and the doctor as white; likewise do not illustrate a homeless person as a minority,” the CDC now says.

Even criminals are no longer criminals, but should be called “persons in pre-trial or with charge,” “persons on parole or probation,” or “people in immigration detention facilities.”

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Arts Council of Wales finds itself racist for… asking employees to speak Welsh

The Arts Council of Wales spent £51,000 on a report that found its own Welsh language policies “systemically racist.” By asking workers to know the language, the council upholds a “white supremacist ideology,” the report claimed.

The Arts Council of Wales tests its employees on their Welsh language skills every year, while National Museums Wales assesses whether Welsh language skills are “essential” for particular roles. 

However, the arts council recently paid an outside organisation, the Welsh Arts Anti-Racist Union, £51,000 ($69,474) to investigate whether these language policies exclude black people and other non-white minorities. 

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Woke Doctor Apologizes for Using Term ‘Pregnant Women’

A physician teaching a course at a woke University of California system medical school apologized to his class for using the “offensive” term “pregnant women,” Common Sense with Bari Weiss reported Tuesday.

“I said ‘when a woman is pregnant,’ which implies that only women can get pregnant and I most sincerely apologize to all of you,” the doctor said, according to a medical student’s recording obtained by writer Katie Herzog.

The doctor reportedly added:

I don’t want you to think that I am in any way trying to imply anything, and if you can summon some generosity to forgive me, I would really appreciate it. Again, I’m very sorry for that. It was certainly not my intention to offend anyone. The worst thing that I can do as a human being is be offensive.

The medical student explained to Herzog that, at her medical school “acknowledging biological sex can be considered transphobic.”

During a class on transgender health, an instructor reportedly said, “Biological sex, sexual orientation, and gender are all constructs. These are all constructs that we have created.”

But, as Herzog observed, the idea that medical students are being taught biological sex is “a construct” matters when it comes to issues about health since “refusal to acknowledge sex can have devastating effects on patient outcomes.”

For example, the medical student noted that “abdominal aortic aneurysms” are “four times as likely to occur in males than females, but this very significant difference wasn’t emphasized.”

“I had to look it up, and I don’t have the time to look up the sex predominance for the hundreds of diseases I’m expected to know,” she said.

Most medical school instructors, the student continued, “are probably just scared of their students,” likely because of online forums in which students can chastise instructors for saying “breastfeed” instead of “chestfeed,” and petitions that “name and shame” instructors for “wrongspeak” and misuse of preferred pronouns.

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Humorless EU report: It’s not funny anymore. Far-right extremists’ use of humour

Humour has become a central weapon of extremist movements to subvert open societies and to lower the threshold towards violence. Especially within the context of a recent wave of far-right terrorist attacks, we witness “playful” ways in communicating racist ideologies. As far-right extremists strategically merge with online cultures, their approach changes fundamentally. This trend has been especially facilitated by the so-called alt-right and has spread globally. This predominantly online movement set new standards to
rebrand extremist positions in an ironic guise, blurring the lines between mischief and potentially radicalising messaging. The result is a nihilistic form of humour that is directed against ethnic and sexual minorities and deemed to inspire violent fantasies — and eventually action. This paper scrutinises how
humour functions as a potential factor in terms of influencing far-right extremist violence. In doing so, we trace the strategic dissemination of far-right narratives and discuss how extremists conceal their misanthropic messages in order to deny ill intention or purposeful harm. These recent developments pose major challenges for practitioners: As a new generation of violent extremists emerges from digital subcultures without a clear organisational centre, prevention strategies need to renew focus and cope with
the intangible nature of online cultures.

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UK law commission recommends making speech offenses based on “likely psychological harm”

Recommendations unveiled by the UK’s Law Commission are seeking to establish a new offense by criminalizing communications that could cause “likely psychological harms.”

Another offense that is recommended in the document concerns “knowingly false communications.” This is a serious threat to freedom of expression, and a chance for the authorities to get the last word on what is perceived as true and false.

The recommendation defines “harm” as something that causes “serious distress,” while “psychological harm” is also being mentioned. As for defining “serious distress” – the Commission refers to the Protection from Harassment Act 1997.

The proposed reforms are aimed at protecting victims of online abuse, but there are fears that the vague language and prioritizing subjective perception of speech over objective content could have dangerous consequences.

And the fact that identity and characteristics of the recipient of a communication is also given center stage leaves the door wide open for censorship based on identity politics.

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Olympic opening ceremony director fired for Holocaust joke

The Tokyo Olympic organizing committee fired the director of the opening ceremony on Thursday because of a Holocaust joke he made during a comedy show in 1998.

Organizing committee president Seiko Hashimoto said a day ahead of the opening ceremony that director Kentaro Kobayashi has been dismissed. He was accused of using a joke about the Holocaust in his comedy act, including the phrase “Let’s play Holocaust.”

“We found out that Mr. Kobayashi, in his own performance, has used a phrase ridiculing a historical tragedy,” Hashimoto said. “We deeply apologize for causing such a development the day before the opening ceremony and for causing troubles and concerns to many involved parties as well as the people in Tokyo and the rest of the country.”

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