Tag: race

“Decolonising Math”: University Asks Professors To Consider Race Of Mathematicians Before Relying On Their Work

We previously discussed the view of University of Rhode Island and Director of Graduate Studies of History Erik Loomis that “Science, statistics, and technology are all inherently racist.”

Others have agreed with that view, including denouncing math as racist or a “tool of whiteness.”

Now, as part of its “decolonization” efforts, Durham University is calling on professors in the math department to ask themselves if they’re citing work from “mostly white or male” mathematicians.

According to the Telegraph and The College Fix a guide instructs faculty that “decolonising the mathematical curriculum means considering the cultural origins of the mathematical concepts, focuses, and notation we most commonly use.”  It adds:

“[T]he question of whether we have allowed Western mathematicians to dominate in our discipline is no less relevant than whether we have allowed western authors to dominate the field of literature. It may even be more important, if only because mathematics is rather more central to the advancement of science than is literature.”

Some professors have objected to being asked to consider the race or gender of mathematicians rather than their underlying theories or formulas.

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Feds to offer sweeping racial justice plan

Federal agencies are unveiling sweeping plans on Thursday as part of a government-wide effort by the Biden administration to ensure racial minorities and other underserved communities have equal access to government resources.  

The plans are more than a year in the making, triggered by an executive order on advancing racial justice and equity that President Biden signed on his first day in office last year. More than 90 agencies are releasing equity plans that were the product of internal assessments by each agency, a senior administration official told reporters.  

The official said that the plans in sum include 300 strategies and commitments. Among them, the Labor Department plans to launch a new initiative to help workers of color overcome barriers in accessing unemployment insurance benefits.  

The Environmental Protection Agency will shift from responding to civil rights complaints to beginning civil rights reviews proactively. The Pentagon plans to work with historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) to diversify its artificial intelligence workforce.  

The Department of Homeland Security also plans to focus on making sure transgender Americans are treated fairly in airport screenings.

And the Justice Department will improve language access to its programs so that Americans who are not proficient in English can more easily report crimes and access the department’s resources. 

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Catholic University Speaker Says White Students Should ‘Crucify Their Whiteness’

The Atkins Center for Ethics at Carlow University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, hosted an event titled “Rejecting White Christianity” on March 3. A guest speaker at the event, Miguel De La Torre, called for White Christians to “crucify” their “whiteness.”

“Eurochristian nationalism has been used to justify white supremacy. Many within communities of color, with colonized minds, seek to assimilate to a Euroamerican version of Christianity which is detrimental to their being,” reads an event description. “This presentation will explore what it means to see through the eyes of the dominant culture, how one rejects the Christianity of the dominant culture, and how one begins to create a different cultural foundation upon which to base one’s faith.”

The discussion was also billed as an “indigenous Latinx” lens through which one can conduct “ethical analysis” of Christianity. During his speech, De La Torre, a professor of “Latinx studies” at the Iliff School of Theology in Denver, Colorado, said white Christians should “crucify” their “whiteness”, according to The College Fix.

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Top NYC health official sparks outrage after she refers to whites as ‘birthing people’ but calls pregnant blacks and Hispanics ‘mothers’ in tweet

New York City‘s top health official sparked outrage for a series of tweets where she referred to whites as ‘birthing people’ and blacks and Hispanics as ‘mothers’ 

On March 23 Dr. Michelle Morse, the first medical officer at the NYC Department of Health tweeted about the expansion of a new citywide ‘birth equity’ initiative.

In her tweets Morse, who also works as the department’s deputy commissioner for the Center for Health Equity and Community Wellness, refers to one group of moms by the woke term ‘birthing people’ and black and Hispanics as ‘mothers’ 

‘The urgency of this moment is clear. Mortality rates of birthing people are too high, and babies born to Black and Puerto Rican mothers in this city are three times more likely to die in their first year of life than babies born to non-Hispanic White birthing people,’ she wrote in a tweet. 

The tweets caused an uproar and Morse was accused of being divisive and separating mothers due to their race, with white mothers falling into the ‘birthing people’ category. 

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Federal investigation launched into MBA program that excludes white males

The Department of Education has opened two investigations into the University of Louisville and Howard University for possible discrimination against white men.

The federal investigation by the Office for Civil Rights stems from a program that Yum! Brands offers to help increase the representation of women and racial minorities in the franchise restaurant industry. The company operates Taco Bell, KFC and Pizza Hut.

Professor Mark Perry, who frequently files Title IX and Title VI complaints, shared the OCR letters with The College Fix. Title IX of the Civil Rights Act prohibits higher education institutions from discriminating on the basis of sex, while Title VI prohibits racial discrimination.

The Fix contacted OCR attorneys Bradley Moore and Arati Jani on March 23 to ask for an update on the investigations but did not receive a response.

The two universities joined with the fast food corporation to create the Yum! Franchise Accelerator MBA program at the University of Louisville.

The Kentucky university teamed up with the corporation in 2021 to “unlock opportunity in the franchising industry and create a level playing field for the underrepresented people of color and women.” The program is part of a broader investment in helping everyone, except white men, learn about business.

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Rep. Ayanna Pressley says black and Latinx commuters ‘are disproportionately criminalized by fare evasion policies’

Rep. Ayanna Pressley popped up on Twitter Saturday to urge Congress to pass her Freedom to Move Act, which would “grant Black and brown riders the freedom to navigate their community without fear.” Apparently, black and Latinx commuters are hardest hit by “fare evasion policies.” It was back in 2019 when fellow squad member Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez made a similar point, tweeting that “arresting people who can’t afford a $2.75 fare makes no one safer and destabilizes our community.” We suspect no one was arrested for not being able to afford subway fare; our suspicion is that the arrests had more to do with not paying one’s subway fare.

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Home Depot hammered for shaming employees for their ‘white privilege’

A Canadian branch of Home Depot sparked outrage after it posted a notice to employees about the benefits of “white privilege” and included a checklist for those who are “white, male, Christian, cisgender, able-bodied, and heterosexual.”

The notice, which is titled “Leading Practices — Unpacking privilege,” was posted in an employee lounge at a Home Depot in Calgary, Alberta.

A spokeswoman from Home Depot’s US headquarters confirmed to The Post that the white privilege notice was material from its Canadian division. She said it hadn’t been approved by the company’s diversity and inclusion department. The flyer had a Home Depot logo at the top.

The Canadian staffers who were apparently given the learning material were encouraged to acknowledge “societal privileges that benefit white people beyond what is commonly experienced by people of colour under the same social, political, and economic circumstances.”

Workers at the Home Depot branch were also urged to discuss their “white privilege” while being told that “the word ‘white’ creates discomfort — especially when individuals are not used to being defined or described by their race.”

Hoping to celebrate Christmas? The flyer says: “If you can expect time off from work to celebrate your religious holidays, you have Christian privilege.”

Staffers were also told in the notice that “if you’re confident the police exist to protect you, you have white privilege.”

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Ketanji Brown Jackson Is A Trustee At School That Hosts Racially Segregated ‘Affinity Groups’ For Middle-Schoolers

Georgetown Day School, where Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson is a member of the board of trustees, hosts racially segregated clubs, euphemistically referred to as “affinity groups,” for middle- and high-schoolers.

GDS describes these racially segregated groups as “safe spaces.” The website says that “most” of them are open to “allies” but goes on to define an affinity group as “​​a group whose members share a particular identity,” continuing to note that the groups “can help identify, interpret, interrupt and dismantle sources of oppression or discrimination.”

The only two middle-school affinity groups are for “Students of Color Mentoring,” which exclude white students. The description for the middle-school mentoring program reads:

“The MS SOC Mentoring Program continues to provide community support for any and all students who identify as Black/African/African-American, Asian/Asian-American, Middle-Eastern/Middle-Eastern American, Native-American/Native/American Indian, Latinx/Hispanic, and/or of Bi-racial/Multi-racial descent.”

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UC Berkeley Professor Told Students Abolishing Whiteness Means Wiping out White People

When you were growing up, the term “abolition” likely referred to slavery.

But much history has since been made, and we’re in the midst of a racial revolution.

These days, a world of wokeness wants to “abolish whiteness.”

How might that be done?

According to University of California, Berkeley Professor Zeus Leonardo, we must eradicate white people.

A bit of background via his faculty page:

Some of his essays include: “Critical Social Theory and Transformative Knowledge,” “The Souls of White Folk,” “The Color of Supremacy,” “Contracting Race,” and “Dis-orienting Western Knowledge.”

The author’s most recent books:

  • Race, Whiteness, and Education
  • Race Frameworks
  • Education and Racism

Per The Post Millennial, in a video of the instructor’s lecture “Teaching Whiteness in a Multicultural Context and Colorblind Era,” Zeus asks, “Is it worth it to be white anymore?”

A host of current headlines beg the same.

White folks, he waxes, “depend” upon whiteness:

“[I’m] trying to distinguish between whiteness and ideology, white people and identities and white bodies, which is some kind of literal understanding there that then we graft the meaning of white people onto, right? But if you undercut whiteness as an ideology, one that a lot of abolitionists suggest is parasitic, right? And it’s an ideology that white people really depend on.”

Should they be let off the hook?

“If we give white people an option out of that, and it’s not just sort of words, right? It’s sort of structural transformations, then what I’m suggesting is that it also signals the withering away of white people.”

The professor gets downright biblical. To quote John Lennon, “imagine”:

“If you can, imagine we didn’t have white people…let’s say, 600 years ago. So the suggestion by abolitionists is, we made white people, so one is not born white. By virtue of having a white Bible, one has to be taught to be white. … [W]hites are taught as young children to be white.”

Usually, he asserts, “That means in opposition to the non-white, usually black.”

The instructor can’t fathom that colorblindness is real. “Colorblindness isn’t necessarily such a literal process of being blind to color,” he insists. “It’s about feigning being blind to color, because in a completely racialized globe, how do you not see race?”

White people know what they are:

“[W]e…know just from personal experience, that if a white person took a non-white person home as a date, everything changes. Right? … To bring home a friend who’s not white, everything changes.”

Why in the world wouldn’t whites want whites to be abolished? He theorizes it may be their awareness of whiteness:

“So in some, at least, lived way, whites already know that they’re white. And that may explain why there’s sort of this defensive reaction towards abolishing whiteness and abolishing white people, because there is an investment here, okay?”

And abolition, as he understands it, is exactly what must occur. White bodies, however, will get a pass:

“[M]y recent understanding is that to abolish whiteness is to abolish white people. Okay, now that’s…different from white bodies, right? White bodies will still exist, but we will no longer consider them white people.”

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