Tag: racism

You’ve Been Warned: Western Table Manners Are Now Racist

Heads up, everyone! There are new rules again, so I want everyone paying attention. Eating your food the way you’ve been taught to with forks and knives (because this is the West and it’s what we do) is racist and it hurts people who are still upset about colonization from hundreds of years ago. Writing in “Today’s Parent,” Joshana Maharaj is outraged, I tell you, just outraged that some teacher somewhere in Canada told a little girl not to eat rice with her hands.

This prompted her to write about learning how to eat around the world, where using hands is acceptable and how the West is just racist by using utensils, or something.

Recently, I chatted with someone who told me a story about her young niece, who goes to a prestigious preschool and was eating rice with her hands at lunchtime. The feedback her parents received was that this child needed to work on her table manners and use proper cutlery to eat. I immediately felt a rush of anger bubble up inside me when I heard this. The message that eating food with your hands is an unmannered way to eat is a real problem for me because it is dripping with the control and shame of colonization, which is particularly dangerous in an educational context. Suggesting that a child who eats with her hands has no manners is an echo of European colonial powers looking to tame the wildness out of the people they controlled. These European table manners were imposed on conquered people in an attempt to “civilize” them. It’s a damaging message about right and wrong ways to do things. It positions the technique as superior and the people who practise it as setters of the standard, leaving those with a different approach to eating with a status of inferiority. The idea of a single standard of acceptable table manners is just one of a host of strategies used to grow and promote racism. It’s a subtle message but one that is reinforced three times a day, every day, which makes it quite powerful.

Oh for crying out loud! For the most part in her essay, she explains that certain manners are for certain foods: chopsticks for sushi, and hands for naan, which makes sense and we do that in my house. But if you’re in a Western prep school, you need to use the table manners of the West. It’s not racist. It’s giving respect to the culture you’re in. You’re not in China. We eat rice with forks here in the West. If you are in China, then you probably want to put the fork down. I don’t think this has anything to do with colonialism, but with respecting the culture you’re in. “Recognizing diversity in cultural backgrounds and food traditions is essential, especially in a country as multicultural as Canada,” wrote Maharaj, totally unironically.

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ACLU ‘Waging War on Bill of Rights’ and Self-Defense by Declaring 2nd Amendment ‘Racist’

For years, the American Civil Liberties Union, ACLU, has chosen to stand against those who would attack our Constitutional rights. Even the Free Thought Project has been supported by the organization when a California sheriff attempted to force us to delete an article that was damning to his organization. Over the past several years, however, there has been a sort of rift happening inside the organization, with your right to self-defense right in the center of it.

While they have been vehemently fighting for the right of transgender athletes to compete in sports, the ACLU has largely chosen to remain silent on the Second Amendment. Though they have supported most every amendment in the bill of rights, their position on gun rights has remained ambiguous and nuanced — perhaps deliberately. But that all changed this week when they ran an article with an embedded podcast that claimed the Second Amendment is rooted in racism.

As Gleen Greenwald points out:

The ACLU is now waging war on the Bill of Rights.

ACLU’s position on the Second Amendment has always been nuanced: it’s an important constitutional protection, but one that’s collective, not individual.

Now they’re full on proclaiming parts of the Bill of Rights to be racist.

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Penn State Professor Tells White Student ‘You’re Breathing … So You May Have Oppressed Somebody Today’

Pennsylvania State University is defending a professor who pulled a white student in front of his class and told him that he’s breathing, so he may have oppressed someone today.

Professor Sam Richards, who teaches the 700-student “SOC119: Race and Ethnic Relations” course, pulled students up before the class on June 30 to discuss white privilege.

“I just take the average white guy in class, whoever it is, it doesn’t really matter,” Richards said. “Dude, this guy here. Stand up, bro. What’s your name, bro?”

The student, Russell, stood up to face the class.

“Look at Russell, right here, it doesn’t matter what he does,” the professor continued, according to a report from Campus Reform. “If I match him up with a black guy in class, or a brown guy… who’s just like him, has the same GPA, looks like him, walks like him, talks like him, acts in a similar way…and we send them into the same jobs…Russell has a benefit of having white skin.”

In another class on March 4, Richards attacked two white students as “oppressors” while discussing the Critical Race Theory training taking place at Coca-Cola. The company made headlines after it was revealed that they had instructed their employees to “be less white.”

Richards, according to Campus Reform, asked the class for thoughts on a Coca-Cola slide which read, “To be less white is to be less oppressive, be less arrogant, be less certain, be less defensive, be less ignorant, be more humble, listen, believe, break with party, break with white solidarity.”

“I think, you know, it’s more or less just recognizing the advantages you have in life,” James, a student, responded. “Whatever that may be, and not thinking yourself superior because of that.”

The professor was pleased with that answer, then turned to another student, Brian, and asked, “What White people would find that offensive?”

“Conservatives, I guess,” Brain responded.

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Pentagon contractor investigating ‘extremism’ says BLM web search raises concerns about White supremacy

The Pentagon is reportedly working with an extremism analysis company that considers the web search “the truth about Black Lives Matter” and others to be signs of interest in or engagement with White supremacism.

According to Defense One, the contractor Moonshot CVE, which has ties to the Obama Foundation, is working on data that would identify which military bases and branches have the most troops searching for domestic extremist content. While that particular project’s contours are unclear, the company previously released a June report, in conjunction with the left-leaning Anti-Defamation League, on purported “White supremacy trends in the United States.”

In it, the U.K.-based company said it “monitored a list of almost 1,600 indicators of interest in or engagement with White supremacism, focused specifically on anti-Black and anti-Semitic narratives being used by extremist groups.”

As examples, it listed the search phrases “George Floyd deserved to die,” “Jews will not replace us” and “the truth about black lives matter.”

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UK City Council Suggests Local Cake Might be Racist Because it Contains Sugar

Leeds city council is concerned about the origins of local produce such as Parkin cake because it may have once included sugar imported from the Caribbean and is therefore racist.

Yes, really.

The gingerbread cake was flagged in a Labour council document as part of a white guilt audit performed to satiate the Black Lives Matter mob and uncover “examples of how racism continues to be prevalent in everyday life.”

“Historically, some of the ingredients used to make these ‘local’ products were gained through the triangular slave trade (for example, sugar),” states the document.

The crucial investigation, which the document confirms was conducted “in relation to Black Lives Matter,” laments “how local products such as Yorkshire Parkin and Yorkshire tea are, in fact, reliant on global trade.”

Oh no, the horror.

Where it gets more insidious is that this information is all being prepared for schools so primary-age kids can be taught how much they should hate themselves and their own country.

The document bemoans the fact that the sugar in Parkin cake, as well as ingredients for Yorkshire Tea, “would have been sourced from around the empire and would have involved the labour of enslaved people as well as exploitation of resources and communities around the world.”

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Biden Admin Linked Radical Handbook Instructing Teachers To ‘Disrupt Whiteness’ As Part Of School Reopening Guidance, Admits ‘Error’

The Biden administration has admitted the Department of Education made an “error” after Fox News revealed that the DOE promoted a radical handbook from the Abolitionist Teaching Network as part of its COVID-19 school reopening guidance. The Fox News report added that the ATN instructs teachers to “disrupt whiteness” and that an ATN founder sees it as her mission to “trouble [white teachers’] internalized White supremacy and anti-Blackness.”

The ATN handbook, titled “Guide for Racial Justice & Abolitionist Social and Emotional Learning,” is linked in the Biden administration’s Department of Education “Ed COVID-19 Handbook” which is designed to guide teachers in “reopening safely and meeting all students’ needs.”

The guide promotes the “historic American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (ARP),” and provides “resources” to schools looking to spend the $122 billion in ARPA funds earmarked for public schools to help correct the “disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on students of color, students from low-income backgrounds, students with disabilities, English learners, students who are migratory, students experiencing homelessness, students in correctional facilities, and students in foster care”

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‘Legacy of Racism’: U.S. Officials Move to Change ‘Offensive’ Names of Places—and Fish

Democrats in Washington have introduced a new bill that aims to clear official place names of language deemed racist or offensive. The Reconciliation in Place Names Act was put forward on Friday by Massachusetts Senators Elizabeth Warren and Edward Markey, as well Texas Representative Al Green, and is co-sponsored by 25 other House Democrats.

If passed, the bill would allow 1,441 specific places in the U.S. to be renamed, as their current names have been flagged as offensive or as specifically containing racial slurs. The list would largely be made up of geographic features, such as forests, bodies of water, and general stretches of nature.

Business Insider reports that roughly 600 of these locations, for example, have the N-word in their names, though it is unknown which of these are on the current proposed list. Other questionably named places flagged by the outlet included slurs for Mexican people and Native American women.

“We need to immediately stop honoring the ugly legacy of racism and bigotry, and that’s why I’m introducing the Reconciliation in Place Names Act with my colleagues,” Warren said in an official statement.

“These terms are harmful relics from the era of invidious yet lawful discrimination that must be removed from public property,” Green added in his own statement. “Racism, even in geography, cannot be tolerated in a country that strives for liberty and justice for all.”

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Invasive Asian carp will be renamed to remove the term’s ‘horrible, xenophobic connotations’ in the wake of anti-Asian hate crimes

The invasive Asian carp species will be renamed due to the term’s ‘horrible, xenophobic connotations’ in the wake of a surge of anti-Asian hate crimes.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has now joined state agencies in Minnesota in referring to the species as ‘invasive carp’, despite critics ridiculing the move as misplaced political correctness.

Officials claimed that calling the fish ‘Asian’ and advocating their culling had xenophobic connotations – but the move sparked mockery on Twitter where users pointed out that the term referred to where the fish were originally imported from. 

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‘It’s unavoidable’: Marc Lamont Hill says all white people are inherently racist

Temple University professor Marc Lamont Hill gave an unequivocal answer when asked if he believed that all white people were inherently racist.

“I don’t know if you’re backing me into a corner with that question but yes, I do,” Hill responded.

The former CNN contributor was discussing the controversy over critical race theory when he made the comments to political commentator Liz Wheeler on the “Black News Tonight” show.

“I do believe that all White people are at some level, at the unconscious level, connected to racism, it’s unavoidable,” he explained. “I think all men are sexist at some level. I think that’s absolutely the case.”

Hill went on to quibble with historical accuracy of one of Wheeler’s examples, but he quickly ended the debate after answering her challenge.

Their debate centered on whether critical race theory was Marxist, with Hill challenging Wheeler to identify specific supporters of CRT who were also Marxist.

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