When someone defines a word by using variants of the word, you know you are dealing with a charlatan or an idiot. Another handy sign is when the words used could be substituted by “good” and “bad”. Critical race theory boils down to black good, white bad, which is the epitome of racism. Go here to read the comments.
Yep
- Donald R. McClarey
Donald R. McClarey
Cradle Catholic. Active in the pro-life movement since 1973. Father of three, one in Heaven, and happily married for 43 years. Small town lawyer and amateur historian. Former president of the board of directors of the local crisis pregnancy center for a decade.
Andrew Sullivan is on the same list as Marx Che.
I feel ya, T.Shaw, the more entertaining point though is that Sullivan every once in awhile will stumble upon a moment of sanity. Mark, meanwhile, has proven this post’s point with the word “nazi.”
“Think of the “anti-racist” speakers as televangelists who’ve never cracked a bible and you won’t go far wrong.”
Quote of the day.
Have a gander at Kendi’s dissertation and his professional publications. If he were anyone but Ibram X Kendi, he’d have been hired by a 4th tier institution if he were hired at all. I’ve known black academics who had to leave the professoriate because they hadn’t published enough to satisfy the usual expectations at their institution. They were real professors working in real disciplines (tests-and-measurements psychology in one case, criminology in another). Then there’s Ibram X Kendi with an endowed chair at at a research university, even though his work is dreck and everyone knows it. There’s Robin diAngelo raking in the speaking fees. In her mundane life, she’s an ‘education’ professor whose publication record indicates she knows nothing about teaching methods or the psychology of learning.
Recall Theodore Dalrymple’s observation that the point of much totalitarian discourse is the imposition of humiliation imposed on people forced to say things everyone knows are false.
Don:
“When someone defines a word by using variants of the word, you know you are dealing with a charlatan or an idiot.”
I’d vote for both…and.
Art, would you want to rate the writings of race theorists by their relative quality and academic excellence? How would you even go about trying? Better tenure for all than try to measure the value of one compared to another.
Art, would you want to rate the writings of race theorists by their relative quality and academic excellence? How would you even go about trying? Better tenure for all than try to measure the value of one compared to another.
No clue what you fancy you’re talking about.
I’m saying that you can’t compare academic reputation in nonsense fields to that in real fields. Any approach would likely be condemned by the rules of nonsense fields. As long as people are hiring N positions in nonsense fields, there are no standards by which to say that one or another academic is more qualified.
As long as people are hiring N positions in nonsense fields, there are no standards by which to say that one or another academic is more qualified.
There is nothing that compelled any of these institutions to hire Kendi, who is exceptionally incompetent, much less compelled them to grant him an endowed chair. Nor does it compel the hiring of any academic with a degree in black studies. There are about 40 research degrees in black studies awarded each year. You can ignore all of them and just hire from the ranks of regular disciplines those who research and publish on phenomena within the American black population. You then define your hires as ‘corresponding faculty’ of an interdisciplinary black studies program. A historian who studies ante-bellum slave populations, a another historian who studies 20th c protest politics, a historical sociologist who studies the post-bellum black population, a literary scholar who studies Langston Hughes and Richard Wright and Ralph Ellison, a music professor who studies Jazz or Gospel or R & B, a political scientist who studies black voting patterns, a labor economist &c.
OK, so you’re talking about rebuilding a field of studies. It would be an interesting experiment, potentially worthwhile. But it might take 40 years. I don’t see other schools hiring these students as professors in the field of black studies. I don’t see them getting published without them creating their own journals.
OK, so you’re talking about rebuilding a field of studies.
I’m talking about nothing of the kind. What I described to you is an ordinary practice and one followed by my one-time employer. It institutes a certain bias in faculty hiring and leads to suboptimal resource allocation, but you don’t hire anyone like Kendi because he knows nothing.