From Segregation to Isolation [KT]

Christopher Rufo has done some great reporting about recent events in Seattle. About the end of CHAZ, he said:

The CHAZ saga began on June 8, under the premise that capitalism, police brutality, and the "fascist regime" of Seattle mayor Jenny Durkan were upholding a social order that systemically oppressed African-Americans. Black Lives Matter and Antifa-affiliated activists hoped to create a new regime based on familiar social-justice principles of recent years: they established a social order based on a "reverse hierarchy of oppression," implemented race-based segregation in public spaces, and maintained a "police-free zone" that they believed would protect "people of color" from the depredations of the state.

As it turns out, however, maintaining public order is a complex undertaking and can't be replaced by academic symbolism. BLM activists might despise George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison, but a regime based on the principles of Nikole Hannah-Jones, Ibram X. Kendi, and Robin DiAngelo doesn't work too well. . .

That didn't prevent the City of Seattle from going with some of those principles itself, though. As reported by Rufo at the link under the photo, the City of Seattle is segregating its employees, sort of like CHAZ/CHOP segregated people:

Last month, the City of Seattle's Office of Civil Rights sent an email inviting "white City employees" to attend a training session on "Interrupting Internalized Racial Superiority and Whiteness," a program designed to help white workers examine their "complicity in the system of white supremacy" and "interrupt racism in ways that are accountable to Black, Indigenous and People of Color." Hoping to learn more, I submitted a public records request for all documentation related to the training. The results are disturbing.

A public records request. What a great idea!

At the beginning of the session, the trainers explain that white people have internalized a sense of racial superiority, which has made them unable to access their "humanity" and caused "harm and violence" to people of color. The trainers claim that "individualism," "perfectionism," "intellectualization," and "objectivity" are all vestiges of this internalized racial oppression and must be abandoned in favor of social-justice principles.

I guess this means that we can no longer expect any objectivity from the employees of the City of Seattle. What is this going to mean in practice?

You should read on. It is disturbing.

As part of this process, white employees must abandon their "white normative behavior" and learn to let go of their "comfort," "physical safety," "social status," and "relationships with some other white people." As writer James Lindsay has pointed out, this is not the language of human resources; it is the language of cult programming--persuading members they are defective in some predefined manner, exploiting their emotional vulnerabilities, and isolating them from previous relationships.

Lindsay and others at New Discourses may be able to help if you are faced with the prospect of training like this at your place of employment. FIRE is also fielding calls from panicked employees.

Rufo notes that this training is just part of an ongoing program (in Seattle and elsewhere).

The endgame is to make Seattle's municipal government the arbiter of the new orthodoxy, and then work outward. At the end of the session on "internalized racial superiority," the diversity trainers outline strategies for converting outsiders and recommend specific "practices for interrupting others' whiteness." . . .

Surprise! "Practices for interrupting others' whiteness" is gonna require some people other that white people to learn to let go of their "comfort" and "physical safety", too.

Majority of Seattle council pledges to support Police Department defunding plan laid out by advocates.

A 50% reduction in the police budget?

The segregated training story was picked up by Fox News. Tucker Carlson noted that the nation would be infuriated if similar segregated training were developed just for Black employees.

But I think the Twitter thread in which Rufo first introduced his investigation includes more valuable information than the later news reports for people who wish to really understand how these revolutionaries operate. It includes copies of handouts (YIPES) and other information from the training sessions (though he had not gotten the names of the trainers yet). From a handout:

"How do you know when you've successfully "interrupted your whiteness"?

-When you "implicate yourself" in racism.
-When "other white people may be angry."
-When you have stopped your "white normative behavior."

There were some good responses, too:

I've been fascinated by the level of atrocities of North Korea against its own people and found it very instructive to learn how human dignity can be decimated through brainwashing.

It's amazing that Americans are doing this to themselves.

Historians will be perplexed.

Also think about this training and its isolating effect on "wrong thinkers" in relationship to Cancel Culture. There has been an effort to cancel Steven Pinker recently. He doesn't look real good here as he defines the successor ideology. But what Pinker says goes a long way toward explaining Cancel Culture. It explains why those trying to cancel him seem to be on a war footing. It's short. Take a listen.

VDH suggests that segregation may become detrimental to BLM and the other "Year Zero" thinkers in the long run. We can hope.

Music

This is the Thread before the Gardening Thread

posted by Open Blogger at 11:16 AM

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