Annual You're a Racist Training Video

[mahagonny]

Next semester, my large urban public university is offering a paid workshop on diversity in the classroom to all faculty--including adjuncts--while of course cutting classes offered to adjuncts because the one part of the budget that must not be cut is the pay and number of administrators.

You can always grab a part timer to teach a course on short notice. Teaching courses that help you know stuff is routine, taken for granted and, accordingly, the people who fill these jobs are interchangeable. Whereas this antiracism thing is cutting edge stuff. You can't sit still on these breaking trends. It's how you make your college a cool, woke, up-to-date place. You import a publishing star to give a talk, you have something to write about in your college newsletter.

Dude, White Fragility is racist now.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/07/dehumanizing-condescension-white-fragility/614146/

Follow the plot.

If I understand McWhorter he believes that it would be racist to suppose that black Americans are so weak in coping skills, self confidence, that we must always approach our relationships with them with some extremely fastidious type of concern about any utterance with even the remote possibility of being offensive. I agree with him.

[financeguy]

Let me make this even simpler:

-I'm not opposed to bias as as explanation to some differences in outcomes.
-If this explanation is proposed, it (like any other explanation) should be supported with evidence.
-Other possible explanations should be considered, subjected to evidence-based scrutiny and accepted if the evidence supports them as a complete or partial cause of a disparate outcome.

I don't see how any of these are remotely controversial. In order to reject this basic premise, you would have to believe non-bias related explanations for disparate outcomes are literally impossible. Is anyone explicitly stating this? Not that I'm aware of, but in making insane statements assumptions about the bias of all standardized tests or anonymous instrumental auditions they imply that bias and bias alone is the only acceptable solution. This to me puts someone in the crazy lane of "believe all women." You're no longer trying to find the truth but advocate for a position. That's fine most places outside an academic environment which theoretically attempts to apply ration and logic to arrive at conclusions rather than simply indoctrinate.

Even what is stated as the most controversial possible outcome, genetics can be easily shown to be a possible (although still not assumed without evidence) cause of a disparate outcome. Take the following example:

Local police department's force has slightly lower than the local Asian population. The department has a height requirement. At around 3 inches shorter on average, the total number of Asians who meet this requirement relative to those over represented relative to their percentage of the population explains the difference.  Of course bias is also a possibility. Given only those facts so far I would say it is not the most likely explanation, but presented with evidence that the police chief and other top officials have been found to have made anti-Asian remarks, that could change and bias could "take the lead" as an explanation. It just doesn't get to be the default or escape the requirement of evidence.

[bento]

SunWorshipper, 

I'm sorry this thread has so much close-minded baloney on it.  I think you'll find, if you frequent this forum, that the bitter cheesed-off older faculty predominate.  They resent the fact that the world has moved on from their halcyon days, if they ever had them.  They are pretty racist and sexist, and don't like the way the world has changed in the past 5-6 decades.  And then many of them are under-employed and angry at higher-ed in general.  It's unfortunate, but this thread's type of resentful griping about a short training video is pretty typical.  How offensive!  How dare they imply I might be less than perfect?!  How dare they suggest I might be better able to help my students and be a better colleague if I had to rethink some of my ingrained reflexes?!  Sniff, snort. 

[marshwiggle]

  How dare they suggest I might be better able to help my students and be a better colleague if I had to rethink some of my ingrained reflexes?!  Sniff, snort.

Yes, ingrained biases are definitely problematic. Like this:

I think you'll find, if you frequent this forum, that the bitter cheesed-off older faculty predominate.  They resent the fact that the world has moved on from their halcyon days, if they ever had them.  They are pretty racist and sexist, and don't like the way the world has changed in the past 5-6 decades.  And then many of them are under-employed and angry at higher-ed in general. 

No bigotry there, no sir.

SunWorshipper, 

I'm sorry this thread has so much close-minded baloney on it. 

Aren't we all.

[writingprof]

SunWorshipper, 

I'm sorry this thread has so much close-minded baloney on it.  I think you'll find, if you frequent this forum, that the bitter cheesed-off older faculty predominate.  They resent the fact that the world has moved on from their halcyon days, if they ever had them.  They are pretty racist and sexist, and don't like the way the world has changed in the past 5-6 decades.  And then many of them are under-employed and angry at higher-ed in general.  It's unfortunate, but this thread's type of resentful griping about a short training video is pretty typical.  How offensive!  How dare they imply I might be less than perfect?!  How dare they suggest I might be better able to help my students and be a better colleague if I had to rethink some of my ingrained reflexes?!  Sniff, snort.

Pal, I'm thriving in the new world order.  Laughing at idiots is merely my leisure activity.

[mahagonny]

Bento is referring to me. I am bitter. But then, so are the scholars who think that better or good enough lives for black Americans can only happen by everyone becoming 'antiracist' according to their instructions, and he/she has no problem taking them seriously. Bento will find, if he or she looks around, that the people who think this movement has gone overboard do not all belong to one group. That's because no one has exclusive rights to common sense.

[Burnie]

What was frustrating was that the students, whose behavior was clearly egregious, got off scot-free, and those of us who worked hard to provide opportunity for the Native students got punished.

Or they figured faculty and staff are in a better position to see abuse or micro aggressions when they happen and need training to know how to respond?  IDK if I'd call that punishment...

[marshwiggle]

What was frustrating was that the students, whose behavior was clearly egregious, got off scot-free, and those of us who worked hard to provide opportunity for the Native students got punished.

Or they figured faculty and staff are in a better position to see abuse or micro aggressions when they happen and need training to know how to respond?  IDK if I'd call that punishment...

Presumably a proportional response would be a micro-sanction, or some other micro-action.

[mahagonny]

What was frustrating was that the students, whose behavior was clearly egregious, got off scot-free, and those of us who worked hard to provide opportunity for the Native students got punished.

Or they figured faculty and staff are in a better position to see abuse or micro aggressions when they happen and need training to know how to respond?  IDK if I'd call that punishment...

I would call it both useful information, essential for doing one's best to avoid accusation at the workplace and also punishment for not, en masse,  challenging the 'anti-racist' mob as they encroach on academic freedom, etc.