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EDUCATION SHOCKER: Inside Higher Ed gobsmacked to find faddish, balkanizing identity politics creates racial and educational divide

I know. I, too, was stunned.  I mean, when’s the last time leftist theoreticians have taken over control of governed institutions, implemented social engineering policies that essentially promote special dispensations for favorited specialty group enclaves, and the result hasn’t been a kind of United Colours of Benetton quilted Utopia of culturally diverse bliss?

So sure, things may not be working out now.  But you can’t blame the racialists or the feminists or the Orientalists or the Marxists or the Gramsciites or the Critical Race Theory adepts for this failure.  After all, they have a history of amazing successes on their side!  That is, if you forgive the gulags and genocide and political excommunications and killing fields that are often the tools of that blissful final social configuration.  Because you have to break a few eggs and all that.

Of course, Inside Higher Ed believes the problem is rich, educated whites having still an unfair advantage, gained unfairly by getting good grades from being white and rich, then passing that unfair advantage on to their white children, unfairly, who themselves unfairly then gain access to better schools, after which they unfairly get better jobs and unfairly, therefore, are better off economically.

So obviously the answer from Inside Higher Ed and the authors of the Georgetown Study, “Separate and Unequal: How Higher Education Reinforces the Intergenerational Reproduction of White Racial Privilege,” is that we need a system that redistributes not just wealth, in order to beat back the scourge of white privilege, but a system of, say, promoting diversity in colleges, taking in more of those who have been frozen out by the unfairness of white people working hard, which they can only do unfairly, and giving them access to better universities.

I don’t have a name for such a system, but I suppose we can try something like, oh, “race-based affirmative action,” if that makes any sense.

Of course, it’s not all bad news for the study’s authors, who seek to break the cycle of white privilege that unfairly allows whites to succeed on the basis of, say, unfairly living in stable two parent homes.  To wit, notes Inside Higher Ed:

The report is not all downbeat. Over the 15-year period it examines, African-American and Hispanic access to higher education did increase (though primarily at open-access institutions), and there are significant numbers of academically qualified minority students who could fill seats at the 468 selective colleges identified in the study (which calls them “low-hanging fruit”).

But because the higher education outcomes are reinforcing patterns set much earlier in students’ lives and ingrained much more deeply in the country’s K-12 and housing systems, Carnevale says, altering them would take a comprehensive, many-year social policy campaign akin to the Great Society — a prospect that seems somewhat unlikely, to say the least.

Unlikely because whites cling to their white privilege like Oprah to a rack of ribs, not because, for instance, we already had a Great Society, we’ve already tried race-based affirmative action, and the facts seem to be that those who have unfairly failed to prepare themselves for more rigorous higher education programs are, when promoted to upper tier universities based on the sociological desire to see these people break the back of white privilege, more likely to fail and drop out at an alarming rate than other students.
I suppose we could blame the university curricula, which probably caters unconsciously to white privilege (even though the Humanities are largely bastions of those whose goal it is to fight white privilege and promote egalitarian radicalism).  But then, that can’t be it.  Or rather, that can only partially be it.
No, the real problem is that everyone doesn’t begin on an equal footing.  And if the history of America has taught us one thing, it’s that one can never ever change his or her station, nor can the  children of those in lower stations every move up the economic and social ladder.
Sad, but true.  I believe Michael Moore told me so.  Or maybe it was Howard Zinn who told me so, and Michael Moore popped into my head because he had dropped some potato salad on the pages of Zinn’s book and I watched him literally suck the pages until they were creamy potato salad free.
Easy mistake to make.
(h/t Guido)

 

 

12 Replies to “EDUCATION SHOCKER: Inside Higher Ed gobsmacked to find faddish, balkanizing identity politics creates racial and educational divide”

  1. John Bradley says:

    Hey, I know! If having white blood leads inexorably to doing your homework, getting better grades, getting into better colleges, and overall #winning at life compared to the various mongrel races (not counting the Asians and the Jews, obviously)…

    …then perhaps the Permanently Downtrodden should take steps to get some of that sweet, sweet honkie-juice mixed into their family trees. What we need are Massive Government Incentives for white guys to knock up as many Latinas and Sistahs as possible *; the next generation are our future, after all. (And it seems to have worked out pretty well, in the opposite direction, for the current resident of the Oval Office.)


    * And I know just the old Rolling Stones song to use for the national ad campaign.

  2. bgbear says:

    You can buy a Lincoln but in the end it will only get you to the same places a Ford can.

  3. leigh says:

    More crackers in the cookie jar, John?

  4. Curmudgeon says:

    And this is why, when I get junk mail asking for money from my old alma mater, I fill it out with a magic marker with words like “NEVER” in big letters, and mail it back to them in their prepaid envelopes.

  5. Curmudgeon says:

    Have you posted this to their comments section? Judging by some of the “comments” there, it needs it badly.

  6. Libby says:

    First, kill and degree that ends in “Studies.”

    And this explanation: “…much more deeply in the country’s K-12 and housing systems”
    The uber-liberal teachers’ unions have had the run of public education for decades, with people like Bill Ayers setting the curricula and Howard Zinn drafting the text books. Maybe this is a sign that this approach doesn’t work?

    And what are “housing systems”? We live in a house, in a neighborhood, and before that, a condo in a highrise. These were not “systems” thrust on us by the (white) man, they were choices.

  7. sdferr says:

    ” . . . education has been heralded as the great equalizer . . . “

    Whereas the great equalizer had been understood to be the fear of violent death, or the capacity of anyone to kill anyone else while the latter slept (so to speak). Hadn’t a damn thing to do with education.

  8. Car in says:

    But because the higher education outcomes are reinforcing patterns set much earlier in students’ lives and ingrained much more deeply in the country’s K-12 and housing systems

    *bashes head into brick wall

    Hey, how about they unpack that statement? What patterns? You mean, the non-reading, plop the kids in front of the tv patterns? Or, the “let’s celebrate my five-year-old’s ability to booty shake – isn’t that cute?”

    Or the pattern where low-income, single moms treat head-start like their personal day-care system. Or, or or …

  9. sdferr says:

    Ever notice how vivisection and other such scientific potentials, possibly useful forms of experimentation on live human beings are strictly verboten, yet experimentally fucking around with the souls of people in the most important aspects of their lives is a celebrated sub-culture of scientific social organization? It almost qualifies as a jest wrought on your world, were it not such an evil.

  10. Squid says:

    I suppose they’d argue that by sending your child to public school, you’re consenting to their sick social experimentation…

  11. Slartibartfast says:

    Check your FB email, Jeff. I know a guy.

  12. Slartibartfast says:

    Oops, wrong thread.

Comments are closed.