Ethnic Purgation, Academic Disaster

Oh good. In the Washington Post [1], the trade journal of the coming vacuum, I discover a story on "Whiteness Studies." These, at what used to be the University of Massachusetts, are yet more un-courses that grow like mold on the wreckage of American education. They endeavor to make white students ashamed of being white. How useful.

An implement wielded to this end, saith the Post, is the Privilege Walk. In this the students or, more accurately, indoctrinees, are asked to take a step forward if they can answer "yes" to such questions as "Can you get a bank loan whenever you want?"

The Post: "You looked behind you and became really uncomfortable," said Naomi Cairns, a 24-year-old junior who stood at the front of the classroom with other white students. Asian and black students she admired were near the back. "We all started together," she said, "and now were so separated."

Which discomfort was of course intended. Whiteness is bad. In fact anything associated with achievement is bad.

The questions must have been carefully crafted to separate whites from Asians, who are smarter than whites, more industrious, less criminal, generally more successful, and consequently wildly over-represented in the better schools.

But . . . embarrassment over qualifying for a loan?

"Can you get a bank loan?" might be phrased otherwise. For example, "Has your family, by virtue of proven honesty, sense of responsibility, and the economic fecundity that comes of study, competence, and hard work, demonstrated that it would not be foolish to lend you money?"

The Privilege Walk is transparently designed to punish whites for having historically been intelligent, studious, and productive; for having contributed most of the things enjoyed, often at the expense of white taxpayers, by the shiftless, dull-witted, improvident, and parasitic.

Now, I like the idea of a Privilege Walk, but I believe we ought to make it an Earned Privilege Walk. What do you think?

"Take a step forward if the following statements apply to you:

You got into the university without benefit of affirmative action.

No one in your family has a criminal record.

You have read three books this year you didn't have to read.

You have ever read any book you didn't have to read

You have ever read any book.

You are majoring in a hard science, mathematics, or engineering.

You had 600 math boards or better.

You had 600 verbal boards or better.

You study more than an hour a day."

Since Whiteness Studies is explicitly aimed at segregating the races, how about this:

"Your racial or ethnic group invented (take one step for each): Computational fluid dynamics. Tensor calculus. The harpsichord. The theory of finite automata. Cardiac surgery. Restriction Fragment Length Polymorphism. Writing. The wheel. Counting past ten. Fingers. (OK, OK, I'll give you that one.)"

And:

"You can spell 'polymorphism,' 'automata,' and 'ten' (one step each)."

The result would be an interesting electrophoretic trace. Anyone want to try it?

Next topic: In the Washington Times, I find this lead: "The District's schoolchildren rank as the worst readers in the country and only slightly better in some grades than non-English-speaking children in the territories of Guam, the Virgin Islands and American Samoa . . . . Only 10 percent of D.C. fourth-and eighth-graders last year were at or above proficient in reading ability."

Having lived for many years in and about Washington, I can decrypt the foregoing story. "Children" means "black children." The few white kids in school in the District generally go to private schools, read competently, and produce the Merit finalists. Whites are uninvolved in this scholastic catastrophe: The government of Washington is black through and through, has a high expenditure per student ($9,650 says the Times; the average salary of teachers is $48,651), and can therefore have any schools it wants. This being so, the presumption is that it is satisfied with what it has.

Newsweek [2]: "An astonishing 47 percent of Detroiters, nearly one out of two adults in this predominantly black city, are functionally illiterate. (By way of comparison, the figure for Vietnam is 6.7 percent and 1.7 percent for Croatia.)" [1]

Do you suppose they should have done their homework? Whites however should be ashamed because they can get a loan from a bank.

Black America is a vast, hidden, changeless disaster kept afloat by welfare and pretense. Nobody is even trying to do anything practical about it. While this goes on, the therapists of the University of Massachusetts beat their breasts conspicuously and waste the time of students. Do you sometimes suspect that some people are more useful than others?

Next: The stories are dying down now about Benton Harbor, Michigan, which blacks spent two days burning. It was the usual story: a black with a suspended license ran from the police, wrecked his motorcycle, and killed himself. The population began igniting things. It happens every few years with either blacks or Latinos rioting. Cincinnati, Miami, DC at least twice, Los Angeles, Crown Heights, Newark, St. Pete, on and on, city after city torched, the stories played down, no consequences to the rioters, and the expectant wait for the next conflagration.

Racially, things aren't working. Yet we have Privilege Walks. The Eloi play while awaiting the Morlocks.

Next: I saw a political talk show in which a Mexican-American politician talked about the Latino population in Texas. He wasn't hostile to whites. He was, however, pro-Mexican. He said (I may have the number slightly off) that sixty-some percent of kids under 18 in Texas were Mexican. In ten years, he said, when they reached eighteen, and voted, "there is going to be a huge political change." Yes. Specifically, Mexicans will own the state. (This is exactly what he meant.)

How bad this will be, if at all, depends on how relations develop. An ominous trend however is that Latino kids are dismal students and drop out of school. Other tensions loom. Latinos congregate in cities and, where they outnumber blacks, will displace them in elected office. There will be consequences.

Finally: A friend in California, an economist, tells me that whites begin to flee the state to avoid the taxes needed to provide social services for immigrants. Unfortunately Mexican doctors, engineers, shopkeepers, and taxi drivers do not swim the river. America gets those who can't make it at home. The ethnic cleansing of California, should it continue, will be fascinating.

Whence the productivity, the leadership for America's declining years? Latinos won't provide it, blacks can't, whites are gnawing their own veins, and there aren't enough Asians. But we at least have Whiteness Studies.

[1] June 19, 2003

[2] June 20, 2003