Earlier ^[1], I wrote about the racist “diversity” consultant Glenn Singleton, who is hired by school officials, like the Arlington ^[2], Virginia schools ^[3], despite his long record of promoting offensive racial stereotypes, such as claiming that minority students are “emotional” and not “intellectual” or “task-oriented.”

What is commonly overlooked about Glenn Singleton’s racist approach is who his real victims are: America’s minority children. The Maoist ^[4] indoctrination by Singleton that civil-rights historian and professor David Beito recounts here ^[5] and here ^[6] is no doubt humiliating and uncomfortable for the white teachers and professors forced to undergo it, especially given Singleton’s claim that racism is “ubiquitous ^[7]” among whites, and his assertion that white teachers are to blame for minority students’ bad grades.

But the biggest losers in the long run from Singleton’s approach will be minority students, not the white teachers that Singleton ^[8] scapegoats ^[7] for poor performance by minority students. Being subjected to Singleton’s “diversity” training won’t cost white teachers their jobs, and if such “diversity” training gets too abusive, they may even be able to sue Glenn Singleton or their school system for it, since a federal court ruled in Hartman v. Pena (1995) that a man could sue for discriminatory harassment after being subjected to a humiliating 3-day diversity training seminar. But Singleton doesn’t just humiliate white teachers. He also promotes stereotypes about minority children that could aggravate the minority achievement gap.

Singleton claims that “white talk” is “verbal,” “intellectual” and “task-oriented,” while “color commentary” is “emotional” and “personal.” ^[7] See, e.g., Vincent Carroll, “On Point: The Whiteness Trap,” Rocky Mountain News, May 10, 2006, at page 34A. That’s exactly the sort of racist stereotype that contributes to the poor performance of some minority students, who believe that studying is “acting white.”

The fact that Singleton puts a superficially positive spin on this negative stereotype (by claiming that whites’ fous on achievement is coldly “impersonal” and “task-oriented”) makes it all the more seductive to those minority students who already perceive studying as “acting white” and being a “grind” (and who taunt studious classmates of their own race by referring to them as “schoolboy,” “schoolgirl” and “little miss perfect”).

Singleton is hired for big bucks — a “six-figure fee ^[7]” — to conduct diversity training seminars in order to supposedly remedy the minority achievement gap. But the truth is that his own teachings aggravate and reinforce the minority achievement gap. And America’s minority students will be the losers.

For that reason, I was especially saddened to learn in a November 28 letter from Arlington Schools Superintendent Robert G. Smith that Singleton was supposedly hired to remedy “the disparity in achievement between white students and students of color.” Hiring Singleton to reduce the minority achievement gap is like hiring a flat-earther to teach astronomy and biology.

In his letter, Dr. Robert Smith admitted that Singleton’s bizarre racial theories are “provocative.” Provocative, indeed. Singleton’s racial theories resemble those of the infamous racist Leonard Jeffries, who was belatedly removed from his position as head of the black studies department at the City University of New York, after he decided to go beyond promoting racism to preaching antisemitism. His racial claims, too, were described as “provocative ^[9].” But in Jeffries v. Harleston ^[10] (1995), the federal appeals court upheld his removal from his administrative position because of his bigotry.

Glenn Singleton’s racial theories closely parallel those of Leonard Jeffries. Jeffries taught that whites were cold, individualistic, competitive “ice people ^[9],” while minorities are warm, “communal ^[9]” “sun people ^[9].” Similarly, Singleton claims that “white and Asian students are more competitive and individualistic,” while minorities have a “collective,” communal orientation (see Vincent Carroll, “On Point: ‘Culture of Whiteness,’” Rocky Mountain News, October 19, 2005, at page 37A). And he claims that whites are “impersonal,” “verbal,” “intellectual” and “task-oriented ^[7],” while minorities are “non-verbal, personal” and “emotional ^[7].” (See Vincent Carroll, “On Point: The Whiteness Trap,” Rocky Mountain News, May 10, 2006, at page 34A). Ironically, Asian students end up being classified ^[11] as as “majority students ^[12]” in school systems advised by Singleton, because they have the temerity to succeed academically in a predominantly-white society.

Why Singleton continues to be hired by school systems (like the Arlington County schools) is a mystery, given how much public embarrassment he has caused some of them. Perhaps white school officials harbor so much politically-correct racial guilt that they fixate on his anti-white rhetoric and thus lose sight of how damaging his racial stereotypes are to minority children. Anti-white rhetoric is sometimes rewarded, as Leonard Jeffries showed by obtaining tenure and administrative authority at CUNY as a result of his flagrantly racist “scholarship” and writings.

Singleton recently embarrassed California Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell. This year, he was hired by the gullible O’Connell to give diversity training. O’Connell then was publicly ridiculed ^[13] after he repeated an offensive stereotype voiced by Glenn Singleton: that blacks, as a people, are loud ^[14], and need to have their loudness accommodated in the schools. (In fact, many minority students express dismay ^[15] about how loud and disorderly their classes are, finding that to be a major impediment to learning. They want “simple, elusive quiet ^[16]” so they can study. My Asian, Hispanic, and black relatives are not loud and noisy). The head of San Francisco’s NAACP has demanded an apology ^[13] from O’Connell for spreading this unfounded racial stereotype.  Singleton also embarrassed the Seattle Schools ^[2] in a landmark Supreme Court case.

But Singleton himself continues to be hired, probably because of his anti-white rhetoric. A case in point is the enthusiastic reception that speakers from the anti-white Nation of Islam receive on campus. At both of my alma maters (Harvard Law School and the University of Virginia), a Nation of Islam speaker, Abdul Alim Muhammad, received an enthusiastic reception from predominantly-black audiences, even though he said things that were antisemitic, not just racist. He got away with his anti-semitism as a reward for his anti-white racism. Anti-white racism apparently excuses all sins.

No student newspaper would even criticize the bigoted Nation of Islam speech at U.Va. on November 15, 1990, which lasted for four hours, featured an enthusiastic audience of 600 students, and was filled with racial hatred and antisemitism. Nor would any individual journalist criticize it (except for me), until a Muslim minority student from Bangladesh (Arshad Rahman) publicly condemned the speech on November 28 as a “heretical expression of race hatred.” That broke the politically-correct taboo among journalists against criticizing anti-white racism, and suddenly, guilty whites began to gingerly criticize the speech, although they focused not on its racism but on its antisemitism and one arguably antigay remark made by the speaker.

Published by Karl at 1:17 am under OTA, Schools, racism

Sure, I know that is a loaded title, but every time I turn around the Seattle School district is getting dinged for its diversity in which the focus is less on equality and opportunity then it is on blame shifting and rationalization.

Just recently I blogged about their latest manifestation:

Forget the War on Christmas, here comes the War on Thanksgiving

Caprice Hollins, the Director of Equity and Race Relations for the Seattle School District is at it again.  Caprice as you may remember was the architect of the idiotic racist racism policy for Seattle schools not long ago.  The school district was also sending kids to a bogus White Privilege seminar.

They love their faux diversity, they do. 

Before that I noted that:

As I noted earlier, Seattle went this route earlier this year.  As I noted in this blog, the issue was raised locally by sending a bunch of High School kids to a White Privilege Seminar .  You should be even more alarmed to learn that the curriculum is being pushed at high school levels too:

And speaking of White Privilege, that has made the news in Seattle, where the over compensating racial policies have turned a new page, are now sending students to a white privilege conference:

For the first time, Seattle Public Schools are sending students from four high schools to attend the annual White Privilege Conference, sponsored by the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, the University of Denver, Teaching Tolerance, Study Circles Resource Center, The Matrix, Center for Judaic Studies, GLSEN, and many more organizations. Speakers include Geneva Gay, Peggy McIntosh, Joy Leary, John-Paul Chaisson-Cardenas and many others who are actively engaged in anti-racism.

…

” The annual White Privilege Conference (WPC) serves as a yearly opportunity to examine and explore difficult issues related to white privilege, white supremacy and oppression. WPC provides a forum for critical discussions about diversity, multicultural education and leadership, social justice, race/racism, sexual orientation, gender relations, religion and other systems of privilege/oppression. WPC is recognized as a challenging, empowering and educational experience. The workshops, keynotes and institutes not only inform participants, but engage and challenge them, while providing practical tips and strategies for combating inequality.

The problem is that these conferences begin with a faulty premise and operate under no other possibilities, making the whole thing less about diversity and more about indoctrination of racism.

Seattle has a history of this overly sensitive multi culturalism, and reading back in previously blogs, you will note that White Privilege is an old theme that previously generated a lot of controversy:

Caprice Hollins needs to go

Today’s P-I has a news article on the swirling controversy over the Seattle School District’s bizarre definition of racism and the woman responsible for it, “Director of Equity and Race Relations” Caprice Hollins. The P-I’s headline reiterates what I noted yesterday: “School district pulls Web site after examples of racism spark controversy“. The original definition of racism is still in the google cache. And the statement that replaces it is just as appallingly un-American and racist as the original:

Our intention is not to … continue to hold onto unsuccessful concepts such as a melting pot or colorblind mentality.

Well, Orbusmax had a few links up with flashback to this whole history, and some of the darker aspects of this are much clearer, so here is a much broader look at the racism in Seattle, and the implication that the people behind it are as much selfish and greedy as they are altruistic.

Embarrass Your Employer, While Getting Rich Off of “Diversity” Scams

Glenn Singleton of Pacific Educational Group has become a rich man by preaching racism, hate, and scapegoating. School systems hire him for hundreds of thousands of dollars to insult and scapegoat teachers and students based on their race under the guise of “diversity training.” That embarrasses the school systems that hire him in high-profile legal cases. Yet foolish school superintendents continue to hire him at exorbitant rates, as the Discriminations blog notes, citing a recent story in the San Francisco Chronicle.

Previously, Singleton embarrassed the Seattle Schools. In 2002, they hired him to indoctrinate their students and staff about racism. As a result, they redefined racism consistent with Singleton’s extreme and radical beliefs. The Seattle Schools defined “individualism” as a form of “cultural racism,” said that only whites can be racist, and claimed that planning ahead (”future time orientation”) is a white characteristic that it is racist to expect minorities to exhibit.

Singleton promotes the basest racial stereotypes, such as claiming that “’white talk’ is ‘verbal, impersonal, intellectual’ and ‘task-oriented,’ while ‘color commentary’ is ‘nonverbal, personal, emotional’ and ‘process-oriented.’” He also blathers about “the ubiquity of white privilege and racism,” and depicts Asian students as being “majority students” just like whites because they have the temerity to succeed academically in a predominantly white society. But although he views minority culture as not being “intellectual” and “task-oriented,” it is white teachers whom he blames for the underperformance of many minority students, since he claims it would be a “racist statement” to place any responsibility for minority underperformance on minorities themselves.

Singleton’s rantings would have passed unnoticed had it not been for the legal challenge to the Seattle Schools’ use of race in student assignment. Lower courts had upheld their use of race, and the case was pending before the Supreme Court, which had the option of declining to review the case without comment, as it had more than a dozen prior cases involving the use of race by public schools in student assignment.

But then Seattle’s bizarre and racist definitions of racism, closely tracking Singleton’s own extreme beliefs, came to my attention. At my suggestion, the widely-read Volokh Conspiracy law blog, which has been cited in federal appellate court opinions, and is read by Supreme Court clerks, publicized those definitions on May 17, 2006 (citing me), and shortly thereafter, the Supreme Court, which had previously held over the case for discussion, decided to review it. The Seattle Schools, embarrassed by public ridicule, took down the Singleton-influenced definitions of racism, which I used to urge the Supreme Court to hear the case.

In June 2007, the Supreme Court struck down Seattle’s use of race, and 4 of the 9 justices cited Seattle’s wacky, Singleton-influenced, definitions of racism in the course of their opinions. Justice Thomas, for example, cited those definitions as an object lesson in why not to defer to school districts when they use race. I filed the brief that brought those wacky definitions to the Supreme Court’s attention; it was one of the few amicus briefs filed in the case that opposed Seattle’s use of race. As a result of losing the case, Seattle is expected to pay more than a million dollars in attorneys fees to the lawyers who challenged its use of race.

 But despite this loss and waste of money, the man behind it continues, unabated:

Despite greatly embarrassing the Seattle School District, which hired him, Singleton continues to be hired by school superintendents to preach his weird message of racism and scapegoating. The Greenwich, Connecticut schools have hired him as a diversity consultant. So, too, has Jack O’Connell, California’s Superintendent of Public Instruction, who has hired Singleton and given him the opportunity to scapegoat white teachers for the poor performance of some minority students. And so has a Colorado school district that gave Singleton a “six-figure consulting contract.” Singleton has received hundreds of thousands of dollars to barrage a captive audience with racism and hate. Yet he thinks he’s oppressed.

And that is something no one wants to admit:  That race baiting is an industry.  The agitators have a lot invested in creating racial hostility and distrust.

In short, yes, I am accusing many racism activists of intentionally creating more racism and racial distrust, in order to give themselves a plank on which to make a living.

As I noted above, the Seattle School District adopted a fairly gross policy, then quickly took it down. Parts of it were PC but not bad, but some aspects were fairly inflammatory.

Well, it was saved as a cached page, so here again, to celebrate Thanksgiving in Seattle,  is racism, Seattle Style. 

Equity and Race Relations

Definitions of Racism

Racism:

The systematic subordination of members of targeted racial groups who have relatively little social power in the United States (Blacks, Latino/as, Native Americans, and Asians), by the members of the agent racial group who have relatively more social power (Whites). The subordination is supported by the actions of individuals, cultural norms and values, and the institutional structures and practices of society.

Note that the “definition assumes that only whites are racist, and only non whites are victims. Strangely enough the Dictionary is less specific:

1. a belief or doctrine that inherent differences among the various human races determine cultural or individual achievement, usually involving the idea that one’s own race is superior and has the right to rule others. 

2. a policy, system of government, etc., based upon or fostering such a doctrine; discrimination. 

3. hatred or intolerance of another race or other races

As you see a real definition only concerns itself with describing what it is, not who does it.  If the meaning holds any value, racism is a product of anyone hatred or policy, regardless of race. 

Individual Racism:

The beliefs, attitudes, and actions of individuals that support or perpetuate racism. Individual racism can occur at both an unconscious and conscious level, and can be both active and passive. Examples include telling a racist joke, using a racial epithet, or believing in the inherent superiority of whites.

Note that they interject subconscious behavior, which allows you to be racist even though you think you are not. 

Active Racism:

Actions which have as their stated or explicit goal the maintenance of the system of racism and the oppression of those in the targeted racial groups. People who participate in active racism advocate the continued subjugation of members of the targeted groups and protection of “the rights” of members of the agent group. These goals are often supported by a belief in the inferiority of people of color and the superiority of white people, culture, and values.

Again, the assumption is made about whites being the problem.  Since the definition of racism is so slanted and tainted the continued use of it just further corrupts it.  

Passive Racism:

Beliefs, attitudes, and actions that contribute to the maintenance of racism, without openly advocating violence or oppression. The conscious or unconscious maintenance of attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors that support the system of racism, racial prejudice and racial dominance.

Cultural Racism:

Those aspects of society that overtly and covertly attribute value and normality to white people and Whiteness, and devalue, stereotype, and label people of color as “other”, different, less than, or render them invisible. Examples of these norms include defining white skin tones as nude or flesh colored, having a future time orientation, emphasizing individualism as opposed to a more collective ideology, defining one form of English as standard, and identifying only Whites as great writers or composers.

Institutional Racism:

The network of institutional structures, policies, and practices that create advantages and benefits for Whites, and discrimination, oppression, and disadvantages for people from targeted racial groups. The advantages created for Whites are often invisible to them, or are considered “rights” available to everyone as opposed to “privileges” awarded to only some individuals and groups.

Source: Teaching for Diversity and Social Justice, 1197 eds. Adams, Bell & Griffin

Race

A pseudobiological category that distinguishes people based on physical characteristics (e.g., skin color, body shape/size, facial features, hair texture). People of one race can vary in terms of ethnicity and culture.

Ethnicity

A group whose members share a common history and origin, as well as commonalities in terms of factors such as nationality, religion, and cultural activities.

Culture

The way of life of a group of people including the shared values, beliefs, behaviors, family roles, social relationships, verbal and nonverbal communication styles, orientation to authority, as well as preferences and expressions (art, music, food). “What everybody knows that everybody else knows.”

Acculturation

A dynamic process that occurs when members of one culture (culture of origin) come into contact with another culture (host/dominant culture) over a long period of time. The process involves exposure to, reaction to, and possible adoptions of aspects of the other groups culture. Adapting to the characteristics of the larger or dominant culture, while retaining some of one’s unique cultural traits.

Assimilation

The process of giving up connections to and aspects of one’s culture of origin and blending in with the host/dominant culture. Also, the wholesale adoption of the dominant culture at the expense of the original culture.

Prejudice

An attitude or opinion that is held in the absence of (or despite) full information. Typically it is negative in nature and based on faulty, distorted or unsubstantiated information that is over generalized and relatively in-flexible. Prejudices can be conscious or relatively unconscious.

Oppression

Treatment of a group of people within a society that results in the systematic denial of equal access to civil rights, freedoms, and power within that society. It involves a devaluing and non-acceptance of the target group and can be manifested economically, politically, socially, and/or psychologically. Individuals, through their values and behavior, can collude with a system of oppression which contributes to its maintenance in a society.

Equality

“In any given circumstances, people who are the same in those respects relevant to how they are treated in those circumstances should receive the same treatment” (p. 45). Equality defined in this way, looks at the individual and the circumstances surrounding him or her. It does not focus on group differences based on categories such as race, sex, social class, and ethnicity. This view is one of assimilation because it assumes that individuals, once socialized into society, have the right “to do anything they want, to choose their own lives and not be hampered by traditional expectations and stereotypes” (Young, 1990, p. 157).

Here comes affirmative action:

Equity

“…. deals with difference and takes into consideration the fact that this society has many groups in it who have not always been given equal treatment and/or have not had a level field on which to play. These groups have been frequently made to feel inferior to those in the mainstream and some have been oppressed. To achieve equity, according to Young (1990), “Social policy should sometimes accord special treatment to groups” (p. 158). Thus, the concept of equity provides a case for unequal treatment for those who have been disadvantaged over time. It can provide compensatory kinds of treatment, offering it in the form of special programs and benefits for those who have been discriminated against and are in need of opportunity.”

Equitable Access

Equitable access provides groups of people access to resources, services and programs that would not otherwise be available to them due to disadvantages created over time resulting from many factors including marginalization, racism, discrimination, and oppression. In essence, equitable access attempts to create a level playing field between the have and have nots.

My challenge:  Take this list and compare many of the words to a normal dictionary, and you determine if the choices of definitions servers to promote disharmony, inequality and distrust, or if they promote tolerance, acceptance and harmony.

There is no argument that American History is an uncomfortable read.  We have a serious history of bad behavior.

But in theory we are growing and learning.  So, how does it help to tell white people, you were racist, so you still must be, and only you can be, and you cannot even help it.  You can’t stop it.

Under such terms, why would any white person care about being racist or not?  If they are by your definition racist regardless of their actions, regardless of their values and regardless of their beliefs, then are you really encouraging them to not be racist?

That’s what I see happening, the agitators want to subconsciously encourage racism, in order to keep the flames burning.

The most racist people these days are the activists and politicians who fan the flames of hatred for profit and power.

Particularly when they do so to a new generation of kids who should be learning to transcend racial boundaries.