31 Comments

I was thinking about this last week. If I were a racist, white supremacist, the tactics used by the progressive left in the past 7 or so years would be exactly what I would use to make sure everyone knew their place in society. I am not, so it's all a bit disgusting, divisive, and inhumane to me to continually cite race as an us vs them issue. Oppressor vs oppressed seems like a way to make people feel less than and victimized always. But, who am I to say anything? I'm white.

Expand full comment

I say it does not matter if you are white you have a right to say how you feel. I refuse to participate in the race hustling. I say to the activist and educators quit telling me how I feel. I don’t feel guilty for the color of my skin. Actions speak louder than words.

I have four mixed grandchildren and I will never tell them that they are either oppressed the oppressor.

Expand full comment

As Justice Roberts it in 2007, ""The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race." Full stop.

Expand full comment

The pressure is real. My 9 year old biracial child was approached by a 5th grade ‘activist’ who encouraged her to join such affinity group. My daughter declined politely. She was then followed around the school for three days and called a racist, a hater and a bigot by black and white racial justice ‘activists’. She was told she was lying about her heritage and that her dad wasn’t black enough. We finally contacted the school and the parent of the so called activists. The badgering stopped although we were told by the principal that we potentially violated some laws by contacting the parent directly. That’s Oakland, CA in 2023 for you.

Expand full comment

That's awful. You should write up that story in detail. People need to hear about this.

Expand full comment

Good for your daughter, and good for you having the backbone to stand up against it.

Expand full comment

At the risk of empowering those on the right or those few remaining racists actually alive, I will say that as a parent living in Northern California, I could cite 10 examples of this type of animosity from the SJW community in the last few years in my own circles. Its appalling. My own politically affiliated peers have gone senseless, seemingly because George Floyd was killed. Not quite sure what has happened here since that horrible day.

Expand full comment
Comment deleted
April 12, 2023
Comment deleted
Expand full comment

This all sounds frighteningly similar to what ended up being codified in the Nuremberg Laws. I really don't think these people have the faintest clue about the road they're so blindly heading down.

Expand full comment

Couldn’t agree more. My kids’ K-12 school pushed affinity groups down to the Lower School this year, after having them in place in Middle and Upper Schools for some time. I call it what it is when I speak to the school administration--needless to say, it’s not well-received.

Expand full comment

This is a sad example of 'late-stage academia' (LSA) - fields of study which are increasingly irrelevant are grasping at straws to remain relevant. It is an offshoot from the post-modernist movement which sought excuses for continuing generating literary critique well after volumes written about classic works exceeded the works in quantity but not quality.

One sign of LSA is the lack of new ideas accompanied by repacked old ideas. The repackaging often contains tortured language such as excessively obfuscatory verbification for the expression of simple/old ideas or gratuitous changex in spelling of old termz. Sometimes these academic folx will viciously enslave and violently oppress words into usages in which they would not freely engage if those words were granted agency and self-determination.

It seems like they are trying to say something but damn-all if anyone can figure it out. (BTW: The lack of consensus over the meaning of CRT is an example of LSA - if folx had written clearly about it then we wouldn't have had to guess WTF is CRT!)

Expand full comment

Racialized affinity groups are toxic and they breed toxic organizational communications and patterns. At De Anza College a public community college in California, racialized affinity groups have now been embedded into their shared governance structures including the Academic Senate which formerly was representative of academic disciplines and is now a bizarre concoction of racialized affinity groups, gender ideology affinity groups, and academic disciplines; it seems that schools are no longer focused on academics but also racialized and gender ideology-focused tribalism... it's a sad state for the students who attend such institutions that have lost their way. I raised many questions and concerns about this, but they were all ignored and I was accused of attacking racialized affinity groups for asking critical questions. You can read more about those questions at my communications archive: https://tinyurl.com/OESJMEFacDirectorComms When they want to take your organization or school down the same dead end, push back and ask questions.

Expand full comment

Thank you Lee! You are a hero!

Expand full comment

Students will benefit from prioritizing the pursuit of academic disciplines. Why focus on segregation when the world they graduate into isn't segregated. I just don't understand the end game. I'd prefer to see students focusing on building skills that enrich and elevate their standard of living. There's enough ugliness in the world.

Expand full comment

Much respect. Thank you.

Expand full comment

I recall in the 1980s in the Los Angeles School District they had Project 10, which offered on-campus social support for gay and lesbian high school students. It started at Fairfax High School. I attended a meeting once. This was nearly a decade before the first Gay Straight Alliance, which began in salt Lake City, UT. My Psychology of Sexual Orientation professor (Janice Bohan) was instrumental in this achievement. I also recall attending the first Lavender (LGBT student) Graduation at my college Metropolitan State College of Denver in 1999. The idea was we could be "visibly gay" there. We wore rainbow cords with our black gowns. This all seemed so innocent back then.

Expand full comment

Groups with shared interests can meet. Being gay is not merely a skin color, but changes how you choose to live your life. It would similarly be crazy to say that religious groups don't have a shared "affinity" and shouldn't be allowed and encouraged to congregate separately.

But there is a time and a place for such meetings. And to diminish the evil effects of racialization, we must stop assuming "race" means anything beyond skin color. Race implies nothing that would give a group shared interests requiring us to separate.

Expand full comment

I think we are distinct as a group of people. LGB&T anyway. But in terms of affinity groups, I think there must be an all-comers policy. There can be no "cisgender straights, stay out" policy.

Expand full comment

It was innocent. It raised awareness and didn't have the angry characteristic of 'new segregation'. I would not feel welcome approaching people from an affinity group as I wouldnt risk friction in this fractious environment. I wonder whether friendly interactions occur between 2 people who don't share a racial affinity, but who might share a pov or quirky sense of humour. This stuff feels divisive.

Expand full comment

I have no problem with that. At my high school (a private one in LA), we had the Straight Gay Alliance. Of course, when I was in college, I joined my university's Black Student Union (still have my card). They let in everybody, regardless of race.

Expand full comment

Thank you for this very sensible explanation of a very large problem.

Expand full comment

I do not understand how anyone can refer to this development of racial affinity groups as "well intentioned". Separating people by any identity, whether it be race or gender, is intended to separate people and, as we have seen, no good will come of that. Those who have power to make a difference should seek to unify and not divide us.

Expand full comment

I think in the immediate aftermath of the Civil Rights Act, it's easy for me to see how there was an urgent need to help a group that had been truly oppressed and had not yet had any opportunity to recover out of it. In that time misguided, mistaken, counterproductive, but well intentioned actions could be taken. I would not and do not have the same sympathy for individuals making these choices today over a half-century later.

Expand full comment

@Mike - I agree. A better term than "well intentioned" would be "misguided"

Expand full comment

Reading the stories from parents of children being harassed by junior activists, I am reminded of the social status cliques from my day, the "mean girls". They'd actively disparage other girls for not having the right clothes, make up etc. Today's mean girls appear to actively disparage people for not having the right opinions or melanin. Unfortunately they cause alot of damage. Surprising how little society has learned. Need to shut that stuff down.

Expand full comment

I get that vibe as well! One big difference of course is that clothes is something you can change and immutable characteristics like skin color is something you never grow out of. Being made fun of because of an uncool haircut may sting, but being called a racist or a hater cuts deeper, I think.

Expand full comment

Certainly. These activists claim the high ground, but they can be the least compassionate, most offensive people.

Expand full comment

Maybe we should start assigning colored triangles to these "affinity groups" so people could understand what they really are. The blindness of so many to the origins of their methods is truly disturbing. It's all simply repackaged National Socialism.

Expand full comment

Just say no to racial affinity groups.

Expand full comment

Folx? That thing, whatever it is, that teachers are supposed to take seriously, that children are being abused with, is as racist and harmful as any KKK organizational materials were in the last century. The antipathy toward one race, the hatred, the disparate treatment, the lies; its all there. And it leaves us terrible "white folx" filled with rage against the perpetrators (not any peaceful citizens of any race at all). If this crap continues, a civil war seems inevitable.

Expand full comment

The Democrat Party has been slicing, dicing and pandering to these affinity groups going back to the 1960's. It's the party's raison d'etre. The Democrats only know how to divide and conquer. It's their modus operandi (MO).

Expand full comment

How they don't see this...

Expand full comment
Error