Weekly Roundup
Reading List
Racism and Common Humanity at the DMV
This week on our Substack, Kathryn Wolf writes about how a recent experience at the DMV impacted her views on race and privilege.
I started to regret how quickly I had judged those women as unhinged and the DMV woman as racist. I wondered if the younger woman felt at all bad about publicly labeling some people “privileged,” or if the older woman rued how she had almost reported the DMV lady for discrimination.
And I wanted to tell that jagged line that this country just feels so broken. And that it does seem messed up how in some black neighborhoods the houses look sort of stuck, like not enough has changed in this old cotton and tobacco state. But that when I drive through Virginia, I see the same stuck-ness in a lot of tumbledown mountain homes—and it’s mostly white folks living in those. And that I still firmly believe America is good for the taking. That we’re all in this boat together and I’m glad. That I wish we weren’t so scared of each other now. And that I wish we could agree to disagree about what our problems are and what might help solve them—without calling each other names.
Coleman Hughes: asking ‘where are you from?’ isn’t racist
For Unherd, FAIR Advisor Coleman Hughes talks about the controversy over Lady Susan Hussey, an 84-year-old lady in waiting accused by Kilburn-born charity worker Ngozi Fulani of insensitivity for asking ‘where she was really from’, led to Hussey’s resignation from the royal household and an apology from Buckingham Palace.
But it also means that people like this woman should be much more forgiving, and not seek to cancel someone for what is clearly a well-intentioned comment. No one believes that if she had answered ‘oh, I’m from Africa,’ that this 80-year-old woman would say, ‘oh no! Africa…’. She would have been curious and would have wanted to know more about the place. How many signals do you need to know that the intentions are good before you understand that you don’t have to rush to judgement of a person over such a benign question?
As for the Royals’ apology, the temptation to do something is deep and profound. This is as true of politicians as it is of institutions. But sometimes the best thing to do is to let it blow over. There are cases where if you hold the line people will forget. They will move on to the next issue. They will betray the fact that sometimes they didn’t really care so much about this to begin with. Sometimes it’s a kind of short-lived anger about these kinds of issues because most of the people getting mad in the back of their minds know that asking ‘where are you from’ is a normal question.
Glenn Loury is daring you to cancel him.
For Brown Alumni Magazine, FAIR Advisor Glenn Loury sits down in his home for a wide-ranging conversation with Ravi Shankur about Loury’s willingness to take unpopular stances, the culture war kerfuffles, and where the two agree or disagree on policy positions and philosophical stances.
Shankar: “One thing I really appreciate about you, Glenn, is that you are willing to take an unpopular stance.”
Loury: “Woke racialism claims the American Dream doesn’t apply to Blacks, which is a patronizing lie.” Look—here we are. We’re African Americans but we are Americans first. We are not African in any way that’s meaningful. Yes, our ancestors may have been enslaved, but they were also emancipated. We are literally the richest and most powerful people of African descent on the entire planet. We have ten times the income on average of the typical Nigerian. There’s an enormous Black middle class and Black billionaires. Woke racialism claims the American Dream doesn’t apply to Blacks, which is a patronizing lie that robs us of agency and authenticity and self-determination and dignity. It doesn’t acknowledge that we possess the ability to rise to meet our challenges and carry the torch of freedom.
How Heterodox Academy Hopes to Change the Campus Conversation
For The Chronicle of Higher Education, Tom Bartlett writes about Heterodox Academy’s new program that will provide support for a network of groups on college campuses to further the organization’s mission of promoting “open inquiry, viewpoint diversity, and constructive disagreement.”
What exactly that means, and what influence those groups will have, remains to be seen, but the program is an attempt by Heterodox to exert its influence at a more grassroots level. Founded in 2015, Heterodox, which now has more than 5,000 members, including professors, educators, administrators, and students, began as a response to what its founders saw as a growing tendency on campuses to quash dissent and shy away from controversial topics. In the years since, the conversation about how to navigate potentially offensive topics — and how to balance the concerns of students with a commitment to academic freedom — has, if anything, only become more combustible.
Rage Against the Machine
For his Substack, Limits and Hope, FAIR’s DC chapter leader Renaud Beauchard writes a review of Wendell Berry's The Need to Be Whole.
The association between wholeness and the love of a place is at the heart of Berry’s decisive contribution to our national conversation about race in his new book; The Need to Be Whole, Patriotism and the History of Prejudice. In his characteristically prophetic style, Berry delivers a message of biblical simplicity: black and white Americans will remain estranged so long as our lives remain enslaved by an economy which forbids the love of a place and rewards abusing the land and our fellow human beings. But despite an entire economic organization of our society built on rootlessness and the relentless destruction of communities, we must continue to hope, because “[l]ove of country is not yet a possibility foreclosed.”
How DEI Is Supplanting Truth as the Mission of American Universities
For The Free Press, John Sailer, a fellow at the National Association of Scholars, writes about how our obsession with Diversity, Equity and Inclusion threatens students, professors, and the very credibility of higher education in the U.S.
The principles commonly known as “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) are meant to sound like a promise to provide welcome and opportunity to all on campus. And to the ordinary American, those values sound virtuous and unobjectionable.
But many working in academia increasingly understand that they instead imply a set of controversial political and social views. And that in order to advance in their careers, they must demonstrate fealty to vague and ever-expanding DEI demands and to the people who enforce them. Failing to comply, or expressing doubt or concern, means risking career ruin.
In a short time, DEI imperatives have spawned a growing bureaucracy that holds enormous power within universities. The ranks of DEI vice presidents, deans, and officers are ever-growing—Princeton has more than 70 administrators devoted to DEI; Ohio State has 132. They now take part in dictating things like hiring, promotion, tenure, and research funding.
Want to help advance civil rights and liberties for all, and promote a common culture based on fairness, understanding, and humanity? Sign up for a free subscription today!
FAIR News Podcast
For audio versions of our FAIR News and FAIR Weekly Roundup newsletters, subscribe and listen to FAIR News Weekly on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or via RSS feed.
Join the FAIR Community
Become a FAIR volunteer or to join a FAIR chapter.
Join a Welcome to FAIR Zoom information session to learn more about our mission, or watch a previously recorded session in the Members section of www.fairforall.org.
Take the Pro-Human Pledge and help promote a common culture based on fairness, understanding, and humanity.
Support FAIR and the pro-human movement with a tax-deductible donation.
Share your reviews and inform our legal team of incidents on our FAIR Transparency website.