From the New York Times:
After Racist Episodes, Blunt Discussions on Campus
By JOHN ELIGON FEB. 3, 2016 385 COMMENTS
Scott N. Brooks, draped in a dapper shawl-collar sweater, looked out on the auditorium of mostly white students in puffy coats and sweats as they silently squirmed at his question. Why, he had asked, does Maria Sharapova, a white Russian tennis player, earn nearly twice as much in endorsements as Serena Williams, an African-American with a much better win-loss record?
Because Sharapova’s prettier, has blondish hair and longer, thinner legs? Because female consumers more want to buy stuff that holds out the promise that they’ll look more like Sharapova than Serena?
“We like to think it’s all about merit,” said Dr. Brooks, a sociology professor at the University of Missouri, speaking in the casual cadence of his days as a nightclub D.J. “It’s sport. Simply, the best should earn the most money.”
Or maybe the most money should go to the athlete who takes fewer artificial male hormones?
In any case, only two women make the Forbes top 100 highest paid athletes. Serena makes $13 million per year in endorsements, which is only half of Sharapova’s $26 million, but a lot more than most other female athletes. On the other hand, Serena makes about twice what quarterback Tom Brady, who has won four Super Bowls, makes in endorsements, and she makes more than ten times what Clayton Kershaw, the best baseball pitcher of the 2010s, makes in endorsements.
In the current Forbes list, the top five beneficiaries of endorsees are Roger Federer (white), Tiger Woods (caublinasian), Phil Mickelson (white), LeBron James (black), and Kevin Durant (black). Blacks would seem to do fine overall.
If you want to get it into the details, black men seem to do extremely well from endorsements, black women less so. Could this have something to do with blacks being more masculine on average?
Fortunately, college students know enough not to bring up suggestions like that. They know that if they just sit there with blank looks on their faces, eventually the racial haranguing will stop and they’ll be allowed to leave.
Maybe tennis is not as popular here as overseas, one student offered. Dr. Brooks countered: Ms. Williams is a global figure. As the room fell silent, the elephant settled in. Most sat still, eyes transfixed on the stage. None of the participants — roughly 70 students new to the University of Missouri — dared to offer the reason for the disparity that seemed most obvious. Race.
The new frontier in the university’s eternal struggle with race starts here, with blunt conversations that seek to bridge a stark campus divide. Yet what was evident in this pregnant moment during a new diversity session that the university is requiring of all new students was this: People just don’t want to discuss it.
The racist episodes that rocked the Missouri campus last fall, leading to resignations by its president and chancellor, set administrators here and around the country on frantic course correction efforts. They have held town halls to hear students’ complaints, convened task forces to study campus climates, adjusted recruiting strategies and put in place new sessions on implicit bias and diversity, like the one Dr. Brooks spoke at, held in mid-January.
More an introduction to the diversity on campus than an instruction manual for navigating it, the session featured eight professors who spoke about their teaching and research that related to race and culture. One presented a campus survey showing how Missouri students’ attitudes broke down based on their race (for instance, about 63 percent of black students identified as liberal, while only 38 percent of whites did). Another discussed myths about Islam and offered a few surprising facts (the country’s oldest mosque is in Cedar Rapids, Iowa). Yet another talked about cultural appropriation (Mexican-themed costume parties can be offensive).
And then there was Dr. Brooks, a 43-year-old African-American who teaches “Race and Ethnic Relations” and challenged the students to think about race through the prism of sports. He offered a gentle explanation of the Williams/Sharapova discrepancy: “Maria is considered a beauty queen, but by what standards of beauty? Some people might just say, ‘Oh, well, she’s just prettier.’ Well, according to whom? This spells out how we see beauty in terms of race, this idea of femininity. Serena is often spoofed for her big butt. She’s seen as too muscular.”
Here’s the most popular comment on this article:
Dave Boz Phoenix AZ 18 hours ago
The anti-intellectual nature of this browbeating session is disgusting in any setting, but especially in a university. It is obvious that this is not a “discussion” but a demand to submit to a correct set of opinions and answers. The facile and unsupported notion that a black athlete can only receive fewer endorsement offers because of racism is just one of the ill-thought out examples that indicate that this not a learning but an indoctrination session. The students know that they’d better not try to have a “discussion” or the browbeating will get worse. This is not a session or an environment for the purpose of learning; it is to make the students submissive and to encourage them to adopt the university’s approved thought process: “Submit. Conform. Obey.”196 Recommended
COMMENTS:
* And then there was Dr. Brooks, a 43-year-old African-American who teaches “Race and Ethnic Relations”…He offered a gentle explanation of the Williams/Sharapova discrepancy: “Maria is considered a beauty queen, but by what standards of beauty? Some people might just say, ‘Oh, well, she’s just prettier.’ Well, according to whom? This spells out how we see beauty in terms of race, this idea of femininity. Serena is often spoofed for her big butt. She’s seen as too muscular.”
I think Dr. Brooks should be forced to hand over his personal computer to analyze what kind of pr0n he has on it. I’m wagering most of the women (assuming it’s not gay pr0n, which may be a generous assumption) look more like Sharapova (both in terms body type and skin color) and a lot less like Williams.
* Getting past the 2 Minute Hate imposed on incoming Mizzou students, some more interesting data:
“Since 1980, the percentage of blacks and Hispanics among those attending higher education institutions has more than doubled, from 13 percent to 28 percent in 2014, while the white population has dipped to about 52 percent from 84.”
52 + 28 = 100, right?
What are the other 20% of students, if they aren’t white, black, or Hispanic, and why isn’t their race mentioned? Why isn’t a nearly 40% decline in white enrollment any sort of problem at all?
“The four-year graduation rate for black students who started college in 2007 was 21 percent, a mere 1 percentage point higher than for the 1996 cohort. (At the same time, the rate for white students went up 7 percentage points, to 43 percent.)”
One in five black students who starts at Mizzou manages to graduate within four years. How many graduate within five years? Within six years? What percentage fail to ever graduate at all?
* There is currently a link on the NY Times front page (“Insider” section) to this article:
http://www.vox.com/2016/2/3/10905466/gifted-black-students
If you exclude a priori (because your world view does not permit it) the possibility that fewer blacks are selected for gifted programs because there are fewer (intellectually) gifted blacks, then the only remaining explanation is racism. If on the other hand, blacks dominate certain sports and whites are scarce, this is because of the overwhelming talent of blacks even in the face of the racism that holds them back.
So the whole deal is sort of a Catch-22, heads I win, tails you lose setup . You bring the whites to a struggle session and you dare them to say that blacks in general are less attractive or intelligent or whatever. If they are dumb enough to take the bait (and most aren’t) then you can brand them as racists. If they sit mutely, you can “explain” to them that they are racists anyway. Like all witch trials, the outcome is predetermined and anything the accused (in this case the entire white race) does is taken as evidence of guilt either way.
* According to the government 75% of the students at Mizzou score above 23 on the ACT.
The average ACT score for blacks in Missouri is 17. This is why only 20% of blacks at Mizzou graduate within 4 years.
The media makes the lack of diversity or low minority grad rates to be some mysterious thing or act of vicious racism. When the reality is that blacks don’t have the intellectual chops to compete at this high a level.
* In the comment section in the Atlantic article about this study, people pointed out that the researchers minimized the test scores of black students and focused on more subjective criteria for gifted ability.
* Why do Jews and Asians do better than non-Jewish whites?
What’s the appropriate response to that question that doesn’t apply to whites vs. blacks & Hispanics?
If the accuser says Jews and Asians have a better/stronger culture than whites, then that explanation can apply to whites vs. blacks. Given the insanely high rate of black illegitimacy that explanation, correct or not, certainly has teeth.
One thing is for certain: the accuser won’t claim that Jews and Asians discriminate against everyone else, and he/she/zhe/zher/it definitely won’t claim that Jews and Asians have better genes.
* “…the repugnant racist expressions that sparked last fall’s protests…”
They were fabrications. The media continues to cite them as if they actually occurred. Consumers know otherwise. At this rate the school will be shuttered within 10 years. We are witnessing death by race hoax, a symptom of The Antioch Syndrome, whereby liberal institutions succumb to their own promotion of anti-establishment agitation.
And it’s funny as hell.
* Maybe it has something to do with Serena looking like a middle linebacker. Just spitballing.
* Is every cultural battle really just a way that poor Jewish girls can get other people mad at the hot blonds who steal Jewish men away from them?
* Well we’re no longer allowed to argue that there is such a thing as objective beauty or objective aesthetics.
And we’re similarly no longer allowed to argue there is anything as masculine or feminine.
As Steve has noted, we’ve lost the vocabulary to explain why certain ideas are nonsense. As such, nonsense becomes the rule.
1984 was so prescient about language. Orwell’s greatness grows larger by the day.
* Because the elites don’t recognize (or don’t want to recognize) the idea of objective beauty—or that beauty is a good that is very pleasing and very valuable—-they have to complain/wonder why the prettier girl is rewarded more than the ugly one.
If the elites could just admit that women are ornaments while men are appliances, much of their consternation would evaporate.
* I would also add, to my knowledge, Sharapova has never uttered these words at a lineswoman:
“I’ll f-ing take this ball and shove it down your f-ing throat!”
* This Catch-22 is identical to the one in Corporate America, the difference being that (largely) 18-year-olds lack the background to recognize Reeducation Camp 101.
I vividly recall being required to attend a similar harangue as a J&J employee at a sales meeting, administered by a female lawyer. Paradoxically, the room was over 50% women and “minorities” were over-represented significantly compared to their percentage of the population as a whole, much less the population of college grads (given that a college degree was a hiring requirement.)
This was 17 years ago. We white males already knew enough to keep our mouths shut then. Our kids surely know it now.
The difference today? I can’t be fired for crimethink.
* “Submit. Conform. Obey.”
Translate that into Latin, and it would make a nice motto for some institution of higher learning today. The Latin translation, apart from oozing class, also has the great advantage that most people wouldn’t know what the words mean.
* I used to bristle at all this reeducation camp BS (especially the white privilege, “white males get to do life on the easiest setting,” etc.)
Now I just laugh.
There are millions of people who are smarter than I am. I respect that talent. Often, the people who before and today contribute the most to my comfortable living standard were drawn from this cohort, so I’m grateful to them. It does not remotely occur to me to resent them.
To those who resent me (and mine) and covet the benefits reality showers on us simply because our parents’ genes conferred a fast track to success, I can only say, “Too bad, so sad. It must suck to marinate your entire life in the realization that you were late in line at the genetic store.”
My white privilege is nothing but high intelligence and low time preference, characteristics largely dependent upon DNA. Those who attack this attack me at the cellular level, which is to say they clearly wish to exterminate what makes me, ME.
If this isn’t war, what is?
* “Scott N. Brooks, draped in a dapper shawl-collar sweater, looked out on the auditorium of mostly white students in puffy coats and sweats as they silently squirmed at his question.”
Yeah, we get it. Sharp-dressed fashion-plate black man. Grubby white-trash students.
Subtle.
Brooks, like all race-studies professors, is a fraud. He has phony degrees in phony subjects – credentials that qualify him as a peddler of bullshit. He is a state certified ju-ju man in the field of race/class/gender witchdoctory.
* One of the emeritus faculty members at the Mizzou sociology department is named “Andrew Twaddle”. Hard to imagine a more fitting name for a sociologist.
