Unsurprisingly, the requirement dates back to 2020, when The Great Stupid spread its dark wings across the land, aided and abetted by the dual disasters of the weaponized Wuhan virus pandemic and the George Floyd Freakout. Student organizations began participating in “anti-racist training” through two required workshops titled “Foundational Anti-racism Training” and “How To Create An Inclusive Anti-racism Action Plan.”
Today the required training is administered by Mount Holyoke’s Office of Community and Belonging. (That title: Gag me with a spoon…) Its mission is to foster “a sense of belonging and connectedness for all students by providing services that promote social justice, liberatory consciousness, and identity exploration.” (“Liberatory”? Where’s that wood-chipper?)
In addition to the Office of Community and Belonging, Mount Holyoke maintains a separate Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. Of course it does.
“As an outcome of these training sessions, student groups will be creating anti-racist plans for their organization,” the college states. “Many groups have begun to create plans, but it is important for this work to be ongoing and for rising group leaders to have the opportunity to participate in training and bring ideas back to their group.”
All I have left after these gut-punches are futile questions. How can parents allow their offspring and their tender young minds to attend such brain-washing camps? How did we allow colleges and universities to be co-opted by these totalitarians? How much destruction will they wreak on the nation and its core principles before they are stopped, or can they be stopped?
I have had several personal experiences with close friends who left the then free thought committed community of Arlington, Mass. for that nest of radical ideology up north, and witnessed my friends’ return four-years later with hollowed out skulls, vacant eyes and anti-American sensibilities. Naively, I thought it was just them.
Ethics Alarms 
Anti-racism isn’t.
“one of the cluster of woke private colleges in northern Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont along with Amherst, Williams, Smith, Wellesley, Dartmouth and Bennington.”
Did someone forget about Middlebury?
-Jut
Yup. And I was certain I had forgotten one….
What sort of anti-racist plan would a chess club even have?
In all seriousness, past a certain point inclusiveness measures make a space more racist, not less.
If someone struggles to participate in a group and needs encouragement, I respect and support that. If someone needs accommodations in order to participate, that’s fine with me as long as it doesn’t limit the purpose of the group for others too much.
If there’s someone nobody else is allowed to challenge, question, or critique, though, then to me that means I’m not allowed to treat them as a full person. And if they don’t bear responsibility for their actions, then the system is infantilizing them.
I’d like to see students take this opportunity to deconstruct the dogma and show what real inclusiveness looks like.
I was going to say “Black gets to be white.” to force the microaggression into turn-based reparations.
“If someone struggles to participate in a group and needs encouragement, I respect and support that.”
Can you come up with a good faith argument that we should determine someone’s needs based on the color of their skin? Not asking as a gotcha–I’m truly curious if one can be made, and I can’t think of one. The one that would likely be made by someone desperate to make the argument would likely be refuted by the below:
I’ve said this before (maybe not here) but I’ll say it again. “Inclusiveness” or any type of critical theories like intersectionality are fundamentally flawed, as perfectly displayed by Michael Scott on the first or second season of The Office.
For an in-office basketball game, Michael chooses the old, grossly overweight Stanley for his team, because he’s black. Michael is very surprised when old, slow, overweight Stanley is bad at basketball.
This is how dumb people think, and Michael shows us why. If you had a random high school roster that showed only gender and race and had to create a basketball team, you’d be smart to choose a team made up of black boys. They are, statistically speaking, much more likely to be good at basketball than other races. But you will NEVER be in that position. We never have to make decisions based on just one characteristic of a person when that characteristic is unrelated to the goal of the choice. There will always be indicators that are 100x better for predicting results than skin color.
“If there’s someone nobody else is allowed to challenge, question, or critique, though, then to me that means I’m not allowed to treat them as a full person. “
I would suggest that if there is someone that no one is permitted to challenge, question or critique then it would mean that you have lost your ability to be a full person; not them. This is no different then demanding minorities treat you with deference because you are a superior being. It is the hallmark of racism and the mere fact that such challenges, questioning or critiques can jeopardize your economic or social well being means that the minority possesses power to control and power over others is one of the criteria minorities use to claim racism.
As a parent with a child in middle school, I worry greatly about what to do. She wants to become a chemist and while I generally support that, I wish she wanted to be an electrician instead. I don’t want her exposed to the crazy that is college anymore. I’m choosing not to even think about the younger ones yet.
My family and especially in-laws laugh that I am too overprotective and that kids will be fine in college. We were after all. I occasionally send them to your articles, Jack, so they can see what I’m talking about. They are mainly still in denial.
You might consider University of Austin or Hillsdale College in Michigan.
I’m pretty sure those are not woke.
Also, I would be really curious if anyone has firsthand knowledge of Wayland Baptist University in Plainview Texas. I’ve no actual experience of their work since 1987, but they talk a good game.
…and I believe Hillsdale accepts no government funds of any kind.
I’m a Smith grad and as a freshman I had to complete required anti-bias/racist/classist training to be able to register for classes. And then I had to do it every year after because I was involved in our housing system governance structure. I was a freshman in the early 1990s.
I’m disgusted but not surprised. The first great love of my life, a smart, funny, level-headed young woman with dynamism and principles, returned from four years at Smith as a pot-smoking,commune-dwelling Marxist and man-hating feminist who spouted slogans instead of ideas and who was offended at everything I said, even “Go Red Sox!” Based on her social media footprint, she never recovered.
THAT’s depressing! And she never got over it. Ugh.
And greetings from Exeter, New Hampshire. Back in the belly of the beast. Still glad we departed New England fifty-two years ago for points south and west.
Just had our Wellesley grad friend tell us how poor Anthony Fauci had to take the Fifth because it was the only thing he could do.
Well, if he was going to lie, that’s correct.
Most organizations learn the right words and phrases to incorporate to evade the thought police.
Usually something like proposed outreach to other races with marketing content to back it up are enough to keep the leftwing admins at bay.
The fact this exists in so many places without a single critical thought of how racist it is makes it dangerous and worrisome.