social justice

On The Bright Side, At Least This Esteemed Journalism Professor Doesn’t Deny Bias…

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

This is three years old—the numbers are much worse for journalists now. And rightly so…

He celebrates it!

Stanford Communications Professor Emeritus Ted Glasser, in an interview with The Stanford Daily, asserts that objectivity is an impediment to good journalism. The profession, he said, must “free itself from this notion of objectivity to develop a sense of social justice.”  Instead, of objective reporters of events and facts to be then used by the publlic to make their own decisions and come to their own opinions. Glasser sees “journalists as activists because journalism at its best — and indeed history at its best — is all about morality…Journalists need to be overt and candid advocates for social justice, and it’s hard to do that under the constraints of objectivity.”

Yes, a veteran journalism professor actually believes that, openly admits it, and presumably has been teaching that to journalism students all these years.

It would strain credulity and chance to think he was alone in this approach, especially the way our current journalistic establishment behaves. Bolstering my confidence that Glasser is not an anomaly was Wesley Lowery,  an African-American journalist who has been a reporter with the LA Times, CBS News, and currently CNN (what a surprise!).   In a tweet, Lowery declared “American view-from-nowhere, “objectivity”-obsessed, both-sides journalism is a failed experiment…The old way must go. We need to rebuild our industry as one that operates from a place of moral clarity.”

Let me be clear. Since objectivity and the absence of bias are the very foundation of journalism ethics, the positions of Glasser and Lowery (and, I would guess, the majority of American journalists who may not be as candid, self-righteous and arrogant as them) would remove journalism from the ranks of professions, which all have defining ethical mandates designed to make them trustworthy. For a journalist, or worse, a journalism professor, to hold that it should be the objective of journalists to decide what to report and how to report it according to their own ideological objectives based on their personal interpretation of “morality” is a rejection of journalism and an endorsement of  the role of propagandist, which is the antithesis of ethical journalism. Continue reading →

KABOOM! (This Is What President Trump Will be Running Against, Make No Mistake…)

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

The above excerpt  is from “Is Everyone Really Equal? An Introduction to Key Concepts in Social Justice Education” by Özlem Sensoy and Robin DiAngelo. Apparently it has won awards, though I suspect not for what I would give it an award for. Here’s the description:

This is the new edition of the award-winning guide to social justice education. Based on the authors’ extensive experience in a range of settings in the United States and Canada, the book addresses the most common stumbling blocks to understanding social justice. This comprehensive resource includes new features such as a chapter on intersectionality and classism; discussion of contemporary activism (Black Lives Matter, Occupy, and Idle No More); material on White Settler societies and colonialism; pedagogical supports related to “common social patterns” and “vocabulary to practice using”; and extensive updates throughout. Accessible to students from high school through graduate school, Is Everyone Really Equal? is a detailed and engaging textbook and professional development resource presenting the key concepts in social justice education. The text includes many user-friendly features, examples, and vignettes to not just define but illustrate the concepts. Book Features: Definition Boxes that define key terms. Stop Boxes to remind readers of previously explained ideas. Perspective Check Boxes to draw attention to alternative standpoints. Discussion Questions and Extension Activities for using the book in a class, workshop, or study group. A Glossary of terms and guide to language use.

Continue reading →

Your Ethics Reading Assignment: “The Cost Of America’s Cultural Revolution”

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

I swear, when I wrote the recent post about the lawsuit against the use of the standard college admissions tests, I had not read nor was even aware of Heather MacDonald’s superb essay on the topic of the manipulation of higher education in pursuit of ideological domination. (Thanks and gratitude to Instapundit for the timely link.)

Here is a taste:

The social-justice diversity bureaucracy has constructed a perpetual-motion machine that guarantees it eternal life. Minority students who have been catapulted by racial preferences into schools for which they are not academically prepared frequently struggle in their classes. The cause of those struggles, according to the social-justice diversity bureaucracy, is not academic mismatch; it is the lack of a critical mass of other minority students and faculty to provide refuge from the school’s overwhelming bigotry. And so, the school admits more minority students to create such a critical mass. Rather than raising minority performance, however, this new influx of diverse students lowers it, since the school has had to dig deeper into the applicant pool. The academic struggles and alienation of minority students will increase, along with the demand for more diversity bureaucrats, more segregated safe spaces, more victimology courses, more mental health workers, more diverse faculty, more lowered standards, and of course, more diversity student admits. And the cycle will start all over again.

And another…

The ultimate social-justice solution to the skills and behavior gap is to remove the competition entirely. From the moment children enter school, they are berated for their white heteronormative patriarchal privilege if they fall outside a favored victim group. Any success that they enjoy is not due to their own efforts, they are told; it is due, rather, to the unfair advantages of a system deliberately designed to handicap minorities. Teachers are now advised to ignore white male students, since asking or answering questions in class is another mark of male supremacy.

Please read it all, here.

There will be a quiz.

What Is The Ethical Response To The Racially Unbalanced Admissions To New York City’s Elite High Schools?

/ Jack Marshall / 41 Comments

The question has been giving me a headache since I first read about the stunning results of the process that gives New York City students access to its elite public schools.  Of the nearly 4,800 students admitted into the specialized schools for 2019, 190 are black, down from  207 black students admitted last year out of just over 5,000 offers. Stuyvesant high school, which is representative, gave 7 offers to black students (out of 895 slots),   33 offers to Hispanic students, 194 offers to white students, and Asian-American students received a whopping  587 offers. Overall, Asian-American students constitute 60% of the student bodies of the eight elite schools.

Students take  a single exam that tests their mastery of math and English in order to gains entrance to the academically challenging school. Stuyvesant, which has the highest cutoff score for admission and is thus the most selective of the schools, now has the lowest percentage of black and Hispanic students of any of New York City’s roughly 600 public high schools.

What should the city do about this? Should it do anything?  Continue reading →

This Is How Officials Like Mayor De Blasio Think: Unethically, But They Mean Well

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

Never mind that the always dubious logic behind educational quotas and affirmative action is finally being exposed and discredited: New York’s socialist-in-all-but-name Mayor de Blasio is determined to have the city’s elite public schools “look like New York City,” which is code for “quotas.”

“The status quo is broken. We have to make a major change. We have to make sure that the very best high schools are open to every New Yorker, every kind of New Yorker. They need to look like New York City,” he has said. So he has announced a proposal that would change how students are admitted to eight of the city’s specialized high schools, the crown jewels of NYC’s school system, the equivalents of private schools in quality of teachers and challenging curriculum where students gain entry based on their performance on a single test, taken by all applicants. That seems fair…but since it doesn’t yield a perfect demographic match to the city as a whole, de Blasio’s social justice sensibilities are offended.

Black and Hispanic students make up 67 % of the public school population, but the specialized high schools, which include Stuyvesant High School and the Bronx High School of Science, have just 10 % of students from these groups occupying the 500  available slots, with no improvement in that percentage for years.

Ah! The test must be the problem! This has been the accepted, conventional wisdom and cant that has been repeated by Democrats and affirmative action activists for decades, despite little but blind faith to bolster it. The Mayor, of course, is a believer. Continue reading →

Comment Of The Day: “Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 3/22/18: Nanoo Nanoo, And The Oxford Comma”[Item #3]

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Observations:

1. I love it when I am out of the office all day and return to find that my desperately rushed post in the morning spawned multiple donnybrooks.

2.  If this were baseball, Mrs. Q would be leading the Ethics Alarms League in batting average. Her Comment of the Day/Comments average leads the pack.

3. This quote…

“If someone were to ask me “what do you want most from our society today?” I’d answer, to have people mind their own business, not assume I’m needing a leg up, and honor those who honor family, faith, and free thought.”

…is as smart, powerful and profound a statement as any that have appeared on Ethics Alarms in nine years.

Here is Mrs. Q’s Comment of the Day on #3 in the post, Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 3/22/18: Nanoo Nanoo, And The Oxford Comma: 

How do we as a society make things more fair for a variety of minorities, based on a history of unnecessary biases?

I don’t think it’s possible to make everything equal for everyone forever and always. It’s a nice idea but I’m called to remember the book “The Lathe of Heaven” where the therapist manipulates his patient into “making the world a better place” with disastrous results. For example in trying to solve overpopulation, millions die. In another, an attempt at solving racism turns everyone grey.

The song by Tears for Fears, “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” highlights another dilemma in attempting to make things as we wish:

“All for freedom and for pleasure
Nothing ever lasts forever”

There is simply no way to obliterate prejudice. There will always be poor folks, enslaved folks, downtrodden folks, and people who get treated like crap for one reason or another. Obviously this doesn’t mean we stop caring or making effort to be kinder people, which includes examining institutional racism, homophobia, etc. However any “peace” we make won’t last in the next generation or the one after that because some other disparity will always present itself. This is the way of life and the evidence of history from the Egyptians to the Jews to women today being trafficked. So how do we balance the scales for minorities here in the US? Continue reading →

Indoctrination Begins Early At Yale

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

From the Yale admissions blog:

“Will we get rescinded if we get suspended for engaging in a school walk-out to bring attention to the school shooting issue?”

In the week since the tragic mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, something incredible has begun to happen. High school students in Parkland and beyond are stepping up in a refusal to allow the issue of gun control fade from the public eye. Peaceful protests around the nation have begun to echo those in Florida. Included in these demonstrations are a number of school walkouts that have been scheduled over the next several weeks.

Some schools have indicated that students who disrupt class time by participating in such walkouts will face disciplinary action, potentially including suspension. Some, in hopes of discouraging participation, have warned their students that such disciplinary action may negatively affect their college admissions decisions. And so, over the past few days, we continue to get the question: will Yale look unfavorably upon discipline resulting from peaceful demonstrations?

The answer is simple: Of course not.”

Of course not? Why “of course not”? Because Yale as an institution favors the weakening or elimination of the Second Amendment? Because naturally Yale favors students who demonstrate for issues on the progressive agenda? What if the question was,

“Will we get rescinded if we get suspended for engaging in a school walk-out to bring attention to the unethical practice of removing statues of Confederate figures?”

or Continue reading →

Comment Of The Day: “Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) Ethics”

/ Jack Marshall / 33 Comments

I am very grateful for veteran commenter Extradimensional Cephalopod clarifying explanation regarding how and why adversaries on the “dreamer” issue so often talk past and around each other, with never the twain meeting. The first I heard of the “Honor vs. Compassion schism” was in this 2009 essay in The New Criterion by James Bowman. I should have referenced it before. He wrote in part,

Compassion is a virtue, but it is a private, a face-to-face virtue which almost invariably ceases to be one when it takes on a public dimension. An act of compassion by a government, in the full glare of publicity, is not a virtue but a bid to be given credit for moral superiority.

Bingo.

Here is Extradimensional Cephalopod‘s Comment of the Day on the post,Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) Ethics:

It’s a classic honor versus compassion schism. Honor represents orderly good, enforcing consistency and stability so that society may benefit from people knowing where they stand. Compassion represents chaotic good, making exceptions and doing things that cannot be expected or required so that society can benefit from such kindness. Both are necessary, but they must be balanced against each other.

Because your position is based on honor, and makes sense in that context, it’s impossible for people to rebut it in those terms. Instead, they assert that the harm allowed by not extending compassion outweighs the benefits provided by honor, or they reject the concept of honor entirely. They don’t really understand honor or the harm done by dismantling it. Maybe they never noticed the benefits of honor, and only saw its negative effects, or they were oppressed by an ill-conceived brand of honor. Continue reading →

Occupy Wall Street: “This Is What We Want!” Finally! Oh…THAT.

/ Jack Marshall / 41 Comments

Time to stop wasting our time.

After more than a month of demonstrations that have cost millions, deflected local governments from vital matters, inconvenienced and clogged cities across the country, invigorated anarchists, communists, fascists, free-loaders and loonies, suckered desperate Democrats into declaring common cause with a mob, and exposed the worst of Left-wing punditry as the embarrassing demagoguery society that it is…and after well-intentioned demonstrators have been robbed, arrested, and injured…the Occupy” movement finally is finally ready to declare what it wants.

It’s about time. Large-scale demonstrations to express “frustration” are the advocacy equivalent of humming, or maybe belching: speak clearly, or get off the street.  On October 9, Ethics Alarms described the Occupy Wall Street demonstration, in the context of pointing out the friendly mainstream media embrace of a left-ish, anti-capitalist mob in contrast to its open contempt for the peaceful, focused and conservative Tea Party, as “incoherently chanting anarchists, radicals and unemployed youths…advocating nothing constructive whatsoever.” Many of the site’s distinguished readers objected to that characterization, with one, blogger Jeff Field,  promising to produce an articulation of what the protest really wants to accomplish. Today he fulfilled that promise by sending me a statement by an “Occupy” supporting group, with his introduction, “This is what we want.” I am genuinely grateful to Jeff…especially since it shows that I was correct in my assessment, however harsh. Continue reading →