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August 1, 2020

Seattle is apparently implementing Maoist training for white employees

By Andrea Widburg

There’s a new Jim Crow afoot in America. Once again, it’s coming from the Democrats, but this time, instead of pitting whites against blacks, it’s pitting blacks against whites. Beleaguered white people technically have the Civil Rights Act of 1964 at their back but, in the witch hunt atmosphere currently prevailing in America, it’s unclear whether they’ll have the courage to use it.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 doesn’t mince words. It exists to outlaw discrimination based upon a person’s race, color, religion, sex, or country of national origin. It explicitly expands these protections to employment programs. Under  Title VII,

It shall be an unlawful employment practice for any employer, labor organization, or joint labor-management committee controlling apprenticeship or other training or retraining, including on-the-job training programs to discriminate against any individual because of his race, color, religion, sex, or national origin in admission to, or employment in, any program established to provide apprenticeship or other training. (42 U.S. Code §2000e-2(d).)

The City of Seattle has put a program in place for its 10,000 employees. There are special whites-only aspects of the program. In the “white only” portions of the program, whites must admit that they are racist (and, presumably, any refusal is more proof of racism), and then they must have that racism trained out of them.

Christopher Rufo has obtained the materials for the segregated “whites only” training. Trying to summarize the material falls far short of showing the immensity of this Title VII violation, so I’ve embedded all of the tweets below.

The only question remaining after reading this series of tweets is whether any of the employees will sue. It’s entirely possible that, because they’re Seattle residents, and therefore presumptively leftists, all will meekly accept this Maoist indoctrination that requires them first to confess their sins and then to submit to “re-education.”

Today's cancel culture no longer simply disagrees with people who do not want to get with the program. Instead, at the workplace, it forces people into training with the implied threat that their jobs are at stake.

In the public sphere, the cancelation threat isn’t implied, it’s open. Take, for example, Louisville, Kentucky:

Businesses and non-profits in the East Market District of downtown Louisville, also referred to as NuLu (New Louisville), have received letters from left-wing activists demanding that they give in to a list of racial reparations or face having their businesses get negative reviews online.

The demands are financially onerous. They impose hiring, buying, and training decisions on the threatened businesses.

Academia is especially toxic. Colin Wright writes about the concerted activity to destroy his ability to get a job in academia because he sinned against leftist orthodoxies when he insisted that sex is biologically determined and cannot magically change. It’s not just frightening that the scientific and academic world accept the unhinged notion that sex is a cultural construct. It’s equally unnerving that, in this Brave New World, nobodies have appointed themselves as gatekeepers who stir up the mob:

Earlier this year, on February 22nd, I tweeted out a Guardian article titled, “Teenage transgender row splits Sweden as dysphoria diagnoses soar by 1,500%,” accompanied by my own two-word commentary: “social contagion.” My tweet would have made sense to those familiar with the work of Brown University academic Lisa Littman, and particularly her scientific paper hypothesizing links between “rapid onset gender dysphoria” (ROGD) and peer contagion within cliques of teenage girls. However, activists were able to contort my comment in a way that suggested I was targeting the children themselves or suggesting gender dysphoria was akin to a virus. Knowing I was on the job market, a Michigan State University graduate student (and president of the Graduate Employees Union) named Kevin Bird accused me of “spreading disgusting transphobic pseudoscience.” Unlike other critics, Bird didn’t even pretend to be motivated by anything other than a desire to deny me employment in my field.

 

Bird himself offers an interesting case study, because his example illustrates how even a single ideologically radicalized troll can present the appearance of a grass-roots campaign. If Bird’s name sounds familiar, it’s because he is the same activist who led a campaign against his own university’s senior vice president of research and innovation, theoretical physicist Stephen Hsu. Bird has no particular distinction in his academic field, has tweeted support for burning banks, and is on record stating that he has no “interest in attaining or discovering truth” when he does science. But he also has worked tirelessly to build up his online stature as a cancel-culture enforcer and a warrior “against fascism.” As such, he has been able to mobilize flash mobs of online trolls to aid in his deplatforming efforts—which is why Hsu was forced to resign his VP position despite the spurious nature of Bird’s racism accusations.

It is long past time for someone to stand atop this monstrosity and holler “Stop!” I take that back. Although one person hollering is not enough. A society cannot tolerate this madness, and majority action is the fastest way to end it. We must all holler.

Image: Twitter screengrab

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