It should probably go without saying at this point, but we're going to say it anyway: Scratch a radical progressive, find a racist. It's practically a law of nature now. And it can be applied seemingly constantly.
That's definitely the case for a growing number of colleges and universities. Actually, there aren't too many colleges and universities left that haven't been completely taken over by a coalition of radical progressives who commit multiple acts of racism in the name of antiracism.
And that brings us to New York University, where, as the Washington Free Beacon's Aaron Sibarium reports, antiracist progressives have been up to some pretty racist stuff:
NEW: NYU hosted a whites-only "anti-racism" workshop for public school parents in New York City, barring minorities from a five-months-long seminar that legal experts say was a brazen violation of civil rights law.
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) July 11, 2023
We have audio and video. 🧵https://t.co/PiFqBv4cqh
The all-white seminar, "From Integration to Anti-Racism," cost $360 to attend and met six times between February and June, according to a description of the program that has since been scrubbed from the university’s website without explanation. https://t.co/PSiSklfmbg
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) July 11, 2023
$360 a person? Damn. The antiracism racket is a lucrative one! If we were racist grifters, we'd seriously consider getting in on that action.
But we digress:
Organized by NYU’s Steinhardt School of Education, the workshop was "designed specifically for white public school parents" committed to "becoming anti-racist" and building "multiracial parent communities."
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) July 11, 2023
Organized by NYU’s Steinhardt School of Education, the workshop was "designed specifically for white public school parents" committed to "becoming anti-racist" and building "multiracial parent communities."
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) July 11, 2023
Recommended
Isn't it hard to build multiracial parent communities when the only parents allowed to attend the workshop are white?
But to promote solidarity with all races, participants were told, it was necessary that the seminar include only one.
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) July 11, 2023
A few days before session 1, facilitators circulated a short handout, "Why a White Space," to explain "why we are meeting as white folks for these six months."
The handout, produced by the nonprofit Alliance of White Anti-Racists Everywhere, argued that white people need spaces where they can "unlearn racism" without subjecting minorities to "undue trauma or pain." https://t.co/mCr2K7zCik
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) July 11, 2023
Facilitators reiterated this argument on day one of the seminar, audio and video of which was obtained by the Washington Free Beacon. You can listen to the entire session here: https://t.co/NzVQfbgVHX
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) July 11, 2023
When a parent questioned the premise of the workshop—saying it seemed "a little counterintuitive" to exclude minorities from an anti-racism seminar—Barbara Gross, the associate director of Steinhardt’s Education Justice Research group, assured her that it was for their own good.
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) July 11, 2023
Excluding minorities from a conversation about race "for their own good"? Yeah, that's not racist at all.
These effing people, man. We swear.
"People of color are dealing with racism all the time," Gross said. "Like every minute of every day. It’s a harm on top of a harm for them to hear our racist thoughts."
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) July 11, 2023
See for yourself: pic.twitter.com/XffX8szTij
Even before the Supreme Court outlawed affirmative action in college admissions, it was illegal for universities to practice other forms of race discrimination. The whites-only workshop, five lawyers said, almost certainly violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) July 11, 2023
And—since NYU charged parents for the seminars—it also ran afoul of laws banning discrimination in contracting, according to Dan Morenoff, the executive director of the American Civil Rights Project.
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) July 11, 2023
"It’s quintessentially illegal," said @ishapiro.
Sure sounds that way.
"This episode illustrates the horseshoe theory whereby left- and right-wing radicals end up agreeing on race-based societal balkanization. It’s like that social media meme: ‘woke or KKK?’"
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) July 11, 2023
The program took place while NYU was under an ongoing consent agreement with the U.S. Department of Education over a string of anti-Semitic incidents on campus. https://t.co/v9tUggOfy4
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) July 11, 2023
The seminar is a stark signal that "anti-racism" doesn’t just mean minority-only fellowships or workforce diversity targets; at one of the top universities in the country, it now includes programs that bear an eerie similarity to Jim Crow.
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) July 11, 2023
"They are literally running a ‘whites only’ program in the interest of so-called social justice," said Samantha Harris, an attorney who litigates campus speech and civil rights issues. "I find it inconceivable that the people putting these programs together don’t see the irony."
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) July 11, 2023
The seminar is a fascinating study of how one group of white liberals guilt-tripped and self-flagellated their way into segregation. Participants seemed petrified by the possibility that they could "harm" a person of color with a misplaced comment or anecdote.
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) July 11, 2023
Asked when they first "learned about race," one parent recalled how her black classmate in Kindergarten had been expelled for bringing a knife to school. Later in the session, she expressed relief that there had been no minorities around to hear such a traumatizing tale.
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) July 11, 2023
"I was so grateful that there weren’t, you know, people of color in this space to hear me say [that] my first experience learning about what my race was was a black boy with a knife," she said. "That can be harming." https://t.co/d5piXP5wgn
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) July 11, 2023
If your jaw hasn't hit the floor by now ...
As participants filed into the first meeting of the workshop, they were greeted by a rendition of Woody Guthrie’s "All You Fascists Bound to Lose" performed by the "Resistance Revival Chorus," a group of women and "non-binary singers" that "centers women in music."
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) July 11, 2023
After participants shared their pronouns—most of which were "she/her"—facilitators performed a brief land acknowledgment and laid out the ground rules for the session.
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) July 11, 2023
"Resist the urge to intellectualize," Gross said. pic.twitter.com/kCo51cfovJ
In what seemed like an effort at self-awareness, another facilitator, Courtney Epton, told participants to avoid virtue-signaling. "Trying to compete with each other to be the ‘good white person,’" she said, is itself a "part of white supremacy."
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) July 11, 2023
Epton—a "senior equity associate" at NYU Steinhardt and a board member of the nonprofit Integrated Schools—did not respond to a request for comment.
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) July 11, 2023
At least one parent in attendance, Jordan Feigenbaum, had direct say over the governance of local schools.
Feigenbaum serves on the Community Education Council for New York City’s District 13, an elected policy body that reviews school curricula and approves district zoning lines. He touted his participation in the program when he ran for office, saying the whites-only workshop would…
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) July 11, 2023
Feigenbaum—who described himself as an "ally" in his candidate statement—did not respond to a request for comment.https://t.co/pihtu87oWH
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) July 11, 2023
Gross indicated that the workshop began four years ago when she heard from white parents with kids in majority-black schools that they felt like "everyone hates me."
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) July 11, 2023
Since then, she said, the Black Lives Matter movement and the death of George Floyd had made those parents more concerned about systemic racism—and more guilty about their assumed role in it.
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) July 11, 2023
She spoke of anti-black bigotry as though it were a genetic condition, passed down biologically as well as socially. "What we know intellectually is very different from what’s in our bones and in our nervous systems," Gross said. "What we have internalized. What we have…
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) July 11, 2023
As a result, she added, "young African-American girls face 23 microaggressions every single day."
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) July 11, 2023
Instead of just wallowing in shame, however, Gross promised participants they would learn to "love [other] white people" in spite of their collective guilt.
Dear God.
The seminar also included a discussion of Tema Okun’s "Characteristics of White Supremacy Culture," which include "perfectionism," "a sense of urgency," and "worship of the written word."
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) July 11, 2023
Many parents struggled to reconcile these teachings with the day-to-day demands of their careers, taking the already thin line between parody and reality and smashing it altogether.
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) July 11, 2023
Every single parent in that workshop should never have been a part of it. And if they were dumb enough to sign up for it (the name should've been a dead giveaway of what they were in for), they should have left immediately upon entering the room and demanded their money back.
What an absolute nightmare cluster that workshop was.
Incredible https://t.co/oCMKjPsVTN
— Pradheep J. Shanker (@Neoavatara) July 11, 2023
The only thing more incredible than a whites-only antiracist workshop is that Aaron Sibarium's brain didn't completely melt while he was going over all this stuff. Ours would've been shooting out of our ears had we been in his position.
OK, that would actually be awesome. But without actual evidence to support it, we're stuck concluding that the workshop was put on by earnestly racist antiracists who desperately want to make racial segregation great again, again.
"Whites-only" does not sound like a good idea, maybe it's just me? https://t.co/DFB46RT6KI
— Dan McLaughlin (@baseballcrank) July 11, 2023
Democrats: The parties switched places!
— Sunny McSunnyface (@sunnyright) July 11, 2023
Also Democrats: Here's an invitation to our whites-only educational event https://t.co/br2ZtCOuOu
El. Oh. El.
Certain white liberals seem just as race-obsessed as any KKK members. I guess they tell themselves they're doing it for benevolent reasons, but judging people by race is poison no matter what. https://t.co/UmnLOrmhY8
— Frank J. Fleming (@IMAO_) July 11, 2023
https://t.co/EYHKXe1bbn pic.twitter.com/e4tfqq2bj0
— John Now at Friendster Ekdahl (@JohnEkdahl) July 11, 2023
Works every time it's tried.
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