Solving the Whiteness Problem

by John Stevenson

White males are a species our civilization, or at least academia, would be better off without.   At least that’s what Piper Harron, a professor at the University of Hawaii says. Her thesis is that white men, just by their presence, are keeping others from advancing. 

Well, to be fair, her problem is not with all men---it’s only with white cis men.  What is a cis man?  He’s a man who is biologically a man and who knows he is a man.  (Odd that someone invented a word for that---wouldn’t “normal” suffice?)  So transgender men are exempt from Harron’s complaint.  Here’s what she wrote:

Not to alarm you, but I probably want you to quit your job, or at least take a demotion…you are probably taking up room that should go to someone else.  If you are a white cis man…you almost certainly should resign from your position of power…[and] make sure you’re replaced by a woman of color or trans person.

Not relying on white cis men to go away voluntarily, Harron also suggests that universities stop hiring white cis men.  Of course if you disagree with her you are racist, sexist, or transphobic.

The Democratic National Committee (DNC) recently sought to fill eight positions in its tech department.  These included IT Systems Administrator, Product Manager, and Chief Security Officer. 

Madeline Leader, the DNC’s Data Services Manager, sent an email to employees saying that she was looking to recruit a “staff of diverse voices and life experiences.” But apparently that diversity does not include white cis men, because Leader included this: “I personally would prefer that you not forward to cis gender straight white males, as they are already in the majority.”  So much for the heralded inclusiveness of the Democratic Party.

DNC spokesman Michael Tyler disavowed Leader’s message, saying it “was not authorized by DNC nor was it authorized by senior leadership.” 

But the Grand Prize for proposals to solve the whiteness problem once and for all goes to Nicole Valentine, who writes in medusamagazine.com.  Valentine goes far beyond the University of Hawaii professor and the DNC’s Data Services Manager.  After all, they only wanted white males to give up their jobs to women of color or to transgenders---or at least to keep white males from advancing in their careers.

Valentine wants white folks to be aborted out of existence.  Here are some of the more coherent excerpts from her genocidal essay:

In progressive society, it is often white families that stand in the way of equality and justice…That is why the white family must be destroyed.

Valentine then offers this totally inverted view of the availability of abortions.  “Women of color do not often have the privilege to choose termination as do white women…white supremacy prevents women of color from their freedom to choose.”  Data show just the opposite is true: whether measured by the number of abortions per woman (age 15-44) or by the number of abortions per 1000 live births, Black women have roughly three times the number of abortions as white women.

But, back to the excerpts from Valentine’s entertaining if deranged thesis: 

White women: it is time to do your part!  Your white children reinforce the white supremacist society that benefits you.  If you claim to be progressive, and yet willingly birth white children by your own choice, then you are a hypocrite.  White women should be encouraged to abort their white children, and to use their freed-up time and resources to assist women of color who have no other choice but to raise their children…How about adopting children of color who have lost their parents to the destructive white supremacist society that you have enabled and encouraged? 

There’s plenty more, as you can imagine, but here is Valentine’s piece-de-resistance:

Of course, the best choice is to act preventatively to ensure that white children are not at risk of being born.

Whiteness problem solved.  Hard to top that one.  

Crime and Punishment at the Air Force Academy

by John Stevenson

You probably heard of the recent hate crime crisis at the Air Force Academy Prep School.  Some racist cadet wrote hateful messages on the whiteboards outside the dorm rooms of five African-American cadets. 

I say “hate crime” because that’s how it was reported in the media.  Of course writing a message, however hateful, on an erasable board is not a crime in the U.S., although it might be a crime in some other Western countries (e.g. England, Germany, Australia, etc.) that do not have robust free speech protections comparable to our First Amendment.  But the written messages were racist, hateful and, although not a crime, certainly a violation of the Air Force Academy’s rules.

The Prep School is for students who are on-track to enter the Academy but need a bit more development and polishing before admission.  The Prep School is on the same campus as the Academy and under the same superintendent, Lt. Gen. Jay Silveria. 

Silveria wasted no time in reacting to the crisis.  He assembled all 4,000 Academy and Prep School cadets and he gave them a collective butt chewing.  Referring to the offensive messages, he said:

If you’re outraged by those words, then you’re in the right place.  That kind of behavior has no place at the Prep School.

If you demean someone in any way, then you need to get out. And if you can’t treat someone from another race or different color skin with dignity and respect, then you need to get out.

The lashing Silveria gave his cadets received universal praise in the press.  For example, an editorial in The Washington Post was titled “Too bad Trump can’t emulate the military when it comes to matters of race.”  The article included this: “Lt. Gen. Jay Silveria did naturally what Trump is incapable of doing.  The Air Force Academy superintendent answered the hate in his ranks immediately, head-on, and with a moral clarity nonexistent in the Oval Office.” 

The New York Times and an assortment of other publications and political figures across the political spectrum, including Sen. John McCain and former Vice President Joe Biden, joined in the hosannas heaped upon Silveria. 

Denouncing the hate crime, applauding the Academy superintendent, while simultaneously taking a gratuitous shot at President Trump---that seems like pretty safe ground.  A trifecta for virtue signalers. 

The wisdom of Phaedrus---“things are not always as they seem”--- would have well served the Academy superintendent, the press, the politicians, and others who leapt aboard the cadets-are-racist bandwagon. 

As it turns out, the racist messages on the whiteboards of the Black cadets were in fact written by one of the alleged victims---one of the five Black cadets who were targeted by the racist messages.  That cadet has confessed to the hoax and is no longer at the Academy---allowed to slink away, name withheld to protect the guilty.   

If this turn of events comes as news to you, it’s because it was much less enthusiastically reported in the media and received little attention from those who had boldly commented when racism apparently ran rampant just a few days before.

Whenever a hate crime is discovered to be a hoax, we are assured by experts that hate crime hoaxes are extremely rare.  A National Review article disagrees, saying this:

Fake hate crimes…are by this point so familiar that they are practically a cliché.  When a Muslim woman…was attacked and had her hijab ripped off, two things happened: One, the Left insisted that this announced the coming wave of pogroms against Muslims in the Age of Trump; two, people who follow this sort of thing began betting how quickly she’d be exposed as a fraud.  It did not take long.

The National Review article goes on to list several hoaxes.  And if you Google “fake hate crimes” you’ll find enough examples to keep you busy reading for a good while.  One web site maintains a database (though it’s always lagging and incomplete) of hundreds of such hoaxes: www.fakehatecrimes.org. There probably are other such lists.

Had the superintendent waited just a few days for the results of the Academy’s own investigation, he would have known who was responsible.  He could then have spared his corps of cadets the unfairness and indignity of being berated for a supposed evil of which they were totally innocent.  And he could have spared himself the embarrassment of having lobbed an ICBM at the wrong target.

The superintendent offered not so much as an “oops” for fragging his own cadets.  He offered instead this ludicrous declaration to justify his action:  “Regardless of the circumstances under which those [racist] words were written, they were written, and that deserved to be addressed.”  

Really?  Addressed with whom?  Well, he did address it.  He chewed out the entire corps of cadets, who had absolutely nothing to do with it.