The universities are a minefield. Try not to offend. Good luck with that.
The leader of a small faculty group at Portland Community College, the Pathway Learning Community, sent this letter to his colleagues:
Dear Pathway Colleagues,
It has been brought to our attention that the use of the term majority faculty, as a way to respect our part-time colleagues, has associations with systems of power in a way that feels alienating to some faculty of color. Hurting colleagues is not acceptable. We apologize for the harm this has caused. We will return to the term part-time in the form, as we look for a better way to communicate respect. We commit to finding ways to communicate that are respectful and inclusive, especially for those educators in all employee classes who carry identities that have been marginalized.
The PLC Pathway Team
Interim Temporary Program Dean for Sciences
Pronouns: he, him, his
The letter is deadly earnest and sincere.
To explain: Adjunct faculty at the college had been described in earlier communications as "part time" faculty. Hierarchy is an issue because full time and tenured professors make a great deal more money than do the adjuncts, whose jobs are insecure and poorly paid. The difference in status is obvious to everyone, but it is impolite to acknowledge it with one's terms. The email author chose not to use the term "part time;" it embeds hierarchy, "part" being less than "full."
There was a respectful workaround. The college union used the term "majority faculty" to describe adjuncts, so it had apparently been vetted and found acceptable. Since there are more adjunct faculty members than full time ones at PCC, they constitute a majority of the faculty. The team leader substituted that term. Moreover, the word "majority" has the benefit of somewhat normalizing their status, thereby upgrading it. It was a good intention.
It backfired. Some people the email called "faculty of color" took offense. "Majority" implied to them inclusion in a racial group,` which at PCC would be White. They are not White. Therefore they are not majority. Including them in a "majority" denied their status as a disadvantaged racial minority.
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| Describes a good apology |
The team leader heard their complaint and acknowledged he gave them harm and acknowledged their hurt.
He gave a full and compete apology, by the book. He said he had done wrong. He admitted he hurt others. He apologized. He said improvement was necessary. He committed to being better in the future.
His email is a window into a cultural phenomenon. I commend the email author on his effort to be respectful to his colleagues. He is coping with a treacherous environment where people are exquisitely sensitive to insults, micro-aggressions, and errors in categorization of identity. It is a minefield.
I have an impression I will share: What an oppressive environment. How difficult it must be to self-monitor so punctiliously. How stifling of communication.
I should keep quiet. By the rules of identity privilege and oppression, and the lens of "systems of power," I have no legitimacy to comment. I am White, a cisgender male, physically able, heterosexual, and married. I am educated, financially comfortable, and live in a nice neighborhood. Therefore, I could not possibly understand the feelings of the oppressed, and have no basis for critiquing others' demands for a respectful, non-racist, work environment. I have no standing.
And yet I have not disappeared. I still live, earn and spend money, vote, and have opinions. My opinion is that it must be exhausting to be the author of that email, to need to walk on eggshells. My opinion is that stories about this academic environment have drifted out into public attention and it frightens people, including people on the left. It is too much. It is overboard. My opinion is that this level of attention to insult and terminology and identity, especially when error is called "harm," has a political dimension. The left is now very conscious of the authoritarian impulses of the political right. Those impulses frighten people. The left needs to acknowledge that there are authoritarian impulses on the left as well. Those, too, frighten people.
I wish the left would lighten up a little.
31 comments:
At some point too much is too much. It can feel like the supposed victims are actually the perpetrators. Some people take advantage when they can and make true legitimate issues less legitimate. Maybe I have no room to reflect as I fit your description of yourself.
Many so-called conservatives claim political correctness (now called ‘woke’ or ‘cancel culture’) is destroying the U.S., but don’t seem to care about an attempted coup. On the other hand, some so-called liberals are so woke, they’re obsessed with concocting gender-neutral pronouns.
About all I can say is s/he/it.
Apparently, I shouldn't be able to say anything either as I more or less match your self description Peter. The attitudes described by the writer of that letter, while in his mind are undoubtedly well meaning, strike me as being positively Orwellian in nature, and should be frightening. And I will never, as long as I live, describe myself with a handful of pronouns.
I find tut he whole thing chilling.
I teach at a college and I have seen many examples of this sort of thing. I periodically get into controversy/trouble because I refuse to walk on eggshells just because I am a white heterosexual male.
Wokeness breaks society down into “the war of the tribes.“ Its advocates assume that the negativity directed at white people will not motivate them to become tribal as well and fight on the side of their tribe. This only works for guilty liberals, which colleges are overstocked with.
The left in general and the denizens of higher education in particular have no idea how alienating this woke nonsense is to the general public. To the extent that they indulge in it, The Democrats will pay a high price in future elections.
I'm in the same advantaged position as you describe yourself, Peter.
For all of my life and, as best I can discern, for all lifetimes before me, the language of those advantaged people, like us, was, at various levels, degrading to other people. Whether it was strong racial insults or negative stereotypes, or other demeaning use of words, people like us just talked and wrote that way and it was accepted. There was no need to analyze the harm those words caused.
Now there is an effort in many places to use words that show respect for others. Good, I say. We can never use enough respectful language to overcome all the disrespect of the past. If, and your example does not show me this, there is some overcorrection as we try to improve, the effort is worth the candle, and more.
I have a friend who teaches at a university in the east. He finds to give all his students as full a measure of self worth as possible to be invigorating to the academic process. Treating students respectfully leads to better learning.
Who are we privileged people to be frightened by this effort? We should embrace it.
Phil,
What you dismiss as “some overcorrection” is actually a full-scale attack on freedom of speech combined with the institutionalization of hostility towards white people, and specifically towards heterosexual white males.
There are many examples of this that I think you would find egregious if you cared to look. A good place to start would be https://www.thefire.org/.
White, heterosexual males who whine about being victims, as if they were the ones being oppressed, have no clue what it even means, much less what it feels like to experience it.
Bill Maher has faced correct speech directly and lost his show "Political Incorrect" due to "bad language" and is now on HBO "Real Time with Bill Maher". On numerous shows he has debated the issue with his panel with numerous examples of where and how "wokeness" is destroying free speech and academic freedom. Living in the environment we do today our mind needs to be like a parachute - it's only works when it's open. Consider this, if someone uses offensive language or appears to be insensitive why go to the effort of confronting them? Why turn to social media and "flame them"? Why are you even in higher education as a student if you know it all already? Just maybe this "learning environment" is a safe place where you can pull the covers over yourself but you will have to enter the real world eventually and there you will have a very rude awaking. Concerning facility, my experiences have shown them to be the most petty and vindictive over everything from a perceived slight to where they park their car or whether their office has a view. The greatest flaw in the current dialogue is that we've lost our sense of humor and we take ourselves too seriously.
Maybe it's just you.
Mike,
Was this professor "whining?"
https://www.lamag.com/citythinkblog/usc-professor-slur/
Was this one?
https://www.thefire.org/a-theater-professor-wasnt-sufficiently-outraged-about-a-list-of-names-on-a-whiteboard-the-colleges-next-act-probable-termination/
There are plenty more examples.
You're pretty quick with the dismissive snark. You might want to consider opening your mind up, just a bit. Discrimination is wrong in any direction.
John F,
I believe it was Henry Kissinger who once said,
"Academic politics are so vicious because the stakes are so small."
John, what you said about the cancelation of Politically Incorrect is wrong.
He was, however, canceled for saying things his corporate bosses did not like regarding the 9/11/01 attacks.
We have been the cowards, lobbing cruise missiles from 2,000 miles away. That's cowardly. Staying in the airplane when it hits the building, say what you want about it, [it's] not cowardly."
Nice article, Peter. I too share almost all the descriptors you use for yourself, other than not earning money, and not living in a “neighborhood”.
I think our entire society should probably lighten up a little. My education is substandard these days, but I’ve been very successful financially, as an extremely hard working, very intelligent! Blue Collar Worker. I was physically able up to the age of low 70's. Now I have to seek my wide's permission to drive, and to run much of my power equipment. That, I suppose, is my personal form of oppression, as her answer is invariably, No way!”+
Im also apparently too old to understand the 120 separate gender descriptions sent home with my 13 year old grandson.
Here are “my adjectives”: Me My Mine.
Poor Michael. Attacked by those meanies in his own classroom. Sticks and stones, Michael. You have NO room to whine about discrimination of the ruling class.
An observation commonly heard on campuses:
Q. Why are feuds and arguments in academia so vituperative and
unreasonable ?
A Because there is so little at stake.
The surest way to be isolated from a community or society is to self-create isolation by demanding unique personal pronouns unfamiliar to all but the bearer. I have.neither the interest nor inclination to become informed of each individuals self concept, or genital play preferences
From a conservative perspective, anyway, what’s simultaneously most amusing and most dangerous is how most institutions of higher education these days, public and private alike, are becoming secular-left equivalents of Oral Roberts or Liberty universities. Blasphemers, heretics and apostates are rooted out so as to preserve the sanctimonious, choir-loft and hothouse flower repose of puritanical prigs and prats who representing today’s Left cultural establishment, instead of Elmer Gantry’s, or Jerry Falwell’s, or even those sneering on the street in the days of Hawthorne’s “Scarlet Letter”. Then as now, pharisees of all sorts locate their supposed moral authority in the “courage” to denounce the inferiority of their people, especially the non-conforming. The dynamic is part of human nature, whether the dogmatic inquisitorial impulse is Christian in auspices, or a Soviet or Chinese Cultural Revolution or Khmer Rouge martinet reporting “subversive” behavior or beliefs. When I was in college in the mid-1980s, the hot iconoclastic book on our universities and the life of the mind was Allan Bloom’s “The Closing of the American Mind”. Bloom was correct, and more besides.
This nation has a long, gruesome history of racial oppression, and anyone who thinks prejudice and discrimination are all behind us isn't paying attention. If some of the ‘woke’ seem to be taking social injustice too seriously, it’s because it still has serious consequences for those who experience it.
What’s hard to understand is white-wing conservatives getting so bent out of shape over being expected to treat all people with dignity and respect. You’d think we were asking them to do something unpatriotic, like put on a mask or get vaccinated.
@ Low Dudgeon, for a guy who seems to pride himself on incessant expositions that clarify the connotation of Peter's blog posts from your conservative side, this may have been your finest load of horse droppings yet... errr exposition... err comment.
To Low Dudgeon and Michael Trigoboff:
Here's what being woke means: it means not being a dick to people. It means treating them as they would wish to be treated. It means having the humility to acknowledge that maybe, just maybe, someone was born into circumstances through no choice of their own that you couldn't fathom and that maybe for one fucking second you should try putting yourself in their shoes, and not do things, say things, or behave in ways that puts them down more. And that also maybe, as a thinking person yourself, you should try to give one iota of a fuck and be a decent person who tries to treat people in a way that is respectful of them and their circumstances.
Woke = not being a dick. It's not complicated.
Anonymous,
I would take you seriously if you had the courage to post in your own name. It’s pretty easy to hide behind anonymity and throw stones. It’s also pretty ineffective. It’s also not pretty.
Ok. Let’s address the issues here, and not each other.
I agree. We should be better to one another. Don’t be dicks. The comment section is itself a document. People take stuff personally, and maybe it is in fact personal.
So let’s pretend we are in a graduate seminar room here, discussing a text. Peers around a big conference table. Be nice to one another. We are all going to have a beer together when the seminar is over.
Peter Sage
I want a decaf almond vanilla latte.
Thanks, Peter, I learned a new word: "cisgender." Of course, it won't be useful to me in certain households that welcome me, where mention of any gender other than two "traditional" ones will get you a "huh?" response. And that makes me think just how far apart are segments of our culture. I've lived and worked in a specified pronoun environment, as well as, shall we say, a more rustic one. It's like the difference between "out back," where the horses are groomed, cows milked, and manure flows, and the "clean rooms," where you wear "bunny suits" to create high technology. Problem is, each place has to recognize the other; we need both for an economy, a society, a country.
Mr. Sage—
Why was my comment to this post deleted? Surely it didn’t pass moderation muster initially, then fail to do so a few hours later!
Heads up to commenters.
I welcome your comments. Because of trolls and spammers hoping to seduce people into clicking on malware links, I need to moderate comments. This means I check to see if there are pending comments multiple times a day. Sometimes I do it on the fly, using my I-phone.
The distance from the "publish this comment" and the "delete this comment" is about an eighth of an inch on my i-phone screen. Sometimes my finger slips and it instantly deletes instead of publishes. I can always later delete an unintended "publish" but it takes an awkward workaround to publish one accidentally deleted. I can go to the original notice email I get, copy and paste the content, and then publish it as my own comment. I do that when I can, but not while I am driving on the freeway.
When that happens, comments appear to be deleted then re-appear some various time later.
I am not malevolent here. Nor a censoror. I am doing my best. Please presume good intentions.
Peter Sage
Perhaps you are going to need to acquire a whip and a chair to keep this menagerie under some semblance of control… :-)
Peter's right, of course, but Mr. Anonymous had a good point nonetheless, so it's good he included it.
I know I’m very late to the game here, but I have a day job and I wanted to make sure I had the time to construct something (hopefully) worthy of Peter’s aspirations for this platform. I am hoping to offer a different perspective rather than an opinion.
I have noticed that many commenters here range from dismissive to downright hostile to religion in general, and Christianity in particular. Some have stated that humankind would be far better off without religion (to which Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot would agree). Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt is one of the leading thinkers of what’s called Moral Foundations Theory. He’s an academic who is not religious but thinks religions can serve a useful role in creating social cohesion. But religions are more than that; at their heart they are about "ultimate things". They not only shape people’s individual and collective identity, sense of morality and other social norms, religions also define a common understanding of “virtue” and things worth fighting for. Perhaps dying for.
In his book Political Visions and Illusions, political scientist David Koyzis describes the idea of America as essentially a "civil religion" cloaked with rights conferred by a vague “creator” which early American Christians assumed was the Christian God. The Declaration of Independence forms the canon of this religion, which asserts the unquestioned right of "life, liberty and pursuit of happiness". There’s nothing particularly “Christian” about this from any orthodox or biblical perspective, but the Founders (many of whom, including Jefferson, were not confessing Christians) found that pitching these principles as religious imperatives could mobilize an effective rebellion against the British. You could say Christian Nationalism was the foundation for America’s story. As long as immigrants were more or less Christian, things went mostly okay.
Back to religion as a cohesive force. With the secularization of modern society combined with multi-culturalism through immigration, and technology that amplifies, celebrates, indeed worships individualism (and demands that you do too), I suggest that we’ve lost a kind of common religious compass: the kind that Haidt says is necessary for social cohesion.
Of course, history has shown that a singular religion does not mean that there will not be infighting and factions. In fact quite the opposite. But I do suggest that absent some kind of religious-like common understanding of truth, reality, purpose, virtue and meaning, the illusion of “American ideal” will continue to evaporate into mere tribalism.
John C. –
Interesting perspective. However, it isn’t lack of a common religion that is exacerbating our tribalism, but lack of a common reality. For example, Democrats believe Biden won a free and fair election, Trump tried to overturn it, vaccines are necessary to control the pandemic, climate change is real, etc. Republicans live in some parallel universe with their own “alternative facts” but unfortunately, they vote in ours. Their support for Trump’s attempted coup makes them an existential threat to our democracy. Until the willfully ignorant learn how to tell fact from fiction, the problem will get worse.
Mr. Sage—
Thank you, and understood concerning your logistics. I felt like complaining only when I thought I’d been jettisoned on the merits.
Anon @ 8:27–
Re what you directed to me and to Mr. Trigoboff? The short answer to everything in that paragraph, exactly as written, is “Physician, heal thyself”. There are few more abusively and hyperbolically judgmental sorts of people in public discourse today than many if not most of the so-called woke, especially from their jejune and undereducated younger set. I’m capable of appreciating—and actually debating in good faith—sincere and thoughtful folks on the other side of hot button social justice issues such as e.g. trans science and law & order. Are they?
Low D:
Social justice issues such as "trans science" are only "hot button" to busybodies with nothing better to do than obsess over which bathroom they use.
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