"Keep a clean nose
Watch the plain clothes
You don't need a weatherman to know
Which way the wind blows."
Bob Dylan, "Subterranean Homesick Blues, 1965
The wind shifted.
The period of 2009-2020 was a high-water mark of consciousness of harm to the weak and marginalized in America. It showed up most often in universities, where administrations believed they had an obligation to provide safe places for students, and students began to demand those safe places.
President Barack Obama's Department of Education Office of Civil Rights sent a "Dear Colleague" letter of guidance to universities instructing them that Title IX required formal processes to protect agains a hostile environment. If universities knew, or should have known, of something hostile that triggered discrimination, they neded to create procedures to protect the most vulnerable. Students were taught it was their right -- indeed obligation -- to call out micro-aggressions.
The instruction letter was a bombshell, and its presence helps explain Monday's letter by Trump's education secretary. We are seeing the oscillation.
 |
| Click |
On its surface, Obama's instruction seemed reasonable and harmless. Who can be in favor of sexual harassment? In its actual operation, it created a climate of fear. Walk on eggshells. Self-monitor what one said for potential objection. We heard protests about the "coddling" of students, but authors of those comments themselves got hounded into resigning their jobs. Comedians stopped performing on campus, saying that they couldn't joke about anything, lest someone feel offended. "Trigger warnings" were a thing. Shut your ears. You might hear something that would send a delicate person into distress.
In his first term Trump rescinded the Obama advisory letter. Trump was ineffective at changing the mood. It remained the high tide of "woke" culture, which shaped the Biden response to immigration. Immigrants escaping poverty or violence are the archetype examples of oppressed people needing protection. Obama had been the "deporter in chief" and was criticized from the left because of it.
In his first term Trump rescinded the Obama advisory letter. Trump was ineffective at changing the mood. It remained the high tide of "woke" culture, which shaped the Biden response to immigration. Immigrants escaping poverty or violence are the archetype examples of oppressed people needing protection. Obama had been the "deporter in chief" and was criticized from the left because of it.
Biden listened to immigration doves on the left. Immigration control was Trump's issue, and Trump was openly, joyfully spreading racist dog whistles. Black Democrats were "low IQ," Black-majority countries were "shit-holes," brown-skinned migrants were unwelcome but people from Norway were welcome, Muslims were presumed to be terrorists, and Haitians ate your pets. He played Democrats and they fell for it. Democrats heard the racism, but didn't hear the dismay of people across the political spectrum who wanted better immigration control.
This created an environment that allowed Trump to get elected.
This term features a new Trump, making bold, decisive, unmmistakable moves to re-establish the status of White Christian majority culture. His U.S. is great and has always been great.
Theater companies make decisions about performances with a long lead time. The choice of plays produced by the Tony Award-winning Oregon Shakespeare Festival in nearby Ashland, Oregon reflected that prior zeitgeist, with an emphasis on plays that explored non-traditional subjects, with non-traditional casting, generally with an emphasis on the marginalized. The audience response had a dutiful, eat-your-broccoli quality to it. To the alert, it was a signal of a trend pushed past the breaking point.
The winds of change are evident this week in Portland. The National Endowment for the Arts peremptorily cancelled funding of a play 24 hours before its opening performance. The play, Joe Turner's Come and Gone, by Black playwright August Wilson, is an archetypal example of the kinds of plays serious theaters presented under the earlier zeitgeist. It explored the Afro-American experience.
Prior to this year, last-minute cancellation of funding would be shameful. Unfair. Disrespectful. Now it is on-brand as an act of political theater by Trump. Why should taxpayers pay to hear about poor Blacks? Let liberals cry. It is part of the larger project of focusing on American greatness, not the people who have been injured by injustices. It is why Trump eliminated mention of Jackie Robinson and the Tuskegee Airmen from federal government websites. Trump is communicating with broad strokes. Cruelty and insensitivity are messages that he means business.
Trump's assault on the rule of law and the authority of the executive may turn out to be the catastrophe the left fears. It worries me. We may be in a constitutional crisis.
I am less concerned about Trump's refocus in the arts. This is just an oscillation. Art will survive. Artists cannot be suppressed for long. New art will emerge under a new wind. Suppression is the fertilizer of art.
[Note: To get daily delivery of this blog to your email go to: https://petersage.substack.com/ Subscribe. Don't pay. The blog is free and always will be.]
10 comments:
How the pendulum does swing! Now the snowflakes are those who are offended by facts, who think us poor oppressed White guys are the victims of discrimination and who consider opposition to the war crimes in Gaza antisemitic.
Republicans used to pretend they weren’t racist, Regan going to Mississippi city where killing took place, Bush’s Willie Horton adds, but it was subtle. Trump was not past or present subtle. The question in my mind is if the US is okay with being racist? It’s close but it seems like the answer is yes as does all the anti diversity stuff. Maybe give it another 100 years.
Woke went way too far. That produced a backlash. Perhaps the backlash will also go way too far.
But in the meantime, the hammer is coming down on woke and DEI, and I couldn’t be happier about that.
According to Merriam-Webster,
Diversity is the inclusion of people of different races cultures, etc. in a group or organization.
Equity is freedom from disparities in the way people of different races, genders, etc. are treated.
Inclusion is the act or practice of including and accommodating people who have historically been excluded (as because of their race, gender, sexuality, or ability).
Strange but true: White-wing Republicans find that offensive.
When the term ‘woke’ was coined, Blacks were being lynched with impunity. Now the far White has coopted the term as a pejorative they use to disparage people who believe that after centuries of brutal oppression, Blacks deserve a leg up through such programs as affirmative action. White nationalists think that’s deplorable, but they’re projecting.
“Equity” in it’s modern usage means that any “disparity” that negatively affects a favored (by the woke) minority can only and exclusively be the result of racist discrimination. So, for instance, since blacks are 13% of the population, they must be 13% of every desirable profession, because otherwise the cause can only be racist discrimination.
There are many problems with this idea. If underrepresentation is a problem, it can only be solved by illuminating overrepresentation. If “not enough“ blacks are admitted to an Ivy League college, the problem can only be solved by eliminating members of overrepresented groups like Asians.
“Equity” in its current usage means purposely discriminating in favor of some groups and simultaneously discriminating against other groups. There is no way to do the discrimination in favor without also doing the discrimination against.
Those who constantly display their animus against white people(for instance, using terms like “white wing“) are apparently fine with discrimination against white people. Fortunately, the Supreme Court has reaffirmed that racial discrimination in any direction is illegal, even against groups that woke ideology has decided to hate.
I forgot to mention that, as with 'woke', the far-white redefine other words to suit their fancy. Like their "alternative facts," they believe what they want regardless of the facts.
If you’re referring to the 2023 university admissions ruling, Chief Justice Roberts stated, “"Nothing in this opinion should be construed as prohibiting universities from considering an applicants discussion of how race affected his or her life." What's more, the court specifically left open the possibility that the nation's military academies, because of their "distinct interests," may be able to continue with their successful affirmative action programs, which have resulted in a very diverse officer corps – although I’m sure Hegseth will do what he can to sabotage it.
And that “woke ideology” that supposedly hates whites is about as prevalent as the alleged “massive election fraud” that supposedly stole the 2020 election from Trump.
Ah man the poor white people who are so discriminated against by dastardly woke ideology. It's so unfair that the minorities don't just accept their underrepresentation like God intended! I'm going to vote for Trump because even though I'm a straight white male and have more privilege than literally every other class of human being in this country I'm too ignorant to understand that, too selfish to care, and too racist to think that minorities being underrepresented is a problem. Woke is so mean to me, wahhhhhhh
In seeking equality, woke has its favorites. Equality of outcome, that is? At least identicality of group outcome, anyway. After all, the only operative variable is Racism.
Post a Comment