I think Donald Trump’s whining about the ethnicity of the Hispanic judge in his Trump University case is shameful, and yet another example of his gross immaturity and narcissism. It is dangerous to have a presidential candidate openly question whether a judge can be fair because of his ethnic background.
That said, is this not what the Left does constantly, and has done for a long time? Claim that members of minority groups must have special privileges, because it is impossible for a white-majority society to be fair to them, on account of the majority being white, cisgendered and heterosexist?
For example, New York City is funding a summer jobs program … but it’s more than a jobs program. As the reader who sent me that link said:
Everything, and I mean everything, is now about LGBT acceptance. Check out this story about the youth employment program in New York City. It seems like it’s actually a political re-education camp thinly disguises as a jobs program.
Businesses cannot participate unless they pledge to be allies. And the companies get special training to teach them how to be allies.
It’s a jobs program. Despite my libertarian leanings I have no problem with that. Teach a kid to work? OK. But they don’t even interview because it would allow someone to kinda maybe discriminate against LGBT kids. So they are being trained to know that… jobs just materialize. You get them. Without interviews.
Can anybody seriously doubt that a Hillary Clinton presidency will mean four more years of privileging approved Democratic Party grievance groups in law and policy? Trump’s childish caterwauling is obvious for what it is, but in principle, how is it different from left-liberals demanding special treatment because whites cannot be trusted to be fair?
If Trump’s whining about the Latino judge strikes you as racist and unjust, well, welcome to how many conservatives see the sham “diversity” ideology of contemporary liberalism.
It is deeply alarming to see institution after institution falling before this ideology. In Seattle, Matteo Ricci College has just placed Jodi Kelly, its dean, on paid leave while it investigates whether or not she has been sufficiently sensitive to the Diverse:
After three weeks of Seattle U repeatedly stating it would not remove Kelly from her station, the MRC Coalition sees her being placed on leave as a win, Smith said, but Kelly continuing to receive salary is still an indicator of Seattle U’s support for her. There is also the potential for Kelly to be reinstated.
Following the announcement of Kelly’s leave, the MRC Coalition spent Wednesday night crafting a list of candidates and the desired qualifications they’d like to see from an interim dean.
“A woman of color would be phenomenal and something we derive,” Mohammad said.
But the protesters are unhappy not to be consulted over Kelly’s replacement:
“By not asking for the input of the coalition, it’s already decentering people of color,” Smith said, adding there are “loose ends” to tie up before the coalition considers ending its sit-in. “It will happen by the end of the school year.”
Mohammad said “Phase 2” for the coalition involves working with administrators to review and make positive changes to the college’s curriculum, which the group has criticized as being too Eurocentric and in need of diversification.
“We’re really entering Phase 2 of our organizing,” she said.
What have they been protesting at the Catholic college? From the MRC’s original statement:
Once again, these concerns are urgent and necessitate an immediate response, to be handled with utmost severity and care. Dissatisfaction, traumatization, and boredom are realities within our collective MRC experiences, as well as being ridiculed, traumatized, othered, tokenized, and pathologized. These experiences have been profoundly damaging and erasing, with lasting effects on our mental and emotional well-being. Additionally, the curriculum in MRC is unsatisfactory as a Humanities program. For students to have their personal and ancestral voices erased in curriculum and conversation, only to be told that their experiences of pain are insignificant, is psychologically abusive.
In light of this college environment, multiple cohorts of students in both the Humanities for Teaching and Humanities for Leadership majors have joined together to write our truths and demand systemic change.
The Humanities program as it exists today ignores and erases the humanity of its students and of peoples around the globe. Humanity is defined as the human race, and as such studies in humanity must be about human beings collectively. We are diverse, with many different life experiences, also shaped by colonization, U.S. and Western imperialism, neo-liberal politics, and oppression under racist, sexist, classist, heteronormative and homophobic, trans*phobic, queerphobic, ableist, nationalistic, xenophobic systems, which perpetuate conquest, genocide of indigenous peoples, and pervasive systemic inequities. The world in which we live, and the realities of students at Seattle University are vastly complex and worthy of critical study. Our concerns regarding racism, sexism, homophobia, and other manifestations of oppression are not individualized–they are systematically upheld by the college.
It is to appease these barbarians that the authorities at that college sacrificed their dean. The remaining administrators at Matteo Ricci College and its parent institution, Seattle University, deserve whatever they get from now on.
Crude as he is, Trump seems to get in ways that no other senior Republican gets is the degree to which American politics, cultural and otherwise, have become about raw racial and demographic power. I suppose you could plausibly argue that they always have been, but at least most of us tried to argue in classical liberal terms for a more fair and just society. What Trump seems to be saying is, “And look where that got you, white people.”
Again, this is a dangerous thing to say in a pluralistic democracy, and it troubles me deeply that Trump says it. On the other hand, there is some truth in it. For years I’ve been saying that the militant identity politics practiced by the Left is sooner or later going to call up the same thing on the Right. I do not celebrate this, no how, no way. But then, I have been objecting for years to the way the Left plays this grievance game, especially in the news media. They have played their part in the rise of Trump. They still do.