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Racism - systemic, personal, or otherwise, is wrong.

Firing someone for something they did not do, is wrong.

The current sociocultural phenomenon of identity politics and its attendant empowerment of marginalized discourses is, as Foucault would be the first to point out, an ideology meant to advance the urge to power of those who adhere to, and advance, said ideology.

It is the unfortunate nature of any ideology, that its adherents tend to become convinced that they, and only they, are in possession of 'The Truth'. As such, any and all who argue in favor of ideas which run counter to the ideology, are reflexively branded as wrong, or somehow evil, seen as a threat to the ideology's proponents veiled urge to power, and dispatched with accordingly - cancelled, deplatformed, fired, shadow-banned, what have you. Tolerance of difference of opinion has disappeared from the national conversation. Freedom of speech has followed it down that memory hole.

There is no effort to debate the issues as part of a rational discourse. Nietzchean/Foucaultian will to power is not about being rational. It is a romantic notion of the primacy of the will - voluntarism, not reason. Power is its own reason, as it were, and, as in the rough and tumble of Statecraft, might, as we know, makes right.

Hopefully the day will come when reasoned debate, as opposed to partisan speech, will resume in this country. However, observing events as they have been unfolding on our campuses, in our media, in our politics, in our social media feeds, that day seems, sadly, yet a rather long way off.

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"Do I think Sellers should have been fired? Well, all I can say is that in our current climate I don’t see how she could teach effectively"

Unfortunately the hypersensitivity has turned into hysteria and I'm afraid you might be right. I am concerned for the time when the courts will start to call a reaction like this "reasonable".

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First and foremost, I'm left wondering why it is so difficult for anyone (of any color) to address underperformance of students (of any color) for the purpose of coming to understand just what it is that stands in the way of any student (of any color) and a successful completion of an education.

The more I contemplate this the more I'm convinced that there is indeed, a beast to feed, and it is the nature of that beast (that appears to be growing an ever increasing appetite) that requires understanding. Well, we know at least what the beast feeds on: academics flattened like pancakes by being thrown under the proverbial bus. Please don't pass the Aunt Jemima. But genuine maple syrup would be nice.

This brings to mind the imagery of an Aztec priest (or some sort of holy man) flinging his victim (someone poor, marginal, arrested, perhaps enslaved) off of a rather high pyramid, for said purposes of placation of some god or other, for good harvests, health, and success in war, among other things. The priest has a very clear idea of what he is about, and the wherefore and the why.

The victim is just a hapless measure of circumstance. Could have been anyone (of that ilk.)

I suspect there is an incredibly thin skin about, that itches and chafes without scratch or salve, ointment or any other kind of relief except one: sniping at and otherwise picking off sacrifices. I cannot blame the skin at all (suffering from my own species of itchies) but yet still - this has gone far beyond parlor sport, or any soft sort of gamble gaming. Because anyone anywhere at any time can be at risk. As if none but a sooner or later eventually shows up. As if that were inevitable.

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C'mon John. You're not sure it's fair that she was fired? I'm pretty sure you're VERY sure it's not fair. I'm kind of surprised you won't say that. And I'm pretty sure Glenn is too. And you've got to love the previous comment from TK who criticizes the professor for not just doing her job but doing "nothing to remedy the situation". Maybe It was a mistake that she cared about the issue at all. I'll bet she feels that way now.

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Professor Sellers should not be fired for being racist, but for incompetence. She has identified an issue with her teaching and does nothing to remedy the situation. She feels angst, but no motivation to do something about it. This is typical of professors today who know the answer to the question they are asking and give A's to those who have decoded what they want. If there is a problem, the professor believes it is with the student.

If she looked into the issue, she might find there are some simple answers. One is her teaching is the cause. Another answer is that you always have students in law school who will obsessively work to get good grades. But you also have those students who realize all this extra work does nothing for you. Law School does not teach you how to pass the bar. This is why people spend so much money for bar review courses - after paying so much money for law school. Sellers teaches mediation. Why work hard to get an A in a class that has no practical application to anything you plan to do.

High achieving white kids will always work hard to get A's, but as a friend said (who is dean of engineering at a top ten engineering school) "A" students work for "B" students. Kids from all races are at the bottom of Sellers class because they figured out that all that extra time and effort does not pay off. What do you get if graduate at the bottom of your class at Georgetown Law? A JD. Pass the bar and you are a lawyer. Get a job and your GPA means nothing.

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Serious question. I believe that I heard John/Glenn say that “Black” is the appropriate term. I hesitate every time I need to decide among Black or African American. Honestly, African American seems forced and labored. I’m sure people think I’m silly when I use it at a sports or casual event. 7 syllables vs 1! But now JM is saying it’s graceless to say “Black” under certain conditions. Ugh, what?

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Something confounding about "woke as religion" is that the arguments deployed differ so much from typical liberal political arguments. I've found adapting some of Jonathan Haidt's moral pillars helpful; typically liberal arguments focus on the care/harm principle and ideas of fairness/cheating (e.g. healthcare, immigration, taxes, welfare).

It seems many of the arguments following these racial dust ups may facially address these two moral pillars but the better way to think about them is in terms of sanctity and loyalty. First, Sellers pointed out a fact which caused revulsion among the elect. This is NOT a rational response. Imagine you began a conversation with a Catholic friend with "you know, that generic wafer you take at communion cannot possibly be transubstantiated into the body of Christ." Now, what you are saying may be factual, but my guess is the listener will react with instinctive revulsion as you've just insulted her traditions and community. Certain arguments and "the word" produce revulsion first, rationalizing for the revulsion second.

Second, many religions enforce standards (or perhaps dogmas) with appeals to group loyalty. Who is at the moral nadir of many religions? The worst punishments are typically not for infidels (i.e. Prof McWhorter), but for apostates. The worst for the traitor in our midst. I am sure Sellers said all the right things about BLM and George Floyd over the past year. By treating Sellers words with maximum punishment, the apostate serves as a warning to others who might deviate.

What we are seeing is the inversion of thirty year old arguments about prayer in school and before city committee meetings and other political gatherings. Christianity contains much moral good, so how can spreading its reach be wrong? When the left argued for traditional liberalism, the right often reacted with offense, feeling the sacred was diminished. The religion of diversity may have significant moral goods, but it has simply moved beyond the political realm of "making sense."

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The culture demands silence or woke dogma. Think about that and the implications. A person can be canceled without even a cursory discussion of the issue. The issue persists, and person who may have been a truly effective teacher is gone.

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I shared this with a friend who made a good comment that had me going into all kinds of scenaria. His comment was: "What is the thing that gives her angst?" She teaches the class, some students do well, some poorly as expected, what is the angst about? Does she feel bad that a lot of the students doing badly are of a particular race? Why? Or is she feeling pressured by the department to somehow "help" their grades so that they graduate? Is it a mixture of both, i.e. she's woke herself and doesn't like what she's seeing / tries to "help" but she knows it's not fair and in a moment of frustration, the truth slips out of her lips and bang, she's getting punished for it?

It's an angle.

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I'm pretty certain Sellers was expressing frustration at the depressing persistence of a racial achievement gap — and at the multifarious, nebulous reasons for it. That is not racism in my book; I have frequently felt the same way. I agree her expression of that frustration was graceless, but who among us hasn't sounded graceless in private?

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The clue is in what she's saying: "‘Oh, come on.’ You know. Get some really good ones..."

She's complaining that the admissions officers get black students who are not performing. The admission officers, however, are just tools. They do what the university administrators have ordered them to do, which is to perform affirmative action.

As Tom Sowell so clearly described, affirmative action is a policy that hurts black students. He, too, noticed that black students were over-represented at the bottom of the class as a result of affirmative action. As he pointed out, these students would have done wonderfully in lesser colleges. Instead, many bright black students drop out or come out with a crashed ego which is no good, while they would have flourished in a school better matched to their abilities.

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Just to be sure readers understand law school grades: For most courses, grading is anonymous, that is, students are assigned an exam number, so that the professor reading the exam does not know whose exam they are reading and grading (much less the student's "race"). At many law schools, grades are then ranked on a curve. There are some courses where law professors are aware of the identity of the students they are grading, for example, oral advocacy. Without knowing more about the courses Professor Sellers was teaching, I understood her to be lamenting that many Black students were not doing well in courses where grading is blind.

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I watched the video. I don't think there was anything racist about what Sellers or her colleague Baston said. In fact, I find their conversation to be the logical consequence of our currently obsessively racialized society. I grew up in the South Bronx in the 90's and am now in my late 30's and I have never had to deal with racism, being black, what my blackness means to me and to society at large, and issues like systemic racism and unconscious bias in my entire life combined as I have in the past year or two. My husband (who is also black) works in the corporate HQ of a large company and in the past 5 months, he has had to do multiple diversity, inclusion, and equity seminars, complete surveys, have team meetings to discuss "race," and unconscious bias trainings. I would wager that Sellers has had to do much the same and now finds herself in the unenviable position of having to confront the very real problem at Georgetown and colleges and universities all across the country, of the disproportionately poor performance of black students. Her use of the word angst to describe her feelings on the matter has been completely ignored, as well as the truth of what she is saying. Sellers and Baston seemed genuinely concerned and uncertain as to the cause of this phenomenon. If we don't want to actually identify and address problems and try to find solutions, then all this focus on race and racism is just kabuki theater. The demand for racism and racists to blame for all societies ills massively exceeds the supply, and now almost anyone can be accused of being racist for almost any reason and have their lives and careers destroyed. And it accomplishes nothing except to make some people feel morally righteous, but does not alter reality or change facts.

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The true definition of racism is the belief that ALL black humans are inferior to ALL white humans (or apply any other colors in whatever order.) Today this is obviously false, but was accepted scientific thinking for centuries right up to the end of WW II. Now, as you point out, racism has been redefined to mean anything that might offend a black person. What ought to be labeled "racial prejudice" or "racial insensitivity" is instead called racism. Since conservatives have abandoned the linguistic playing field, we're probably never going to force a return to the real meaning of the word, unfortunately. Instead of asking for a more logically rigorous examination of an event such as this we need to look for a different motivation. If your goal is to destroy America as we know it because the whole of American society is a cesspool of racism, imperialism, greed, and oppression, and replace it with a socialist utopia -- well, then this is just one small incident that helps put the wrecking crew in charge. When they can get the Dean of a major law school to fire a professor for almost any reason, they are growing their control over American institutions. That's the real problem, and long discussions of black performance at law school are really beside the point.

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I think John makes a lot of good points about “The Elect” as he calls them and I also agree that certain aspects of trying to enshrine white guilt and promote cancel culture are problematic and should be criticized, as he is doing. So, I applaud him for being up those points. Where I think John is dangerously not seeing the forest for the trees gets back to his previous post and his presumed dispute with “excuse E of the Elect”: “The real problem is the right-wing, racist zealots who stormed the Capitol Building calling for the blood of Mike Pence and Nancy Pelosi.” John goes on to belittle the Jan. 6 event as a bunch of incompetent Keystone Cops boobs who couldn’t even get an insurrection right, so why worry about them? All fears of a right-wing takeover of the government are overblown? I wish we had the luxury of cancel culture being the most important issue of the day as the right wing would have us all believe. Insurrectionists came close to getting their hands on actual members of Congress which certainly would have led to injuries and possibly deaths. Would that have been enough to change John’s mind that the right wing problem is a much worse problem in this country? What will it take? Armed insurrectionists stormed the Michigan capitol last year, armed to the teeth to try to intimidate the Democrat administration into giving them what they wanted. Still overblown? Militia members were planning to kidnap the Michigan governor to force her to convert her by threat of violence to their misguided and ruinous beliefs. I don’t see this kind of tendency to violence on the left, no matter how many canards we hear about “antifa” from GOP politicians. How about the hundreds of bills being passed through Republican-controlled state legislatures right now that are trying to restrict voting rights back to the days of Jim Crow? John claims that the Elect problem is worse because they are actually affecting our institutions like universities and some workplaces. But I would take mandatory diversity training any day over conservative restrictions over the voting process. When a GOP minority has locked in political power at the federal and many state levels for a generation, are you going to console yourself that “at least I raised awareness about some university professors who were unfairly penalized”. That’s a worthy cause and should be discussed and criticized where merited, but to put concerns like that ahead of the attempted right-wing takeover of our political institutions seems foolish. And it seems like exactly the kind of thing that the right-wing is hoping we will all be focused on, while they try to steal our country away from the rest of us.

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The professor states the obvious, which today is actually a triumph of intellectual honesty. This is why he is so excellent. I am not sure what systemic racism is TODAY, but it includes affirmative action. To deny our history is not crammed with systemic racism is of course ridiculous. And it’s impact is obviously present today. But we need to look forward. If most white kids can only get in New York Law, for example, it hardly seems like racism to match all students with schools that match their capabilities.

White guilt, affirmative action, keep the clash going. Yes, as a group that one is part of cannot get into Harvard without affirmative action has to grate. But as individuals who graduate from a state law school, no one will question their abilities relative to their classmates. It seems easy. But if it were it would have been done already. There is an element of reparations in affirmative action thinking. As Milton Friedman said a few times, if we must use government more than is optimal, the least damaging way is to just pay citizens money.

Personally, I think the brilliant Professor still misses a big point. Who cares what white people think? Who cares about Harvard. Who cares about what caused us to be where we are today? All we can do is move forward. Screw them all-“I will simply do my best” —-just stop doing things for me and to me—and I will figure out the rest.

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