“Many Christian theologies emphasize the possibility of finding meaning in suffering, but the New Calvinism seems to promote a rather stoic and un-empathic attitude that valorizes suffering, particularly among women.… Calvinist beliefs were related to higher levels of domestic violence myth acceptance and lower levels of social justice commitment.”
The Roberts Court is poised to shape American society in Trump’s image for decades to come. All three branches of the federal government are now committed to the Trump agenda: the restoration of America’s traditional racial, religious, and gender hierarchies; the enrichment of party patrons; the unencumbered pursuit of corporate profit; the impoverishment and disenfranchisement of the rival party’s constituencies; and the protection of the president and his allies from prosecution by any means available. Not since the end of Reconstruction has the U.S. government been so firmly committed to a single, coherent program uniting a politics of ethnonationalism with unfettered corporate power. As with Redemption, as the end of Reconstruction is known, the consequences could last for generations.
Source: John Roberts and the Second Redemption Court – The Atlantic
Specifically, the idea that civility is more important than justice. The demand that we allow the powerful to eat in comfort, to never be disturbed, is nothing short of respectability politics. It’s a moving goalpost, historically used to shame, frame, and exhaust people who, despite being brutalized and terrorized, wanted not revenge, but equity. I have no patience for it.
Whiteness and power call for civility while hanging black bodies from trees.
Whiteness and power call for civility while locking children in camps.
Whiteness moves the goalposts FOR BASIC HUMAN RIGHTS while demanding that the powerful and the power-hungry, not be the least bit disturbed or discomforted.
For nonwhite people, freedoms are granted conditionally, and could be revoked at any time for any reason. They are negotiable, temporary, dependent on whatever chemical cocktail happens to be occurring a white person’s brain when they pass us on the street.
White Americans, especially land-owning white men, have been allowed to use literally every available option to secure their freedom, including asymmetrical warfare, which is just a fancy term for terrorism.
Every available tool employed by white Americans has been deemed noble, patriotic, morally just, and necessary.
Everyone who wasn’t white? Well our actions had to meet the muster of the moral code whiteness (ostensibly) aspired to but consistently and staggeringly failed to meet. The self-evident rights to life, liberty, equality, and pursuing happiness were considered more like suggestions for the rest of us. It is the difference between sitting down at the table for a wonderful meal, and sitting down with a hungry, crying toddler, your own belly growling, and making a vision board with pictures of food. The difference a plate of food and picture of food. You are allowed to view, but you are not allowed to taste or touch. In the American context white freedom and all “other” freedom do not exist in the same moral universe.
As always, this story demands historical context. Historical context is, as we know, something whiteness exists to shield white people from entirely. Whiteness protects and defends ignorance, but you don’t know what you don’t know so we will endeavor to learn together.
Whiteness is a social construct, created to protect and preserve power, that insulates and protects white people from having to understand anything outside the realm of their own experience. It protects the ignorance of white people and allows them to announce their ignorance loudly and confidently, often with no pushback (because no one else in their circle knows any better either).
But it is still worth thinking about the blackboard as a disciplinary technology – one that molds and constrains what happens in the classroom, one that (ostensibly) makes visible the mind and the character of the person at the board, whether that’s a student or a teacher.
Indeed, the history of the teaching profession suggests we have long been obsessed with the morals of the latter. But obviously “character education,” as popular as it is with today’s education reformers and education psychologists, also has a long history – a history bound up in the technologies of the classroom. Grit, mindsets, behavior management – this push for disciplinary practices and disciplinary technologies is not new. Framing this in terms of engineering – behavioral engineering, social engineering, educational engineering, learning engineering – is also centuries old.
Source: Why History Matters
I updated “The Pipeline Problem and the Meritocracy Myth” with selections from “Words Matter – Moving Beyond “Meritocracy” – Mozilla Stands for Inclusion” and “The end of ‘meritocracy’ at Mozilla | Doug Belshaw’s Thought Shrapnel”.
“Meritocracy” was widely adopted as a best practice among open source projects in the founding days of the movement: it appeared to speak to collaboration amongst peers and across organizational boundaries. 20 years later, we understand that this concept was practiced in a world characterized by both hidden bias and outright abuse. The notion of “meritocracy” can often obscure bias and can help perpetuate a dominant culture. Meritocracy does not consider the reality that tech does not operate on a level playing field.
Source: Words Matter – Moving Beyond “Meritocracy” – Mozilla Stands for Inclusion
The world is not a neutral place and meritocracy can actually entrench privilege.
Source: The end of ‘meritocracy’ at Mozilla | Doug Belshaw’s Thought Shrapnel
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