The SJ program has an end-goal, with a methodical process for leading you there.
First they want you to buy into race-consciousness, by heightening your awareness of your racial identity.
Next, they want you to accept that white privilege exists, and that it is the BIG problem.
Then, they want you to accept responsibility, as a white person, for white privilege, through making an apology or other means. They call all of this being “woke”. Using this word is a way of implying that their point of view is superior (even if their English grammar is not).
So, where is all of this leading? If you accept that white privilege is a big problem and that you and every white person is responsible for the plight of blacks, then how can you refuse to do something about it?
And what are you, as a “woke” person, supposed to do about it? There are various remedies that are taught in colleges today.
One of these SJ belief systems is Critical Race Theory. CRT has some issues.
For example, Columbia law professor Patricia Williams says that “[I]f a thief steals so that his children may live in luxury and the law returns his ill gotten gain to its rightful owner, the children cannot complain that they have been deprived of what they did not own. Blacks have earned a place in this society; they have earned a share of its enormous wealth, with physical labor and intellectual sacrifice, as wages and as royalties. Blacks deserve their inheritance as much as family wealth passed from parent to child over the generations is a ‘deserved’ inheritance. It is deserved as child support and alimony.”
In other words, whites are the descendants of thieves who should pay black people their inheritance.
CRT also advocates for hate speech laws; and what is “hate speech”? Apparently, speech critical of CRT’s agenda are considered “hate speech”, which they think should be illegal. The CRT advocates want wealth to be transferred from whites to blacks, and for any whites who complain to be criminalized. Nice.
As a “woke” person, you will be expected to support hiring preferences for minorities. It used to be that preferential hiring for minorities was called “affirmative action” and typically involved racial (and sometimes gender) quotas. However, these terms have become very unpopular, partly because in order to reach quotas, standards were often lowered for minority applicants. So today, hiring preferences for minorities is often called “diversity hiring”. The theory with diversity hiring is that an effort can be made to recruit qualified minorities, and remove barriers to hiring that unfairly affect minorities, and thus increase “diversity”, without lowering standards.
However, in actual practice, what often happens is that new standards are created to allow in more minority applicants, and in the process, less qualified people are hired. This information is hidden, and the company pretends that they have successfully “found” equally qualified diversity hires.
As one example, Joseph Switzler enumerates the specific steps that have been taken and/or advanced by diversity activists at a tech company:
“1. Give people of a certain race a numerical boost on their interview feedback scores….
“2. Stop preferring to hire people with a college degree in CS (or related fields) over people without a college degree because that’s sexist….
“3. Stop considering some colleges as better than other colleges because that’s racist….
“4. Start recruiting at certain schools with worse computer science programs explicitly because of race….
“5. Stop looking for people with relevant industry experience because it is sexist….
“6. Stop considering some companies such as Google better than other companies [on a resumé] since it is racist/sexist….
“7. Stop looking for highly experienced people with 15 years of experience since it is sexist because women tend to leave the industry before 10 years of experience….
“8. Stop asking for a link to a portfolio of work on the job application because it is sexist….
“9. Stop having employees refer good people they have worked with since it is sexist/racist….”
To the uneducated eye, this all looks like ways to lower the bar in order to admit more minorities. However, once you are “woke”, you will probably be expected to see this as reasonable.
For another, you will be expected to support an environment in which white people (and other privileged classes) are treated as second-class citizens. If you are white, you must not speak until after everyone else has, and you must not disagree with what a person of color has said. It’s kind of like having separate drinking fountains, or having to eat in the back of the diner while everyone else eats in the front.
And of course, you will be expected to call this unequal treatment “justice”. (I will pause here to recommend a book, 1984, by George Orwell.)
There may or may not be very much you can do about this situation. The SJWs are running the show on college campuses. One thing you might do is print out this Handbook, and circulate it. Leave a few in the library every now and then. Change where you leave them, to make it harder for SJWs to find them and throw them in the trash.
Or, to reduce printing expenses, here are a few other suggestions.
However, what’s ironic is that the SJW end-game actually hurts the very people it is purporting to help.
A study by Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa shows that black students in college make less progress in skills, study less, and take less demanding courses compared with white students. Could it be that receiving demoralizing messages from leftist professors is not helping them advance?
There is a concept in psychology called “locus of control”, which relates to motivation. If a person believes that they have more control over their lives, they are likely to be more motivated to take action. If a person believes they have less control, and instead their lives are at the mercy of others or luck, they are likely to be less motivated.
In other words, if a person feels like a victim, they will likely be less motivated and more passive. So how does it help black students to teach them to adopt a victimhood identity?
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Here’s an analogy to illustrate how the SJ approach is a disservice to those it is purported to help.
An individual person who has suffered from child abuse generally has problems to deal with that those who have not been abused do not. In a serious case, these problems can affect everything in the abused person’s life.
So, because non-abused people have it easier, we could say they are “privileged”.
Would it make sense, then, for non-abused people to apologize for their privilege? “Gosh, I am so sorry that I haven’t been abused and have an easy life compared to you.”
Would it make sense for non-abused people who have the same skin color as the abuser to take responsibility for this problem?
No, these remedies would not make sense, and would not solve the problem.
The truth is that even though the abused person did not cause his or her problem, he or she is the only one who is in a position to do something about it. Life is not fair in this sense.
Others can help. Others can give emotional support. Someone with the appropriate training and background can give guidance, and this is usually necessary. However, the bottom line is, unless the abused person takes responsibility for his or her own healing, the problem will not change.
If someone who was purporting to help the abused person told him or her, “in order for you to have resolution, the whole world must change”, this would be a disservice. When it comes down to it, healing is local.
The same principles apply for people who, subjectively, are in a state of suffering from historical wrongs, and even from mistreatment in their own lives. Even though they did not create the problem, they are the ones who are in a position to solve it, not anyone else.
Others, who feel so inclined, can help. But as long as the focus is on getting random white people to take responsibility for the problems of black people, the problem will not be solved, and in fact it will worsen, because the locus of control is removed to be external to black people.
(Note: While I believe that most problems experienced by black people today will not be solved until black people understand themselves to be the ones with the power to change them, exceptions include cases of actual racial discrimination for which there is evidence; in these cases, there are appropriate legal remedies. In addition, it is appropriate to study the causes of the poor schools in inner cities. Then, those who are responsible, such as local authorities—usually Democrats—need to be held accountable for fixing these schools.)
Becoming an “ally”
Social Justice training highly recommends that people who are deemed “privileged” become allies for those who are “oppressed”.
For sure, if someone feels oppressed and you genuinely agree, looking at the facts, that they have been discriminated against, then there can be great value in assisting them in getting justice.
And it can be useful to speak up if you hear people making racist jokes.
However, it appears that what “allyship” often means is supporting an exaggerated sense of victimhood and grievance. It often means listening to someone else’s feelings and then accepting a taboo against mentioning any factual information or logic which could call their conclusions into question.
Of course, if someone is upset and they are not in a space where they are open to additional information, it’s better not to give unwanted advice, no matter their race or gender or supposed “privilege” or “oppressed” status.
So, is there a way to support someone as a human being, without buying into what, from your perspective, looks like an exaggerated sense of grievance? You could say something like “I understand that you are feeling [their words for their feeling], and that you believe [their words for what they believe]. I can sympathize with your feelings. However, I don’t necessarily think that your conclusions are the only way to interpret the situation. If you’re ever interested in another perspective, you know where to find me. This probably isn’t the time for it. I wish you well in resolving this.”
If even expressing that it’s possible to have another perspective is not tolerated, then perhaps allyship, as it is practiced at your locale, is only about exaggerating victimhood.
You might also be alert for a class of marginalized people whom the SJWs are overlooking, or even actively marginalizing, and that’s non-leftists. They are the ones who may need allies more than anyone, given that leftists have vastly more power on campus than anyone else.
Before allying with a non-leftist, do some screening to confirm that they wish to promote real justice, with equal opportunity and the same standard for all, that they are interested in a “color-blind society” and perceiving people based on “the content of their character”. (Obviously, just as a fair-minded person would not want to ally with an anti-white racist, it is no better to ally with e.g. an anti-black racist.)
A fair-minded non-leftist could probably use some help in getting his or her voice heard. And getting non-conforming voices heard is essential to stop the indoctrination happening on campuses today.
You may be shocked to discover that many SJWs are using techniques that mimic actual brainwashing techniques which have been used on prisoners of war! Click the link below on the right to discover how….