SPS to Get Whitey (especially the boys)

After reading the definition of racism on the web site of Seattle Public Schools (and watching Caprice Hollins' video on the Seattle Channel web site), I've had the image of Howard Stern's movie stuck in my head: "kill, kill, kill, da white people" .... An official, such as Caprice Hollins, Director of Equity and Race Relations for SPS, who invokes that image is probably not doing much that is constructive.

Caprice Hollins seems primarily interested in creating division. (Women Studies is particularly focused on the language of division and victimhood.) She is half white and half black, which on the surface would seem to allow her to unify people, bridge the divide (real or imagined), and help blacks and whites understand each other. But, it seems pretty evident that her background primarily left her angry at white people. As she describes, her white grandparents rejected her, which would leave me angry too! One can hardly blame her.

I have no problem with the actions and efforts of people in the black community to help themselves, heal wounds, and deal with hurt that results from a horrible history (slavery) and - let's face it - the racism they must still experience on occasion even today. If there is some anger and anti-white feeling is expressed among the black community, I can hardly blame them. Calling on more resources, and even set-aside spots in government contracts and hiring preferences, seem reasonable to me, given the history.

The problem, however, is that Caprice’s anger and divisiveness has no business being sponsored by government. And, her anger and hatred is palpable in the definitions of racism she provides on the Seattle Public School Districts web page. Definition after definition focuses on whites as brutish patriarchal oppressors of victims in various racial identity groups. Moreover, in her video, she describes the entire SPS as if it were some sort of conspiracy orchastrated by David Duke to create systemic racism against all these supposed victim groups. Yes, even the whites in ultra-liberal Seattle are somehow part of this grand conspiracy.

For example, she says:

The systematic subordination of members of targeted racial groups who have relatively little social power in the United States (Blacks, Latino/as, Native Americans, and Asians), by the members of the agent racial group who have relatively more social power (Whites).

Perhaps Caprice should visit the web site called iAbolish. This is the web site of an organization fighting contemporary slavery. Much of this slavery is in Africa, where black Africans enslave other black Africans. Why? Because some groups in Africa believe they are superior to other groups. I'm not sure where whitey figures into that, except that various organizations that presumably include at least some whites have helped to free some of these enslaved people.

Then, Caprice goes deeply into making racism charges against every feature of Western Culture she can identify. For example, racism can be seen in:

Those aspects of society that overtly and covertly attribute value and normality to white people and Whiteness, and devalue, stereotype, and label people of color as “other”, different, less than, or render them invisible. Examples of these norms include defining white skin tones as nude or flesh colored, having a future time orientation, emphasizing individualism as opposed to a more collective ideology, defining one form of English as standard, and identifying only Whites as great writers or composers.

She started out pretty good, identifying unfair stereotyping as racism. But, then seems to loose control. "Future time orientation"? And, the thinly veiled swipe at capitalism and individual liberty is so obviouisly unrelated to racism that it hardly needs to be addressed.

The last place these sorts of bizarre and elastic concepts of racism should be taught is in the public school system. Imagine that, telling kids that “future time orientation” is a form of racism, but then trying to convince them that they should prepare for their future by attending school and applying themselves for future gain. A special office dedicated to meeting the educational needs of black students seems like a good idea to me; however, Caprice isn’t filling that need.

On top of that, black boys are suffering the most in public schools. The anti-male ideology Caprice learned in “Women Studies” doesn’t offer those kids much hope. She's got plenty of criticism for black men, as well. If you watch her video, you will hear her criticize black men for, supposedly, prefering lighter skin women like her. Looks to me like she should look in the mirror to find a "superiority complex."

Having such absurd definitions of racism provide a clear sign of poor judgment on the part of Caprice Hollins. She's plenty smart, but not very savy and she'll keep steppin' in it. I doubt she will be around long, even in a bureaucracy as screwed up as SPS. In the meantime, I hope school administrators who are less driven by anger and strange ideology contain the amount of damage she can do.

The path to success in education involves an obsession with "future time orientation." That's just so obvious that it's hard to imagine anybody taken seriously who would suggest otherwise. Even in Seattle.

Click here for more.

Choosing Your Study "Results"

Little surprise here, as yet another study proclaims an “epidemic” of domestic violence. There are so many people feeding at that trough now that one can hardly expect all of these “experts” to find anything but increasing domestic violence. Why, that would be as unimaginable as, say, Seattle’s Office of Sustainability and Environment raising doubts about whether anything they do matters, much less whether global warming actually exists.

Bias is shown in the choice of what to study. It’s politically correct to study violence in heterosexual coupling and, of course, to find it in epidemic proportions. Against women, that is, and perpetrated by men.

It’s sort of like the old question; does a tree that falls in the woods make a sound when there is nobody there to hear it? Does an epidemic exist when there is nobody there to study it? For that matter, does an epidemic exist if there is nobody around to receive money to study it?

What is an epidemic anyway? Does this “epidemic” mean that domestic violence is worse now than it used to be? And, if so, what changed? The general feminization of culture and society, and reconstruction of the American family that has clearly occurred, has actually made “patriarchal control and oppression” worse? Does that mean women were actually better off in the 1950's?

Well, enough of asking the questions of a sentient being. (And, Jonah Goldberg, you should stop exercising such critical judgment as well!) There is nobody there to answer these questions; at least no “experts” that would risk funding and acceptance among the cultural Gestapo. Really, the choice of what is studied is not even interesting any more. It’s all too predictable.

What is interesting about this study, however, is how it was conducted. The "problem" with so many studies about domestic violence in the past is that they have too often surveyed and asked the same questions of both women and men. The usual pronouncement after all of these studies has been the headline grabbing report of out-of-control “violence against women.” That’s the one that attracts the attention and the dollars.

(The trick to finding high incidence, by the way, is to mix everyday emotional stresses that any two people living in close quarters would experience with actual physical violence and report on the combination as domestic violence. Practically all of these studies are very careful not to draw a distinction between actual physical abuse and emotional discord. And, you can get an extra nudge towards making females the majority of victims simply by avoiding the scientific approach to correcting for response bias - in other words, structure your questions according to the responses desired and, for God's sake, don't let it slip that men are less likely to admit being victims than women. You can find a bunch of well known statistical biases here that most of the DV surveyers seem to go out of there way to incorporate. You know, science and statistics are all part of the patriachal conspiracy, and so on.)

But, anyone that cared to look deeper would find that these same studies found similar rates of violence against men, perpetrated by female domestic partners. Not only that, some of the worse perpetrators are lesbians. Men’s and father’s rights groups, concerned about the institutionalized abuse of the basic civil rights of their constituents as well as the general anti-father attitude of our society, did just that. They just can't seem to keep their mouths shut about it and continue to point out the rather obvious fact that the topic was hijacked by feminists with a gender-political axe to grind. And, that's a problem for the DV establishment.

The ideologically inspired "experts" found a solution to this inconvenience, however. They simply leave men out of the survey.

Among a random sample of 3,429 adult female members of Group Health ....

That way, you find violence (remember, everything ranging from physical abuse to disagreement over what to have for dinner equals violence) and you only find it perpetrated against the people surveyed: women. The victims.

Click here for more.

Rewarding Divorce

Here is definitive proof that financially rewarding divorce promotes divorce.

Think it can't happen in America? Think again.

Click here for more.

Seattle Government Promotes Child Pornography?

The Seattle Silly Council heard a protest from a citizen concerned about the city's web site being used to advertise a play about an adult lesbian woman seducing and under-aged teenage girl (9th listing on schedule).

D'Anne Mount, spokeswoman for the city's information technology department, said any group can post on that site "as long as it's not directly commercial in nature, doesn't advertise or directly promote illegal activities and is not derogatory or abusive."

So, it's not blatantly illegal for an adult woman to have sex with a teenage girl? Huh? Things are pretty twisted in Seattle, but I didn't know it was that bad. I mean, isn't this a form of child pornography? See the celebration of getting 'em out of the horrors of heterosexuality early here.

Imagine the uproar from Seattle's gender feminists if a play celebrating a 30 year old man's seduction of a teenage girl were advertised in the city's web site. We'd never hear the end of it.

By the way, in case you are not yet convinced of the wholy unnatural nature of heterosexual relationships, you can check out the "Kathy and Mo Show: Parallel Lives" at the Capital Hill Arts Center. It's a feminist play, which "consists of hilarious scenes exploring the plight of women and the pandemonium that ensues when the two sexes try to get together." Yes, the pandemonium of mixing the sexes, versus the utter normalcy of adults seducing children.

Click here for more.