Confessions of a Red Guard, 50 years after China’s Cultural Revolution
On May 16, 1966, I was practicing calligraphy with my 37 classmates when a high-pitched voice came from the school’s loudspeaker, announcing the central government’s decision to start what it called a “Cultural Revolution.”
It was my first year of junior high, I was just 13.
“Fellow students, we must closely follow Chairman Mao,” the speaker bellowed. “Get out of the classroom! Devote yourselves to the Cultural Revolution!”
Two boys rushed out of door, heading to the playground yelling something.
I left more slowly, holding hands with my best friend Haiyun as we followed everyone else outside.
It would be my last normal day of school.
As Red Guards, we subjected anyone perceived as “bourgeois” or “revisionist” to brutal mental and physical attacks.
I regret most what we did to our homeroom teacher Zhang Jilan.
I was one of the most active students — if not the most revolutionary — when the class held a struggle session against Ms. Zhang.
I pulled accusations out of nowhere, saying she was a heartless and cold woman, which was entirely false.
Others accused her of being a Christian because the character “Ji” in her name could refer to Christianity.
Our groundless criticisms were then written into “big character” posters — a popular way of criticizing “class enemies” and spreading propaganda — 60 of them in total, which covered the exterior walls of our classroom building.
Not long after, she was sent to the cowshed — a makeshift prison for intellectuals and other “bourgeois elements” — and suffered all kinds of humiliation and abuse.
It wasn’t until 1990 that I saw her again.
During a class trip to the Great Wall, we made a formal apology to Ms. Zhang — then in her 80s — for what we had subjected her to.
We asked what had happened to her in the cowshed.
“It wasn’t too bad,” she said. “I was made to crawl like a dog on the ground.”
Hearing this, I burst into tears. I was not yet 14, and I had made her life a misery.
She died two years after our apology.
‘Dismantle whiteness’ mural installed at USC
An artistic mural has been installed at the University of Southern California that declares “dismantle whiteness” in big, black and white capital letters, one part of a larger display designed to spark conversations regarding “racism, sexism and xenophobia,” according to its creators.
The mural was designed by the feminist artist collective When Women Disrupt in conjunction with students in the class “Women: Designing Media for Social Change.”
Read more at College Fix
White, male students called on last in some classrooms
‘Progressive stacking’ not new, not isolated to Penn
The backlash may be new, but the method is not.
Controversy erupted recently after tweets from an Ivy League teaching assistant showed her admitting she only calls on white male students as a last resort.
“I will always call on my black women students first. Other [people of color] get second tier priority. [White women] come next. And, if I have to, white men,” University of Pennsylvania teaching assistant Stephanie McKellop tweeted in October.
McKellop’s tweets spotlight a method known as the “progressive stack” in which speaking priority is given to minority voices while those deemed as having privilege must wait their turn.
McKellop’s comments ignited a firestorm over the controversial teaching method and prompted her university to look into the situation, but a College Fix review of online documentation shows McKellop is far from the first instructor to employ the “progressive stack” in the classroom.
Use of the progressive stack, which is lauded by advocates as amplifying oppressed voices and criticized by others as discriminatory, has been used in college classrooms for years, and has roots in liberal activism.
The College Fix review found several instances in which scholars have engaged in the practice. Additionally, a sociology professor told Inside Higher Ed progressive stacking dates back at least a couple decades.
In an email to The College Fix, University of New Mexico psychology professor Geoffrey Miller denounced the “progressive stack” method and said it will further alienate universities from their stakeholders.
“It’s obvious that universities feel deeply embarrassed when whistle-blowers publicize that progressive stacking is being used in their classrooms; they know that parents, alumni, legislators, and taxpayers can see how discriminatory it is, and will withdraw financial support if it continues,” Miller said.
Read the whole story at College Fix
Campus newspaper editorial: ‘Your [white] DNA is an abomination’
A new opinion piece in a Texas State University student newspaper tells white students, “Your DNA is an Abomination.”
“When I think of all the white people I have ever encountered – whether they’ve been professors, peers, lovers, friend, police officers, et cetera – there is perhaps only a dozen I would consider ‘decent,’” student author Rudy Martinez writes in the University Star.
Without much biological explanation, Martinez informs white readers, “You were not born white. You became white… You don’t give a damn.” Later in his rant, he calls the police “fascist foot soldiers” and says a “white supremacist inhabits the White House.”
…
The editorial concludes: “Whiteness will be over because we want it to be. And when it dies, there will be millions of cultural zombies aimlessly wandering across a vastly changed landscape. Ontologically speaking, white death will mean liberation for all… Until then, remember this: I hate you because you shouldn’t exist. You are both the dominant apparatus on the planet and the void in which all other cultures, upon meeting you, die.”
Read the entire article at Washington Examiner
Here’s the full recording of Wilfrid Laurier reprimanding Lindsay Shepherd for showing a Jordan Peterson video
During a seminar with first-year communications students, Wilfrid Laurier University teaching assistant Lindsay Shepherd screened a TVOntario debate to illustrate the sometimes-controversial politics of grammar.
The video, an episode of The Agenda with Steve Paikin, included University of Toronto professor Jordan Peterson presenting his case against the use of non-gendered pronouns. It also included panellists taking the opposite viewpoint.
Nevertheless, after an anonymous student complained, Shepherd found herself reprimanded for violating the school’s Gendered and Sexual Violence policy. In a subsequent meeting with university officials, she was accused of creating a “toxic” and “problematic” environment that constituted violence against transgendered students. She was also falsely told that she had broken the law.
Shepherd recorded the meeting. Audio and selected transcripts are below. The voices are of Shepherd, her supervising professor Nathan Rambukkana, another professor, Herbert Pimlott, as well as Adria Joel, manager of Gendered Violence Prevention and Support at the school.
Read more at National Post
Can My Children Be Friends With White People?
A blatantly racist Op-Ed in the New York Times where some deluded idiot professor named Ekow N. Yankah writes “I will teach them to be cautious, I will teach them suspicion, and I will teach them distrust. Much sooner than I thought I would, I will have to discuss with my boys whether they can truly be friends with white people.”
Black Lives Matter Students Crash Free Speech Event, Call Liberalism ‘White Supremacy’
The College of William & Mary students associated with Black Lives Matter shut down a campus event on free speech last week, as they declared that liberalism is “white supremacy.”
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) sponsored an event on the William and Mary campus to talk to students about the First Amendment with another organization, reports Flat Hat News.
Students prevented Claire Guthrie Gastañaga, the ACLU’s Virginia executive director, from speaking as they began chanting almost five minutes into her talk. Gastañaga tried to adapt to the situation, but students kept shouting chants like “the oppressed are not impressed,” “shame, shame, shame, shame,” and “liberalism is white supremacy.”
Read more at The Daily Caller
Prof: ‘meritocracy’ is a ‘whiteness ideology’
A Pennsylvania State University-Brandywine professor criticized her students’ belief in “meritocracy” and “hard work” in an academic article published Thursday.
Angela Putman, who teaches public speaking at Penn State-Brandywine, designed a comprehensive three-day seminar on “white privilege” for her students, then interviewed 12 attendees on their belief in meritocracy and equal opportunity.
To her dismay, Putman discovered that these “whiteness ideologies” were widely endorsed by students, many of whom agreed that “if I work hard, I can be successful” and that “everyone has an equal opportunity to achieve success.”
Dismissing meritocracy as a mere social construct, Putman argues that students “are socialized to believe that we got to where we are… because of our own individual efforts,” especially in classroom settings.
“Thus, whiteness ideologies may be reproduced through a general acceptance and unchallenging of norms, as well as through everyday discourse from a wide variety of racial positionalities,” she adds.
While Putman believes that schools chiefly perpetuate these harmful ideologies, she also believes that college professors aren’t powerless, saying they can help undo students’ belief in meritocracy and equal opportunity through intensive re-education.
Professors should teach students “how racism and whiteness function in various contexts, the powerful influence of systems and institutions, and the pervasiveness of whiteness ideologies within the United States,” she adds, recommending the use of “role-play activities” and “readings, discussions, films, and activities.”
Read more at Campus Reform
Western Civilization Holdout Reed College Under Activist Student Attack
Under pressure from student protesters, Reed College in Portland, Oregon is considering whether or not to continue requiring freshmen to take a Western civilization course.
Since the fall semester started, the self-named Reedies Against Racism forced cancellation of the opening of Humanities 110, “Greece and the Ancient Mediterranean,” at the private, liberal arts school with an enrollment of 1,500.
On Aug. 28, Prof. Elizabeth Drumm cancelled class before it began when protest organizers came to the front of the room to address students. You can see the video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mg3i6-J6zI8.
Two days later, students in the class confronted protest organizers Addison Bates, Tiffany Chang and Alex Boyd, who can be seen in this video banging on a table, and calling the faculty’s “exclusion” of herself and others from the class a threat and an attack on black students: https://youtu.be/Sgyb8dH5vFQ?t=5m2s.
Boyd, Bates and Chang left as the class started. School officials have since banned them from protesting in the classroom for interrupting. Reedies Against Racism did not return Reason’s request for comment on their protest.
Read the entire story at Reason
THE REGRESSIVE LEFT 