Bari, hopefully you will see this comment which I have posted on July 23, 2022. I just watched Eli Steele’s new half-hour documentary about Jodi Shaw and the incident at Smith College. It is called “Jodi Shaw and the Racial Mask of Whiteness.”
Eli is a wonderful filmmaker, as anyone who has seen “What Killed Michael Brown?” can attest. This new documentary is also a masterful piece of work, characterized by Steele’s slowly unfolding narrative style. This film deserves a wide audience. I came upon it by accident, because for some reason Jodi Shaw came into my mind and I wondered what she was up to today.
I’m asking you to please consider publicizing or featuring the documentary in some way, here on your Substack or on your podcast, as a follow-up to your reporting on Jodi Shaw. Otherwise, people who do not watch Fox, or who have active animosity towards Fox (they are legion), may miss this important and deeply relevant piece of documentary filmmaking. Eli Steele is a treasure. So is Jodi Shaw. The film broke my heart, infuriated me, and inspired me at the same time.
I am retired. I don't believe I could survive in today's work environment. I certainly know I don't have Ms. Shaw's courage. Supporting her effort is important.
Just finding this post, and wonderful comments here that I have already 'liked." I would add that there is an organization called FIRE that defends professors from just this type of anti-free speech activism currently run amok at certain liberal universities. I couldn't agree more that the intense focus on racial identity is the antithesis of what I was taught growing up in the 70s and 80s. People are people are people. I go to a church--a liberal Christian, 300 year old, Northeast congregational church borne from the Puritan tradition. The parishioners are 95% white. There are a few black families who are part of our beloved community. When the pastor delivers sermons that apologize for our "white supremacy," and when white parishioners stand up and confess their "micro-aggressions," I can't help but think that those black members never feel MORE separate and differentiated than when church leadership draws these lines that delineate based on skin color. (I felt this acutely when I brought our black foster son there once and the topic of race came up in a sermon.) The only upside that I can read into this extremism is that normal people will say enough is enough, and soon.
Cruel and Divisive indeed. I cannot wrap my brain around how many people of all races think that it's remotely acceptable for our educators to segregate our children into groups where they instruct the white children that they're oppressors and others that they are oppressed. Making white children feel ashamed of their immutable racial characteristics and instilling hopelessness and resentment in black and brown children are acts of cruelty that spring from Marxist tyrants. Tyrants who we've entrusted to teach and nurture our children but who are instead, abusing them! Yes, this evil indoctrination is child abuse and in my world the Department of Child and Family Services should sweep in and remove all these kids from these schools in the same manner that they'd remove abused children from abusive parents and caretakers.
The left is eating its own-not terribly surprising- I was a progressive until I actually taught in the inner city and man did I change my mind! You can’t possibly care about education and be a progressive- they are without a doubt the single biggest impediment to educational access and college attainment for -not surprised they are all in on antiracist critical race theory
Why are people in the field of Education so apt to jump on the latest far left bandwagon? It's dismaying as these are the supposed experts in thinking critically. Is it perhaps a fear of being regarded as not being open-minded enough?
I actually agree that she is a victim, but she was victimized by the faculty who preach that racism pervades everything and individual behavior and responsibilities count for nothing. The tenured faculty will not suffer anything from this event but the student in question will have narrowed employment chances. There are of course places that will regard her as a hero and welcome her with open arms.
I think it is fascinating that the NY Times picked up the story and wrote an article that was (1) prominent (on the front page), (2) balanced and sober in tone, almost as if someone had gone through it and carefully vacuumed out any language with emotional content, and (3) by allowing the facts to speak for themselves, implicitly damning of Smith.
So what got into them? They don't usually write articles that disclose false claims of racial bias. How did it get past the adolescent newsroom mob? Maybe there is a senior editor who went to Wellesley.
The article was so well done in terms of being balanced and factual that It made me reminisce about the NYT of old.
Also, for those who haven't seen it, the president of Smith wrote another letter to the community in response to Shaw's resignation letter. https://www.smith.edu/president-kathleen-mccartney/letters-community/2020-21/message-from-president-mccartney-feb-22-2021. It is more of the same (our commitment to racial justice remains as unyielding as ever--no response to the particulars except a general strongly worded denial and a statement that it was Shaw who asked for a large money settlement in exchange for "standard confidentiality provisions"). Note also that she does not dignify Shaw by uttering her name.
I think what this shows is that the president lives in a bubble in Northampton, and doesn't appreciate the power of Shaw's message(s) when viewed by an outsider; even by a liberal.
It's not just the substance of Shaw's message that is powerful but the impression she gives that she is a thinking, sober, individual who loves Smith and didn't want to take on the whistleblower role.
She is very skillful at communicating her position. In one video, she demonstrates how Smith is a little triangle that excludes rather than includes. She compares the paper stacks that represent the investigation of the 2018 incident and of her bias claims. This is theatrical in a good way and quite effective (at least for me). And now the NYT has given liberal thinkers "permission" to discuss the story, and even to concede that no racial bias was present (this one time at least in 2018), and that good people were falsely accused (among others, one low level employee suffering from Lupus), so Smith's position is even weaker. All very Interesting.
McCartney would be better advised to say that while she and Shaw disagree about some tactics, she always welcomes debate, and they have in common their love of Smith and learning, and thereby try to mend fences.
I wonder if all of this will affect applications. Who would want to be in such an atmosphere? Well I guess some people (McCartney for one). And maybe our other temples of learning aren't at this point much better.
And now we have, Bar's former colleague, Michelle (free speech) Goldberg at the NYTimes opining that attempts to stop our public institutions use of CRT to dehumanize more than half the population based on race is actually anti free speech. She does a hit job on Chris Rufo because he is working to get these issues before the Supreme Court.
Okay okay okay, crap on a crutch, I subscribed. If only because it is a relief to be able to say somewhere on the face of the Earth:
That I refuse to tell anyone my "pronouns" because they are self-evident,
That unlike biological sex, the whole notion of "gender" is bullsh*t and sliding from "if you are a girl, you can't do math" to "if you can do math, you aren't a girl" is not f*cking progress,
That intersectionality has been twisted from a badly needed tool to consider how different oppressions interact with one another to a way to refute the very existence of sexism,
That the great sin of the US is not its founding principles but the fact that those founding principles have yet to be applied evenly,
That there is a gap between the twins cliffs of race and color in this country, that there ARE Americans who fall into that gap (Jews, Italians, Turks, etc.), and that we are disliked precisely because we threaten the left AND right's desires to ossify those cliffs into permanence,
That the trust-fund brats who have taken over my beloved liberalism are just looking for people who are dark enough to treat like sh*t and pale enough that they won't lose their progressive cred for doing so,
That they have also created wokeism as a way to compete with one another for the tiara of Wokest White Person in the Room, to the detriment of people of color AND poor to working-class whites about whom they don't give half a sh*t,
That Sarah Palin, much as I can't stand her, was treated disgracefully, and that her radicalization into an ultra-right Trumper is OUR FAULT for the way she was treated in 2008,
That feminism's man-hating problem is not a patch on its woman-hating problem,
And that most ideological cloaks are used as disguises, not as labels that accurately tell you what's under them.
A person's biological sex is usually (but not quite always) physically evident. Such a thing as CAIS does exist (very rare however). CAIS persons look completely female, but are actually XY. They can not have children. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complete_androgen_insensitivity_syndrome#Prognosis for some details.
By your logic people should be required to announce their sexual preferences (gay, straight, lesbian, etc) in advance. That crazy, but true.
Um, what? How does "my logic" of NOT announcing my pronouns require that people have to announce any damned thing about themselves before opening their mouth?
I went to Georgetown University in the 80s. I cannot recall a single time “race” was an issue to anyone. We all respected each other as GU students. Ok there were jabs about the Hoya basketball jocks maybe getting “lite” academic load. But other than that nothing. No “gender” issues either. I a Republican Catholic —partied at alternative clubs with rainbow colors and trans and gay ppl. In conservative Washington DC. It blows my mind how 30 Yrs later college campuses are not recognizable. The agitprop and racial over focus has led to a nasty sickening division not “unity”. We in the 80s were far more evolved and unified than the totalitarian climate of today. Orwellian “new speak”. Coerced “seminars” and Imposed “confessions” of racial prejudice like some kind of Maoist Camp. If someone were to call me Racist because I am Caucasian? I would sue them for slander. The same as if someone called me an animal abuser or a child molester and I am not. The culture on college campuses has been taken over by racial extremists. It STARTED with the inane and pathetic “Safe Spaces” movement. It was tolerated. Then celebrated. Suddenly instead of integrated dorms we needed black only dorms. The idea of that is so Racist in itself. People today mouth the MLK quote about character over
Color and they actually DONT BELIEVE IN IT ANYMORE. They give “character” the heave Ho. I have 3 Nieces and one Nephew teenagers. I pray that their parents do NOT send them to college. It’s a cesspool of indoctrination and CLOSED MINDS. They would be better off working anywhere or going to trade
School. The resignation letter of the SMITH college alum literally made me sick to my stomach. What she details- the never ending belittling of a human being due to “race”‘by the very ppl who purport not to be “racist” is a hot mess of vile dysfunction. GOOD FOR YOU JODI SHAW. BRAVO! How dare they subject you or anyone to their fatuous hypocritical madness. And that is what it is- madness. Sickness. Disease of the soul & spirit. The no safe spaces toxic goo spilled beyond the Universities. Now it coats big business, networks, creatives, hollywood, primary schools, secondary schools, government at all levels and BIG TECH. The slime is going down the throats of all —trying to choke any reasonable conversation, balance, perspective and FACTS. This- not “climate” is the biggest threat. To the United States Free Speech and freedom of expression. You know your leftism has gone too far when even FRANCE hardly a bastion of conservatism is pushing back on our erase the past and distort the present zeitgeist. It has to END. Who can stop it? I now see hundreds of smart savvy free thinking and conservative African American young ppl on TIK TOK self branding as “BLACK WHITE RACISTS” because if they don’t agree with BLM /INC. THEY are called “BLACK RACISTS”. Follow that? Sad right? Yes. It makes me SAD to see it come
To this. I despise and condemn the j’accuse hysteria of the left and the corruption and abuse of “Race” as THE definition of
WHO WE ARE as human beings. I have faith -so much faith in the Christian African American community I see also on TIK Tok speaking up for the more Universal moral ideal of Gods Family being of all colors and looking to character as the vastly and proper denominator of our human worth and place. In the end- I feel their messaging will correct what radical Caucasian (mostly non religious) leftists have wrought at Universities and all aspects of modern life.
Refusing to sign an NDA is what courage looks like in 2021. Kudos to Jodi Shaw for speaking up. She does a favor to all of us irrespective of race, age, gender, religious denomination or anything.
People should be treated with respect, not as abstract concepts. The neo-racists sound super unlikeable, surprised how this stuff goes on. I've never actually met one, unless all it takes is one, and suddenly the whole crowd follows suit out of fear? Very interesting. I wish Jodi luck.
As a Jew of a certain age, whenever I hear stories of compelled speech in a school setting, it reminds me of the times when it was common to force Jewish students to recite Christian prayers at school. Not that long ago, a friend of mine who attended the Horace Mann School back in the 1960's told me how he would have to attend chapel everyday, and even though he was Jewish, he would recite the prayers and sing the hymns as he was afraid of getting in trouble. I thought we left those days behind us but I guess they have been reconstituted in the context of race.
My comment is WOW!!! That took courage.
Bari, hopefully you will see this comment which I have posted on July 23, 2022. I just watched Eli Steele’s new half-hour documentary about Jodi Shaw and the incident at Smith College. It is called “Jodi Shaw and the Racial Mask of Whiteness.”
Here it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whjsCX3dFxU
Eli is a wonderful filmmaker, as anyone who has seen “What Killed Michael Brown?” can attest. This new documentary is also a masterful piece of work, characterized by Steele’s slowly unfolding narrative style. This film deserves a wide audience. I came upon it by accident, because for some reason Jodi Shaw came into my mind and I wondered what she was up to today.
I’m asking you to please consider publicizing or featuring the documentary in some way, here on your Substack or on your podcast, as a follow-up to your reporting on Jodi Shaw. Otherwise, people who do not watch Fox, or who have active animosity towards Fox (they are legion), may miss this important and deeply relevant piece of documentary filmmaking. Eli Steele is a treasure. So is Jodi Shaw. The film broke my heart, infuriated me, and inspired me at the same time.
Thank you.
I am retired. I don't believe I could survive in today's work environment. I certainly know I don't have Ms. Shaw's courage. Supporting her effort is important.
Just finding this post, and wonderful comments here that I have already 'liked." I would add that there is an organization called FIRE that defends professors from just this type of anti-free speech activism currently run amok at certain liberal universities. I couldn't agree more that the intense focus on racial identity is the antithesis of what I was taught growing up in the 70s and 80s. People are people are people. I go to a church--a liberal Christian, 300 year old, Northeast congregational church borne from the Puritan tradition. The parishioners are 95% white. There are a few black families who are part of our beloved community. When the pastor delivers sermons that apologize for our "white supremacy," and when white parishioners stand up and confess their "micro-aggressions," I can't help but think that those black members never feel MORE separate and differentiated than when church leadership draws these lines that delineate based on skin color. (I felt this acutely when I brought our black foster son there once and the topic of race came up in a sermon.) The only upside that I can read into this extremism is that normal people will say enough is enough, and soon.
Cruel and Divisive indeed. I cannot wrap my brain around how many people of all races think that it's remotely acceptable for our educators to segregate our children into groups where they instruct the white children that they're oppressors and others that they are oppressed. Making white children feel ashamed of their immutable racial characteristics and instilling hopelessness and resentment in black and brown children are acts of cruelty that spring from Marxist tyrants. Tyrants who we've entrusted to teach and nurture our children but who are instead, abusing them! Yes, this evil indoctrination is child abuse and in my world the Department of Child and Family Services should sweep in and remove all these kids from these schools in the same manner that they'd remove abused children from abusive parents and caretakers.
The left is eating its own-not terribly surprising- I was a progressive until I actually taught in the inner city and man did I change my mind! You can’t possibly care about education and be a progressive- they are without a doubt the single biggest impediment to educational access and college attainment for -not surprised they are all in on antiracist critical race theory
Why are people in the field of Education so apt to jump on the latest far left bandwagon? It's dismaying as these are the supposed experts in thinking critically. Is it perhaps a fear of being regarded as not being open-minded enough?
I actually agree that she is a victim, but she was victimized by the faculty who preach that racism pervades everything and individual behavior and responsibilities count for nothing. The tenured faculty will not suffer anything from this event but the student in question will have narrowed employment chances. There are of course places that will regard her as a hero and welcome her with open arms.
I think it is fascinating that the NY Times picked up the story and wrote an article that was (1) prominent (on the front page), (2) balanced and sober in tone, almost as if someone had gone through it and carefully vacuumed out any language with emotional content, and (3) by allowing the facts to speak for themselves, implicitly damning of Smith.
So what got into them? They don't usually write articles that disclose false claims of racial bias. How did it get past the adolescent newsroom mob? Maybe there is a senior editor who went to Wellesley.
The article was so well done in terms of being balanced and factual that It made me reminisce about the NYT of old.
Also, for those who haven't seen it, the president of Smith wrote another letter to the community in response to Shaw's resignation letter. https://www.smith.edu/president-kathleen-mccartney/letters-community/2020-21/message-from-president-mccartney-feb-22-2021. It is more of the same (our commitment to racial justice remains as unyielding as ever--no response to the particulars except a general strongly worded denial and a statement that it was Shaw who asked for a large money settlement in exchange for "standard confidentiality provisions"). Note also that she does not dignify Shaw by uttering her name.
I think what this shows is that the president lives in a bubble in Northampton, and doesn't appreciate the power of Shaw's message(s) when viewed by an outsider; even by a liberal.
It's not just the substance of Shaw's message that is powerful but the impression she gives that she is a thinking, sober, individual who loves Smith and didn't want to take on the whistleblower role.
She is very skillful at communicating her position. In one video, she demonstrates how Smith is a little triangle that excludes rather than includes. She compares the paper stacks that represent the investigation of the 2018 incident and of her bias claims. This is theatrical in a good way and quite effective (at least for me). And now the NYT has given liberal thinkers "permission" to discuss the story, and even to concede that no racial bias was present (this one time at least in 2018), and that good people were falsely accused (among others, one low level employee suffering from Lupus), so Smith's position is even weaker. All very Interesting.
McCartney would be better advised to say that while she and Shaw disagree about some tactics, she always welcomes debate, and they have in common their love of Smith and learning, and thereby try to mend fences.
I wonder if all of this will affect applications. Who would want to be in such an atmosphere? Well I guess some people (McCartney for one). And maybe our other temples of learning aren't at this point much better.
And now we have, Bar's former colleague, Michelle (free speech) Goldberg at the NYTimes opining that attempts to stop our public institutions use of CRT to dehumanize more than half the population based on race is actually anti free speech. She does a hit job on Chris Rufo because he is working to get these issues before the Supreme Court.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/26/opinion/speech-racism-academia.html
Okay okay okay, crap on a crutch, I subscribed. If only because it is a relief to be able to say somewhere on the face of the Earth:
That I refuse to tell anyone my "pronouns" because they are self-evident,
That unlike biological sex, the whole notion of "gender" is bullsh*t and sliding from "if you are a girl, you can't do math" to "if you can do math, you aren't a girl" is not f*cking progress,
That intersectionality has been twisted from a badly needed tool to consider how different oppressions interact with one another to a way to refute the very existence of sexism,
That the great sin of the US is not its founding principles but the fact that those founding principles have yet to be applied evenly,
That there is a gap between the twins cliffs of race and color in this country, that there ARE Americans who fall into that gap (Jews, Italians, Turks, etc.), and that we are disliked precisely because we threaten the left AND right's desires to ossify those cliffs into permanence,
That the trust-fund brats who have taken over my beloved liberalism are just looking for people who are dark enough to treat like sh*t and pale enough that they won't lose their progressive cred for doing so,
That they have also created wokeism as a way to compete with one another for the tiara of Wokest White Person in the Room, to the detriment of people of color AND poor to working-class whites about whom they don't give half a sh*t,
That Sarah Palin, much as I can't stand her, was treated disgracefully, and that her radicalization into an ultra-right Trumper is OUR FAULT for the way she was treated in 2008,
That feminism's man-hating problem is not a patch on its woman-hating problem,
And that most ideological cloaks are used as disguises, not as labels that accurately tell you what's under them.
Anyhow, shut up and take my money, Bari.
A person's biological sex is usually (but not quite always) physically evident. Such a thing as CAIS does exist (very rare however). CAIS persons look completely female, but are actually XY. They can not have children. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complete_androgen_insensitivity_syndrome#Prognosis for some details.
By your logic people should be required to announce their sexual preferences (gay, straight, lesbian, etc) in advance. That crazy, but true.
Um, what? How does "my logic" of NOT announcing my pronouns require that people have to announce any damned thing about themselves before opening their mouth?
I agree. A person's name should be quite sufficient.
I went to Georgetown University in the 80s. I cannot recall a single time “race” was an issue to anyone. We all respected each other as GU students. Ok there were jabs about the Hoya basketball jocks maybe getting “lite” academic load. But other than that nothing. No “gender” issues either. I a Republican Catholic —partied at alternative clubs with rainbow colors and trans and gay ppl. In conservative Washington DC. It blows my mind how 30 Yrs later college campuses are not recognizable. The agitprop and racial over focus has led to a nasty sickening division not “unity”. We in the 80s were far more evolved and unified than the totalitarian climate of today. Orwellian “new speak”. Coerced “seminars” and Imposed “confessions” of racial prejudice like some kind of Maoist Camp. If someone were to call me Racist because I am Caucasian? I would sue them for slander. The same as if someone called me an animal abuser or a child molester and I am not. The culture on college campuses has been taken over by racial extremists. It STARTED with the inane and pathetic “Safe Spaces” movement. It was tolerated. Then celebrated. Suddenly instead of integrated dorms we needed black only dorms. The idea of that is so Racist in itself. People today mouth the MLK quote about character over
Color and they actually DONT BELIEVE IN IT ANYMORE. They give “character” the heave Ho. I have 3 Nieces and one Nephew teenagers. I pray that their parents do NOT send them to college. It’s a cesspool of indoctrination and CLOSED MINDS. They would be better off working anywhere or going to trade
School. The resignation letter of the SMITH college alum literally made me sick to my stomach. What she details- the never ending belittling of a human being due to “race”‘by the very ppl who purport not to be “racist” is a hot mess of vile dysfunction. GOOD FOR YOU JODI SHAW. BRAVO! How dare they subject you or anyone to their fatuous hypocritical madness. And that is what it is- madness. Sickness. Disease of the soul & spirit. The no safe spaces toxic goo spilled beyond the Universities. Now it coats big business, networks, creatives, hollywood, primary schools, secondary schools, government at all levels and BIG TECH. The slime is going down the throats of all —trying to choke any reasonable conversation, balance, perspective and FACTS. This- not “climate” is the biggest threat. To the United States Free Speech and freedom of expression. You know your leftism has gone too far when even FRANCE hardly a bastion of conservatism is pushing back on our erase the past and distort the present zeitgeist. It has to END. Who can stop it? I now see hundreds of smart savvy free thinking and conservative African American young ppl on TIK TOK self branding as “BLACK WHITE RACISTS” because if they don’t agree with BLM /INC. THEY are called “BLACK RACISTS”. Follow that? Sad right? Yes. It makes me SAD to see it come
To this. I despise and condemn the j’accuse hysteria of the left and the corruption and abuse of “Race” as THE definition of
WHO WE ARE as human beings. I have faith -so much faith in the Christian African American community I see also on TIK Tok speaking up for the more Universal moral ideal of Gods Family being of all colors and looking to character as the vastly and proper denominator of our human worth and place. In the end- I feel their messaging will correct what radical Caucasian (mostly non religious) leftists have wrought at Universities and all aspects of modern life.
Refusing to sign an NDA is what courage looks like in 2021. Kudos to Jodi Shaw for speaking up. She does a favor to all of us irrespective of race, age, gender, religious denomination or anything.
People should be treated with respect, not as abstract concepts. The neo-racists sound super unlikeable, surprised how this stuff goes on. I've never actually met one, unless all it takes is one, and suddenly the whole crowd follows suit out of fear? Very interesting. I wish Jodi luck.
As a Jew of a certain age, whenever I hear stories of compelled speech in a school setting, it reminds me of the times when it was common to force Jewish students to recite Christian prayers at school. Not that long ago, a friend of mine who attended the Horace Mann School back in the 1960's told me how he would have to attend chapel everyday, and even though he was Jewish, he would recite the prayers and sing the hymns as he was afraid of getting in trouble. I thought we left those days behind us but I guess they have been reconstituted in the context of race.
Judaism doesn't believe in proselytizing. The cult of CRT should take a leaf out of its book
I saw Jodi’s gofundme page is “under review”. 🙁