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Microcosm, Macro-Aggression and the Offended Generation
Townhall.com ^ | February 9, 2016 | Armstrong Williams

Posted on 02/09/2016 2:33:16 PM PST by Kaslin

Scores of dead white men glared back at them from the walls of the college dorm. The thought that some of those esteemed alumni could have actually owned their ancestors apparently haunted the dreams of some of the privileged, elite students at Yale so much that they took to the yard in protest. The dorms at Yale, they have declared, are no longer a 'safe space' for black students.

Not far away from Yale's New Haven, Connecticut campus, in rural York County, Pennsylvania, a twelve year old kid is dealing with the usual cruelties meted out by middle school kids, compounded with an extra dose of racial hostility. Fed up with the ongoing bullying, he writes an open letter to the school demanding redress:

To Whom It May Concern

Yesterday on the football bus coming from our football game a kid ... started saying racist things to me…he told me 200 years ago my ancestors hung from a tree and after he said that I should I hang from a tree. That made me super mad, so in the locker room I told him not to call me n----r or that I should be hung on a tree…I'm tired of boys messing with me because of my skin. I'm at my boiling point with this. Please do something about this because when I bring it to the office/principle you do nothing about it and I'm tired of the racism.

These two fragments represent the dimensions of race faced by a new generation of black Americans. On the one hand, they are evidence of the immense progress that has taken place in the country over the past sixty years or so. The very fact that there are significant numbers of black students at elite universities is a testament to that progress. That a twelve year old boy attending a public school in a predominantly white Pennsylvania county openly voiced his frustration speaks to his expectation that the grown-ups in the room must exhibit better leadership. That's progress too.

But we have regressed in some ways too. At the University of Missouri, students demanded (and received) the resignations of university administrators who they perceived as being inadequately responsive to their complaints about racial hostilities on campus. But their need to be coddled was so strong that even the ouster of the university's President and Provost were not enough. Their list of eight demands included the creation and 'enforcement' of a "comprehensive racial awareness and inclusion curriculum throughout all campus departments and units, mandatory for all students, faculty, staff and administration." Ironically, on the heels of this demand for a mandatory 'inclusion' curriculum, the black student activists then proceeded to ban white students who had joined in solidarity with their protests, citing the need for a black-only space for 'healing.' It begs the question of course - given all of the recent hostility - whether any white students felt injured and also need healing rather than more divisiveness. One wonders how, at a university whose student population is over ninety-percent white, such confrontational tactics will succeed in helping black students win over friends and influence sustainable change.

A group of 'poor,' 'righteous,' and indignant students at Dartmouth College took us back even further. They actually invaded what should be the safest space of all at a University - the campus library. They barged into the library as other students were studying and assaulted white students, hurling despicable racist epithets which have been widely publicized and do not bear repeating. It also goes without saying that this group of rash, immature youngsters need to immediately apologize to the students they harmed and seek to make amends. Or they should be suspended or otherwise appropriately disciplined by the University.

At the end of the day, these recent incidents are not really about attempting to achieve more inclusion or redressing age-old racial wrongs. They are actually about the 'offended' generation expressing its' inherited right to be coddled, entitled and accorded group privilege based on the assumed mantle of victimization. They have unfortunately grown up on a steady diet of liberal media hogwash that finds a bigot behind every door to achievement, a racial slight in almost every utterance which challenges their world-view. But above all they have come to expect that the world owes them something.

Belief in an engineered "equality" to the exclusion of freedom of thought and speech leads inevitably down the road towards fascism. Appealing to authoritarian intervention in a bid to guarantee outcomes almost always leads to disastrous consequences. Real equality doesn't mean everyone gets the same things, or even has access to exactly the same opportunities. It means that no institution - whether government or university - is biased in favor of one group or another. Because, as the lessons of history have taught us, 'equality' without freedom is utterly useless.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial
KEYWORDS:

1 posted on 02/09/2016 2:33:16 PM PST by Kaslin
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To: Kaslin

Move those black Yale student to any of the safe spaces along Congress Avenue where the only white face they will see will be the corpse of the unfortunate person who wandered into the ghetto.


2 posted on 02/09/2016 2:37:58 PM PST by MIchaelTArchangel
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To: Kaslin

This current crop of snowflakes has taken on Coal Oyl’s (Olive Oyl’s father) response to every annoyance: “You owe me an apology.”


3 posted on 02/09/2016 2:39:14 PM PST by sparklite2 ( "The white man is the Jew of Liberal Fascism." -Jonah Goldberg)
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4 posted on 02/09/2016 2:40:27 PM PST by DoughtyOne (the Free Republic Caucus: what FReepers are thinking, 100s or 1000s of them. It's up to you.)
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To: Kaslin

I don’t see anything in here about the Knockout Game.


5 posted on 02/09/2016 2:54:46 PM PST by kaehurowing
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To: Kaslin
To the perpetually aggrieved and offended, I have but one thing to say:
6 posted on 02/09/2016 2:55:27 PM PST by Ancesthntr ("The right to buy weapons is the right to be free." A. E. van Vogt)
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To: Kaslin

These lads and lasses are being led down the garden path of “Never Win.”

They don’t have to hang out on that garden path, but oh let one start speaking up to that effect, and that needs to be a brave person indeed because otherwise he or she will get harassed out as an Uncle Tom or Aunt Thomasina.

People have to either accept that there is a God who addresses unrepented wrongs in the end, or else go mad with the passion for vengeance. And this is not just a problem at these schools. Sadly it is a problem right on FR.


7 posted on 02/09/2016 3:00:01 PM PST by HiTech RedNeck (Embrace the Lion of Judah and He will roar for you and teach you to roar too. See my page.)
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To: Kaslin

a school today banned the words ‘mother father, boyfriend girlfriend, husband wife’- it now has to be ‘significant other’ because they ‘don’t want to offend anyone’ (but apparently they don’t give a crap about heterosexuals being offended that they can’t refer to their wife or girlfriend as wife or girlfriend)


8 posted on 02/09/2016 3:13:09 PM PST by Bob434
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To: Bob434

“Offense” only occurs in one direction, don’t you know???


9 posted on 02/09/2016 3:28:30 PM PST by JBW1949
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To: Kaslin

I have a novel explanation for this mass delusional hysteria, anger, and paranoia on campuses; college kids have been smoking pot for a long time but only recently have they been exposed to “skunk weed”. This stuff is proven to cause psychosis in about 10-15% of heavy users and this pretty much accounts for what we are seeing.

http://www.nhs.uk/news/2015/02February/Pages/Super-strength-skunk-cannabis-linked-to-psychosis.aspx


10 posted on 02/09/2016 3:32:53 PM PST by cassiusking
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To: cassiusking

Makes sense


11 posted on 02/09/2016 3:38:55 PM PST by Kaslin (He needed the ignorant to reelect him. He got them and now we have to pay the consequences)
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To: Kaslin

Your rights end at their feelings.


12 posted on 02/09/2016 3:40:32 PM PST by SkyDancer ("Nobody Said I Was Perfect But Yet Here I Am")
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