Posted on 05/01/2015 11:16:19 AM PDT by rickmichaels
Now, more than ever, racial tensions are off the charts. While it’s true that the majority of cases hitting the news are concerning the police and minorities – primarily African-Americans – this case has nothing to do with law enforcement of any kind; just rules of grammar, punctuation and capitalization enforcement.
UCLA houses a group called Call 2 Action: Graduate Students of Color, and they’re upset. They allege ‘several incidents,’ but the most notable is a tendency (in their eyes) of professor of education and information, Val Rust, to correct the grammar, punctuation and capitalization of the assignments handed in by minority students. According to this group, correcting a black student is deemed ‘micro-aggression.’
Staging a sit-in during another meeting of the class (only five of the 25 in attendance at the sit-in even being students in the class, which has 10 students), the group penned the following to the college: “A hostile campus climate has been the norm for Students of Color in this class throughout the quarter as our epistemological and methodological commitments have been repeatedly questioned by our classmates and our instructor. [The] barrage of questions by white colleagues and the grammar ‘lessons’ by the professor have contributed to a hostile class climate.”
While the main target of the sit-in was Professor Rust, the students had issues with ‘UCLA’s handling of racial issues that went far beyond just one classroom.’
Rust said in a statement to his colleagues (as he is lecturing out of the country at the moment), “I have attempted to be rather thorough on the papers and am particularly concerned that they do a good job with their bibliographies and citations, and these students apparently don’t feel that is appropriate.” He further stated that he meant no offense to any minorities in his class.
According to Kenjus Watson, the organizer of the sit-in, one such correction was Professor Rust telling a student that she shouldn’t have capitalized ‘indigenous’ in her assignments. Kenjus claims this correction was ‘ideologically-motivated.’
Professor Rust admitted likely making matters worse by not taking the side of a minority student who was in an ‘argument’ with a white student. The minority student had argued with the white female student that she had no right to feel oppressed. Rust hadn’t agreed with either side; simply choosing to stay out of it.
Rust explained, “Two weeks ago, a Student of Color and a white female student got into a big discussion. She wants to use Standpoint Theory [a method of analysis based on the idea that all knowledge is subjective and based on one’s position in society] in her dissertation, and the Student of Color told her she had no business claiming that she was a member of an oppressed group.”
“[The white female student] came back saying there are all kinds of oppression. I likely did not handle the situation well, because I chose not to stop the discussion between them, so it went on for quite a while, and the Students of Color apparently interpreted my silence to mean I wasn’t supporting them,” Rust continued.
UCLA’s minority community, however, reiterates that it’s upset about more than just Rust’s class. There was recently a report claiming that minority professors are consistently the victims of discrimination and racial bias, and urged the university to ‘strengthen its bias incident response procedures and hire a Discrimination Officer.’
“What we’re speaking to is part of a larger, institutionalized culture on campus,” said Kenjus Watson in a statement.
By liberal logic, the solutions to differential equations and quantum S-matrices should then differ according to race?
Sorry, liberals, education in the REAL arts and sciences are for adults.
With every BS racist incident, more and more people are taking the "boy who claimed wolf" approach and ignoring them, yet they think they are making progress.
Because of Black PRIVILAGE.
Affirmative action.
Would someone please explain to me how in the heck proper grammar is racist? Is it not the point of higher education to educate students and not rubber stamp ignorance?
Why am I held to a higher grammar standard? Why is gutta street talk glorified? Answer that and you know what’s wrong with this country.
Students of color...don’t expect us to be smart...kkk says we are ok with that.
Sometimes the idiot fools self identify. Amusing, isn’t it!
Wasn’t this the case where we first learned of ‘micro aggression’?
Spelling and grammar corrections are racist acts? I guess if you want to spell cat ‘katt’ or write ‘Him and I gone to the strip joint’, you should if you are black.
Let’s see... run a 40 in 5 seconds or dunk an orange ball into a metal hoop 10’ in the air and you can go to college...’even if you spell cat ‘katt’’
That's what I was going to post.
:)
Why is gutta street talk glorified?
See #10 as to why “proper” grammar is considered “racist”.
Graduate school, no less.
We can’t have black kids spelling properly and using good grammar. They might get out of the ghetto. We must not allow that.
Anyone who supports that is obviously racist.
Some years back I taught writing, English as A Second Language (ESL) and Freshman English courses in a large state University in Texas. The evidence of the collapse of our educational system among all races (except the Asians) was all around.
White students from ‘good’ school districts weren’t taught basic grammar or spelling because phonics and the mushy ‘write what you feel and don’t worry about technical competence’ was the in-thing in educational circles. One senior tenured professor encouraged black students to write in Ebonics as a substitute for standard English as it was their cultural identity. Apparently cultural identity trumped any attention to preparing these students for work in the real world outside the college.
And the Administration imported professors whose claim to fame was ‘deconstruction theory’ where the meaning of words as set down by an author wasn’t to be based on some standard definition, but could be determined by the reader as he/she ‘experienced’ the text.
When liberal folks call for more money for education in order to rescue the students, I have to laugh. Students got more and better education in one room schoolhouses than in all the huge bricks and mortar universities filled with computer equipment.
The fight for victim status.
Ah don’t feel no ways tared.
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