Carole Sherwood introduces the concept of microaggressions, explores what critics have to say about them and finds out why they have created such controversy. Read on…
Microaggressions: In the Eye of the Beholder
by Carole Sherwood, psychologist Cambridge University was recently embroiled in controversy over a Report & Support’ website launched for the anonymous reporting of microaggressions by students and staff. The university claimed this was to encourage a ‘safe, welcoming and inclusive community’ but academics expressed concern that they could be reported for ‘offences’ such as raising […]
Joanna Williams of Cieo dissects The Woke University
In The Woke University, Joanna Williams argues that this institutional model has replaced educational goals with a mission to inculcate particular values
Prejudice Under The Microscope: The Implicit Association Test (Part II)
The latest report from the team at Minding the Campus from part of the White Fragility Symposium, provides a forensic account of the flaws in concepts central to the ‘white fragility’ assertion: Supporters of the ‘unconscious racism’ thesis essentially argue that negative associations held by whites about non-whites, as revealed by the race IAT: (a) […]
Unconscious Bias Training Is Divisive Nonsense
Many public and private institutions and workplaces are turning to alleged anti-racist training materials and providers that endorse the idea of unconscious bias, which is itself based on a scientifically discredited concept of implicit association tests. The result, argues Carrie Clark at Spiked Online, can only be more resentment: The test seemed to show that […]
Let kids be kids
The “unconscious bias” theory is detrimental in the fight against racism, argues Ella Whelan: It’s this fetishisation of white self hatred that has propelled figures like Robin DiAngelo and the theories around white fragility to fame. There’s nothing a white liberal likes more than being congratulated for recognising the sins of their fathers – even if […]
Racial sensitivity training turned me into a confused racist
Lloyd Evans recounts his experience of an online training programme designed to teach ‘racial sensitivity’: I couldn’t help concluding that two messages were being conveyed. First, that office workers should treat each other with courtesy and friendliness. Secondly, that many white people are almost entirely devoid of these virtues. Read more Photo by You X […]
The dehumanising condescension of ‘White Fragility’
Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility, argues John McWhorter, is “the prayer book for what can only be described as a cult”: In 2020 — as opposed to 1920 — I neither need nor want anyone to muse on how whiteness privileges them over me. Nor do I need wider society to undergo teachings in how to be […]
On ‘White Fragility’
Robin DiAngelo’s bestseller has “a simple message”, argues Matt Taibbi: “there is no such thing as a universal human experience, and we are defined not by our individual personalities or moral choices, but only by our racial category”. White Fragility is based upon the idea that human beings are incapable of judging each other by […]
White Fragility Training and Freedom of Belief
What happens, asks Helen Pluckrose, when an ideology holds that beliefs other than its own are harmful and oppressive of others, and fails to recognise that it too is a belief system in itself? It is essential that employers recognise that the concepts of Social Justice, whiteness, white privilege and white fragility all depend upon […]