There is no depth of stupidity that academics will not plumb.

Combining the academic’s penchant for performative virtue with stupidity, ridiculous is a word that can barely contain what is happening in today’s universities.

I ran across a great example as I was cruising the information superhighway that Al Gore invented back in the 90s.

(Also, this is basically a florid and performative version of the language parents use to console children who've just lost a hockey game or flunked a test)

— Jonathan Kay (@jonkay) April 28, 2023

Apparently when faculty send emails from the University of British Columbia the signatures at the bottom include boilerplate language that both acknowledges that the University exists on “unceded territory of the Syilx Okanagan Peoples,” and then appears to pat people blessed with melanin on the head in the manner of Stuart Smalley declaring that they are “good enough, smart enough, and gosh darn people like them.”

Pathetic.

The first part is plainly performative. As far as I know, the university has no intention to hand the land back over to the Syilx Okanagan Peoples,” whose name itself was invented by academics like them. The indigenous residents of the area certainly didn’t call themselves by such a name, and the absurd spellings in the Roman alphabet were entirely an invention of White settlers.

So what is the point of this? It is the equivalent of thanking the spirit of the deer you killed for your evening dinner. Nice, symbolically I guess. But the deer is still dead and the Syilx people aren’t getting their land back. I  would agree wholeheartedly that the indigenous peoples of America got a really raw deal centuries ago, but unless we are going to do an accounting of every justice and injustice going back to Cain and Able that is water under the bridge.

The Ode to Blackness is similarly ridiculous, if not more so.

Want to guess how many people of African origin there are in BC?

1%

One percent.

There are more than 3 times as many Filipinos. 15 times as many people of Asian descent. Blacks were hardly a large group of oppressed people in British Columbia…ever.

The United States has a fraught history of racism and oppression of Blacks, but British Columbia barely existed as a European outpost during that time period.

So why the performance?

“You are seen. You belong. You are beautiful…”

Wretch. I could throw up in my mouth ingesting this treacle, and any self-respecting Black person should too.

I have a relative I have met a few times who, each time, told me how her heart overflows with love for me and how special I am.

That, too, made me wretch because it is a performance intended to deceive me, however well meant. It puts me off. It is phony. And declarations of love that are phony are disgusting.

That is what this is. “Black people” aren’t beautiful any more than “White people” are. Individuals can be beautiful or ugly, build legacies or tear them down. Races? Haven’t we learned by now that racial categories don’t tell us anything important about the individual’s character and contributions to society?

Apparently not. At least if you are an academic whose only hammer is the race card, so everything has become a nail.

This epidemic of apologizing for crimes you have never committed must stop. It is insane, is spreading, not calming social discord, and it is ritual humiliation.

Pathetic pic.twitter.com/Tbxw6IncK7

— Clown World ™ 🤡 (@ClownWorld_) April 18, 2023