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Nicholas Kristof Admits Illiberal Leftist Overreach In Purging Conservatism And Dissenting Views From Academia

Samuel HooperLeave a comment

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“I say unto you that likewise more joy shall be in Heaven over one sinner that repenteth, than over ninety and nine just persons who need no repentance” – Luke 15:7

In the email introduction to his Sunday column in the New York Times, Nicholas Kristof writes:

My Sunday column will probably provoke a number of you to roll your eyes or curse me under your breath. I’m sure many will disagree with it, but here goes.

[..] I’ll get a torrent of angry emails and indignant comments, but as you read this I’m actually in southern Africa reporting a story. If the criticisms get too bad, I’ll seek asylum.

Such are the delicate eggshells that commentators on which the American Left must tread whenever they even think about holding up a mirror to the behaviour of their own side and calling out flawed thinking or bad behaviour.

What is the subject of Kristof’s column? You can probably guess. With great trepidation, Nicholas Kristof is asking his readers to consider the possibility – just the possibility – that the atmosphere of seething intolerance for conservative voices or opinions on the university campus may be a negative thing with potentially harmful consequences.

Kristof writes:

After Donald Trump’s election, some universities echoed with primal howls. Faculty members cancelled classes for weeping, terrified students who asked: How could this possibly be happening?

I share apprehensions about President-elect Trump, but I also fear the reaction was evidence of how insular universities have become. When students inhabit liberal bubbles, they’re not learning much about their own country. To be fully educated, students should encounter not only Plato, but also Republicans.

We liberals are adept at pointing out the hypocrisies of Trump, but we should also address our own hypocrisy in terrain we govern, such as most universities: Too often, we embrace diversity of all kinds except for ideological. Repeated studies have found that about 10 percent of professors in the social sciences or the humanities are Republicans.

We champion tolerance, except for conservatives and evangelical Christians. We want to be inclusive of people who don’t look like us — so long as they think like us.

I fear that liberal outrage at Trump’s presidency will exacerbate the problem of liberal echo chambers, by creating a more hostile environment for conservatives and evangelicals. Already, the lack of ideological diversity on campuses is a disservice to the students and to liberalism itself, with liberalism collapsing on some campuses into self-parody.

One can already imagine thousands of triggered New York Times readers spitting out their morning coffee and clicking away from Kristof’s column in disgust at having their worldview and prejudices challenged instead of flattered.

And Kristof continues in a similar vein:

Whatever our politics, inhabiting a bubble makes us more shrill. Cass Sunstein, a Harvard professor, conducted a fascinating study of how groupthink shapes federal judges when they are randomly assigned to three-judge panels.

When liberal judges happened to be temporarily put on a panel with other liberals, they usually swung leftward. Conversely, conservative judges usually moved rightward when randomly grouped with other conservatives.

It’s the judicial equivalent of a mob mentality. And if this happens to judges, imagine what happens to you and me.

Kristof goes on to recommend to his readers a number of prominent American conservative personalities to follow on social media, so as to get a taste of arguments and perspectives which may otherwise have been long ago purged from Facebook timelines and Twitter streams. Again, this is a good thing – other publications have preferred to ensconce their readers deeper in the bubble by publishing hysterical lists of “fake news” publications which cannot be trusted because they do not reflect the Democratic Party’s view of the world.

And he concludes:

I fear the damage a Trump administration will do, from health care to foreign policy. But this election also underscores that we were out of touch with much of America, and we will fight back more effectively if we are less isolated.

When universities are echo chambers, they become conservative punch lines, and liberal hand-wringing may be one reason Trump’s popularity has jumped since his election.

It’s ineffably sad that today “that’s academic” often means “that’s irrelevant.” One step to correcting that is for us liberals to embrace the diversity we supposedly champion.

This blog has not always been a fan of Nicholas Kristof, having only recently taken him to task for comparing the American Left’s coming endurance of Donald Trump to the agonies of somebody suffering from addiction and receiving treatment through a 12-step programme.

But as a reader pointed out at the time, the people who need to hear this message are not likely to accept it from people like me and blogs such as this, with a proud tradition of beating up on “liberal” intolerance and the Cult of Social Justice and Identity Politics.

Nicholas Kristof is clearly one of their own, however, as evidenced by the fact that he thought it was appropriate to compare surviving the Trump administration to attending AA. When somebody with otherwise impeccable social justice credentials like Nicholas Kristof questions the culture and dynamic on the American university campus, people might actually listen, and so one cannot entirely dismiss his work.

Overall, this is a positive development. Nicholas Kristof is a prominent and celebrated left-wing columnist and commentator, as well connected to the establishment as a writer can be. If he is now expressing reservations about the oppressive climate for academic freedom on campus, then there must truly be disquiet growing about the takeover of academia by the Cult of Social Justice and Identity Politics.

The Right cannot hope to win this fight on their own, but finally it looks as though we may be gaining a few unexpected allies. May many more follow in Kristof’s footsteps.

 

Postscript: At present, there are 93 comments to Kristof’s column, the majority expressing angry incredulity that anybody might think that hostility toward conservatism on American university campuses is in any way a bad thing. However, there are exceptions. One reader, a professor at a university I happen to know very well, writes:

An example: I am a professor at a university (Washington University in St. Louis) that brandishes “prestige” it doesn’t quite have—an Ivy League wanna-be. My web page contained some semi-controversial essays—arguing that science is a terrible career choice, that perhaps Summers’s ideas are worth consideration, “diversity”, “political correctness”, that some moral responsibility attaches to the movements that gave us the AIDS epidemic.

My essays, clearly marked as personal opinion, were censored—kicked off my university web page. As expressions of personal opinion, they didn’t belong in the classroom, and were never mentioned there. As thought-pieces on current issues, they are part of being a public intellectual, part of a professor’s job. Academic freedom? Not here.

As Yale University proved with the whole Halloween costume saga of 2015, Ivy League universities are often the worst offenders, so from that perspective Washington University in St. Louis is absolutely heading in the right direction.

Back in the real world, however, they are hurtling off a cliff, and threatening to take what is left of academic freedom down with them.

 

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Ann Widdecombe Is Right To Encourage Rebellion Against Political Correctness

Samuel Hooper6 Comments

18-year-old Sam would be horrified to hear 33-year-old Sam admit it*, but Ann Widdecombe is actually right more often than she is wrong – and never more right than when she recently gave an interview to BBC Parliament and veered onto the topic of political correctness.

(* As a 19-year-old lefty student at Cambridge, full of self-righteous assurance and moral superiority, I once accosted Ann Widdecombe in the bar of the Cambridge Union after the annual “This House Has No Confidence In Her Majesty’s Government” debate and no doubt made a complete idiot of myself in the process, though for some time afterwards it pleased me to brag about having supposedly confounded Widdecombe with my impeccable logic and well-rehearsed diatribe against the Evil Tor-ees.)

The BBC reports:

Political correctness is “silencing a great body of thought”, the 69-year old says, to the point where she wonders if we can still claim to live in a free society.

She worries that almost everyone is under pressure to keep their views to themselves, not just those with strongly-held political or ethical convictions

“You actually get bright, intelligent people that could hold their own anyway, saying to you: ‘Well, of course you can’t say that these days’. And I think: ‘Yes you can’.

“This is not the Soviet Union. You should not be constrained by state orthodoxy.

“You should be able to say what you individually think and if it is unpopular, you should stand your ground.”

And continues:

In such a climate, she says it is doubly important that politicians speak out.

“The only people who don’t have to (keep quiet) are the parliamentarians. We can say what we like. We can be against gay marriage, we can be against abortion, we can want to limit immigration – we can say what we like.

“The ordinary citizen is much less blessed these days. I’ve always said if you hold a view what is the point of holding it if you don’t stick by it.”

Widdecombe is absolutely right to emphasise the special responsibility which falls upon those with unpopular or minority views to actually air their beliefs so that unpopular ideas can be tested and either be found wanting and discarded or be acclaimed and more widely adopted based on their merits.

I have just come back from a friend’s Christmas party in a very fashionable part of London, a lovely evening, but one in which I was (for the second time this month) presented with the situation in which a fellow party-goer and friend-of-a-friend casually disparaged Brexit and Brexiteers to my face, automatically assuming that I would agree with their stance.

As happened last time, a virtual decision tree flickered to life in my mind. Do I do what the political blogger and ardent Brexiteer in me wants most, and dramatically out myself as a Leave voter before going on to deliver some barbed and witty put-downs of smug London-dwelling Remainers? If I do so, will it escalate into an argument which might be embarrassing for the hosts? Will it embarrass my wife? Is there a genuine opportunity to change minds, or is this just an opportunity to invite social ostracisation with no realistic potential upside?

On different days and in different scenarios and moods, I opt to go down different branches of the decision tree. On this occasion, knowing my audience, I deemed that there was no realistic opportunity to change minds or even plant the seeds of doubt, and so I changed the subject and ended up having a very pleasant conversation with the chap about other matters.

It is important to note that this friend-of-a-friend is a good guy in every respect – he is just lost to reason on one particular, highly important topic. And while I may not have been afforded the same courtesy had the situation been reversed, I think it is important for Brexiteers to hold themselves to higher standards of behaviour than some Remainers seem to be displaying in their sneering contempt of those who dared to vote their principles rather than their wallets.

On other occasions, I have taken the opposite approach and confronted idiotic EU-worship and criticism of Brexit with the immediate revelation that I am a eurosceptic Brexiteer and that anybody intending to insult Brexiteers in my presence had better be packing something more powerful than smug, idiotic, failed talking points from Stronger In. The last time I took this approach, a couple of weeks ago, the person concerned physically moved her seat a couple of inches further away from me, and frosty silence reigned throughout dinner.

Aside from casual interactions with friends (who no doubt feel duty-bound not to dismiss me out of hand because of our shared history) I have had zero success talking to Remainers in social settings with any degree of success, regardless of the approach I choose. But I am increasingly coming to the opinion that on this subject, as Ann Widdecombe says, “you should be able to say what you individually think and if it is unpopular, you should stand your ground”.

Of course there will always be times when getting into a heated political debate at somebody’s wedding reception is not the right course of action. But having now witnessed how a fairly representative sample of professional young Londoners feel about Brexit and Brexiteers, I think that these people urgently need to hear dissenting voices – if not to change their minds (for such a feat seems impossible) then at least to make the point that there are intelligent young professional Londoners out there who do support Brexit and whose political philosophy consists of something more than vacuous, superficial internationalism and a readiness to believe pro-EU propaganda and apologetics.

And whether the subject is Brexit or any of the issues falling under the suffocating blanket of social justice and identity politics, now is not the time for Brexiteers, conservatives, free speech supporters or other modern day heretics to stay hidden in the closet. Not with so much at stake.

Some of the most illiberal movements in society right now – the establishment’s rearguard fight against Brexit, the trampling of free speech under the jackboots of the Cult of Social Justice and Identity Politics – are fuelled by ignorance of and antipathy toward those who dissent from the leftist orthodoxy. Those dissenters such as myself, living deep behind enemy lines in places like central London, almost have a duty to show that Brexiteers, anti-SJWs and other latter-day thought criminals are more than the two-dimensional caricatures painted by screeching left-wing propaganda outlets like the Guardian and Independent.

95 percent of the time, this may be a lost cause. But once in awhile it may lead to a conversation, and even to a changed mind. Was swallowing my tongue and changing the subject in the face of lazy Brexit criticism the right decision this evening, given that the payoff for me was an hour of pleasant small talk and the knowledge that I helped perpetuate ignorance on such an important subject? Probably not.

Next time I am confronted with the Brexit/Social Justice-in-a-social-situation decision tree, I shall hold my ground unapologetically. Henceforth, the price of airily expressing half-baked political opinions in my presence, in the arrogant expectation that everyone present will concur, will be a thundering response from me which might make even Ann Widdecombe proud. Not only when I am feeling particularly up for a debate, but every single time, even when I would rather have a quiet, conflict-free evening.

That much is the least that I can do – that we all should be doing – for the causes in which we believe.

 

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Tales From The Safe Space, Part 50 – University of Maryland President And Students Vie For Coveted Victim Status

Samuel Hooper3 Comments

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Waah, waah, waah

What happens when SJW students and their university president become locked in a social justice victimhood showdown, each trying to claim offence and present themselves as having been somehow harmed by the other in a gruesome yet compelling display of whinnying, childish immaturity?

The University of Maryland shows us exactly what happens.

Campus Reform reports:

University of Maryland President Wallace Loh inadvertently outraged liberal students by using Spanish while pledging to protect illegal immigrant students, a move deemed “offensive” to UMD’s immigrant population.

Much of Loh’s annual State of the Campus Address was a “a clear call to embrace diversity,” according to The Diamondback, including a promise to protect illegal immigrant students on campus by barring immigration officials from campus if they don’t have a warrant and refusing to voluntarily share undocumented student information.

“These are the things that we will commit to, that we will do and will not do in order to create a safe and supportive learning environment,” he declared.

His repetition of the same statement in Spanish, however, raised eyebrows among some members of the crowd, even though he had employed a similar tactic in a campus-wide email last month in which he first outlined UMD’s intent to resist federal immigration enforcement efforts.

Student Senator Ashley Vasquez, for instance, complained that Spanish “does not represent the entire immigrant community here” during a post-speech Q&A, asking Loh if he would like to apologize for repeating his promise in Spanish.

Vasquez later told The Diamondback that she found Loh’s use of Spanish offensive because it implied that the only immigrants on campus are “Latinx.”

This is brilliant on so many levels.

Firstly, why make the comment in Spanish at all? Is anybody studying at the University of Maryland incapable of speaking English? (Hint: No) Is this part of a policy of general bilingual communications, signs, written and verbal instructions at the university? (Hint: No again). The only reason for President Wallace Loh to make such a gesture is that it affords him a quick and easy way to signal his own virtue, his acceptance of absolutely all kinds of immigration, legal and illegal, moral and immoral.

To see Wallace Loh then called out by a professional offence-taking student for oppressing immigrant students of other backgrounds by failing to pander obsequiously to their own native languages is in many ways inevitable. Just as straight gay men are often no longer considered sufficiently “oppressed” to warrant full coverage under the Social Justice umbrella, so it may soon come to pass that “Latinx” students, being so plentiful in the United States, find themselves summarily deemed relatively privileged and cut adrift as the SJWs go looking for rarer and more exotic immigrants to defend.

And if one accepts SJW logic, who can argue with the student’s complaint? Hispanic people are a rapidly growing demographic in America. In the Rio Grande Valley of Texas, where I have family, the Hispanic population far exceeds the white and there are some stores and businesses where I am disadvantaged as a non Spanish speaker. But in terms of how much their language is catered for in America, Hispanics are immensely “privileged” compared to, say, German, French or Mandarin speakers. The student is therefore doing what any good SJW student should do – casting aside the interests and concerns of a relatively privileged group and focusing on more “marginalised” ones instead.

But President Loh’s response makes this story even better:

Loh, who is Peruvian and a native Spanish speaker, did not initially address the question, but later responded to the accusations after a second student asked him to apologize, as well.

“I simply said that I completely support—I said in Spanish what I previously said in English,” Loh remarked with surprise. “Are you asking me to apologize because I’m speaking in Spanish, which is the first language I learned?”

Loh probably realises that he actually committed a bit of a culturally imperialistic faux-pas by translating his Ode to Undocumented Immigrants only into Spanish, thus suggesting that immigrants and illegal immigrants can only come from an Hispanic background. But he doesn’t want to back down, so instead he chooses to take public offence at the student for criticising him for speaking in his native language.

In other words, we have here a grown man and somebody who rose to the position of president of a state university flopping around on the floor like a wounded victim and playing the role of a wide-eyed innocent child whose ice cream was just stolen because rather than confess to a mistake, his social justice ideology commands him to always play the victim to get out of a tight spot.

Naturally the student was unimpressed with his deflection:

UMD senior Lauryn Froneberger apparently didn’t find Loh’s response sufficient, mainly because he did not concede that his use of Spanish was offensive.

“As a student you want to know that your university stands by you and won’t use language that sort of offends you,” Froneberger said. “And even if you let them know they offended you, I think it’s important to acknowledge that. I don’t think he acknowledged that at all.”

I’ve said it before and I will no doubt say it many more times on this blog – the Cult of Social Justice and Identity Politics is not about doing good or liberating people from genuine oppression. It is a first world, middle class cult of power, a virtual country club with its own finicky rules and seething, petty power struggles.

And this pathetic little exchange at the University of Maryland’s “State of the Campus” (ha!) address is just one of what will be many more tussles between students and faculty, both of whom drink the identity politics Kool-Aid and both of whom intend to use identity politics principles to bolster their own tawdry arguments and undermine their foes.

The University of Maryland’s own president is apparently unable to think properly in public or respond to a challenge when called out by a student in any way other than curling up into a ball and asserting hurt feewings victim status himself.

Where’s rock bottom again?

 

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The Cult Of Social Justice and Identity Politics Has No More Worlds To Conquer, Yet Still It Marches On

Samuel Hooper4 Comments

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There may be no more worlds for the regressive Left to conquer, but the warriors of the Social Justice Army still see enemies all around

This blog has spent some time explaining that the Cult of Social Justice and Identity Politics is far less about helping genuinely oppressed people and far more about a small, snarling pseudo-intellectual clerisy seeking to use the often dubiously legitimate suffering of various proscribed victim groups as a means of wielding power and influence over wider society.

It follows, then, that for this cult to perpetuate itself there must be a constant stream of wronged victims at all times, on whose behalf the social justice priests and priestesses can claim to speak. When your career and entire worldview is built on the bedrock of seeking to end “oppression”, one inevitably sees oppression everywhere and in the smallest of things. To acknowledge that we actually live in an historically free and prosperous era would be to admit that their services are no longer required – that their whole raison d’être is no more.

And this is why even now, when the fruits of SJW hyper-sensitivity, snarling authoritarianism and utter contempt for ideological agnostics lie strewn across the political landscape in the form of President-elect Donald Trump and a Republican-dominated Congress, that portion of the American Left which has fallen under the spell of the Cult of Social Justice and Identity Politics cannot admit wrongdoing or overreach, and refuses to change tactics or re-examine their mission.

This is why despite having lost the White House by racking up superfluous votes in liberal enclaves while actively chasing away votes in key swing states with their out-of-touch policies and narratives, the bulk of the American Left and the Democratic Party are unable to conceive of any other possible course of action than shouting the same shrill, divisive message even louder.

Ben Shapiro captures the essence of the problem in a great piece for the National Review:

For decades, the Left consistently put front and center its vision of an America in which Republicans were victimizers: Either they were evil racists, or they were John Lithgow–in-Footloose holier-than-thou sexual prudes, or they were old-style Mad Men sexists looking to shove women back into the kitchen. Celebrities helped push these narratives through the stories they told, the movies they filmed, the books they wrote.

And Americans accepted the critiques.

Americans accepted racial equality. Americans celebrated female empowerment. Americans went libertarian on sexual behavior.

And the Left had to go searching for a new civil-rights struggle with which to cram conservatives back into their “victimizer” cubbyhole.

There was, however, one problem: All the good civil-rights issues have been dealt with already. And so the Left, which focuses all of its efforts on social issues, was relegated to pushing crime-increasing myths about the evils of cops; the celebrities were forced to pretend that men peeing next to women was the next great Martin Luther King, Jr.–style struggle; Democrats were forced to march on their next target, not merely church involvement in state, but private beliefs of churchgoers.

And herein lies the biggest problem facing the American Left: America is the most tolerant country in world history. There are no more serious civil-rights struggles for the Left to push. In fact, the Left now pushes against civil rights in its ignorant search for the new struggle: Religious bakers must be destroyed if they won’t bake a cake for a same-sex wedding; young girls must be forced to go to the same bathroom as middle-aged men, hosts on HGTV must be policed for belief in Scripture regarding sexual sin.

No wonder Americans reacted by telling the Left to shove it.

That phenomenon could very well continue. The Left has run out of aggressors to target; instead, they’ve become the aggressors, self-righteous morality police dedicated to wiping out dissenting thought. Americans aren’t up for that sort of thing. We think we’re pretty tolerant people, and, by and large, we are. Trump won, at least in part, by refusing to kowtow to the Left’s newest social crusades, in word if not in deed.

And Shapiro’s conclusion may well prove prophetic, unless the American Left change course:

In Die Hard, villain Hans Gruber misquotes Plutarch: “And when Alexander saw the breadth of his domain, he wept, for there were no more worlds to conquer.” The Left will never recognize that simple fact — and so they will push ever onward, steadily encroaching on liberty and driving a blowback they cannot comprehend.

There may be no more worlds to conquer, but the Left is strangely unwilling to disband its standing army – or rather is unable to do so, knowing that their electoral coalition of competing special interests and designated victim classes is only held together so long as there is a clear Enemy Oppressor to fight.

Having helped to achieve civil rights, women’s equality and gay rights, the American Left should now be beating its swords into ploughshares, hanging up the social justice armour and generating a tide to lift the boats of all Americans (including the maligned white working class), not only their favoured interest groups.

Hint: this might have something to do with trying to solve the great political question of our time, as frequently mentioned on this blog.

But they can’t. There are too many greedy over-powerful generals to feed and reward with war spoils, and these generals (the leaders of the various social justice movements) in turn must keep their troops happy by providing them with bounty in the form of political victories, legislative accomplishments and tangible real-world perks – including those which encroach on individual freedom, as Ben Shapiro notes.

Thus the American Left has become an unstoppable social justice juggernaut, perpetually seeking out new offences to take outrage over, in order to give the troops something to do and keep the fractious coalition together a little longer.

Even if Democratic Party leaders could see the folly of their present path (and the re-election of Nancy Pelosi as House Minority Leader clearly shows that the vast majority still do not get it) they would be powerless to change course. The unfolding slow-motion car crash is not pleasant to watch. As Ben Shapiro notes, the fury of the American Left (and the British Left too, to a slightly lesser extent) is “driving a blowback they cannot comprehend”.

While plenty of Donald Trump supporters may spend their leisure hours percolating in an online ideological echo chamber, their necessary interaction with a broadly large-L Liberal media and culture means that they are at least constantly aware of the existence other political viewpoints. Conservative college and university students often learn how to debate, defend and refine their ideas through having them constantly challenged and disparaged on campus.

Not so for the Left. Depending on geography and occupation, it is entirely possible for many on the Left to go for long periods (interrupted only by the odd traumatic microaggression experienced when venturing beyond their safe space or carefully curated social media feeds) without ever bumping into the Other America at all. Judging by the ongoing howls of outraged incomprehension, some on the Left only ever glimpse this America once every four years, at presidential election time.

This is why the American Left is unlikely to change course, even now. When your view of the path ahead is skewed to the side so that you cannot see the iceberg field directly ahead, the first light impact may not persuade you of the need to stop or change course. Nor may the second, slightly more jarring collision with reality. And only when a massive head-on collision holes your social movement and political party beneath the waterline does the folly become truly apparent.

 

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Virginia Schools Butcher The English Literature Curriculum To Appease Social Justice Zealots

Samuel Hooper2 Comments

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Humanity’s intellectual and artistic horizons must not be limited by the delicate sensitivities of society’s most easily-offended members

It has happened again – another oversensitive, censorious American school district has suspended the works Huckleberry Finn and To Kill a Mockingbird from their high school curriculum pending a full review of the two novels’ artistic merit versus their supposed offensiveness. And this time, all because of one solitary parental complaint.

The Guardian reports:

To Kill a Mockingbird and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn have been suspended from the curriculum in some Virginia schools, after a parent complained about the use of racial slurs.

Harper Lee and Mark Twain’s literary classics were removed from classrooms in Accomack County, in Virginia after a formal complaint was made by the mother of a biracial teenager. At the centre of the complaint was the use of the N-word, which appears frequently in both titles.

The woman who made the complaint said her son struggled to read the racist language, telling the Accomack County public schools board: “There’s so much racial slurs and defensive wording in there that you can’t get past that.” The challenge also appears to be motivated by the current political landscape in the US, as the mother told the board: “Right now, we are a nation divided as it is.”

What a pathetic person, and what terrible parenting. If her son “struggled to read the racist language”, it is only because he was deliberately made fragile. Made fragile by his own parent(s) and by the society in which he grew up, which constantly, wrongly taught him that sticks and stones may break his bones, but words can kill him stone dead.

The danger is that by bowing to these petty, whinnying requests for censorship, our overall society is dragged down to the level of the weakest and most intolerant members. Little Timmy can’t read this book without weeping and being triggered, so now nobody can read it.

Are we really to shuffle books in and out of the school syllabus according to how sensitive people feel following a presidential election? Is a book’s inherent worth subject to fluctuate according to the changing political fortunes of the Democratic and Republican Parties? This is ludicrous.

As this blog has argued numerous times, the “N-word” has no power to harm beyond that which we give it by pretending that there is no difference between using the word in anger and clinically discussing it in a classroom, court of law or television news broadcast.

And there is a difference. Being called a nigger is not tremendously pleasant. As a mixed race young man (like the child whose insufferable parent demanded the ban), I have had occasional direct experience myself. But this is a world apart from reading or hearing the word in the context of studying a great work of literature. And people who are unable to make this distinction should not be allowed to hold the rest of society back by virtue of their self-inflicted fragility.

 

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