An interesting comment on the latest Dalrymplean exercise in institutionalized humiliation at Harvard:
Chief Seattle said...
Hazing by another name. Lots of frats require prospects to undergo painful or humiliating treatment before they can join. The army has basic training, Hollywood has the casting couch. Years ago, Kennedy would have humiliated fresh recruits about how to hold the salad fork and speak French. Now it's groveling at the diversity altar. Not quite as productive, but just as effective for that esprit de corps that will take them from their first internship to their final revolving door payday.
If true, then the chief beneficiaries of political correctness would be straight white men, since they are the only ones allowed to be bullied. That would be ironic.
And if you look at who makes the Forbes 400, it's hard to falsify it.
But, I don't know. Here's Tom Wolfe on lemon sessions at Yale's Skull & Bones society. The flavor of humiliation seems different, more impersonal, less effective.
The difference is that you can attain plenty of academic and extracurricular success at Harvard (or its peers) without paying any attention at all to the ritual humiliations of political correctness.
ReplyDeleteAside from one or two academic subjects, you can entirely bypass this nonsense in your coursework - cultural diversity course requirements can be met by studying classical Chinese or Japanese culture, the extra-curriculars that set you up for career recruiting or grad school have no PC component, and one is free to ignore the various consciousness raising workshops and identity politics activities.
At least for now it is more like the processions of flagellants in Medieval Europe - the participants love to make themselves suffer, and will look down on your for not joining them in their self humiliations, but you can do quite fine while ignoring them. Of course, if you criticize them too loudly and publicly, then you may be subject of a 2 minute hate.
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ReplyDeleteRoundup of Book Reviews of Nicholas Wade’s A Troublesome Inheritance
http://occamsrazormag.wordpress.com/2014/05/06/roundup-of-book-reviews-of-nicholas-wades-a-troublesome-inheritance/
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My fellow Native Born White Americans
ReplyDeleteMeet your new South Asian Overlords:Preet Moody
The Blessings of Diversity!!!
You are gonna really really hate being a racial minority in post-white "America"....was Fantasy Football worth it?
Bill Blizzard and his Men
I'm sure that any confessions ("gays creep me out"; "I'm afraid on the subway when most of the people in the car are black") could never come back to haunt these young men and women after they've achieved some success on Wall Street. It's not like anyone could secretly record these sessions for later release. Thank goodness we live in a country where that type of Stasi activity is completely unthinkable.
ReplyDeleteIn the 90's when I was still working real jobs, diversity training was treated as exactly that - a right of passage. New hires would be teased about having to go off to diversity camp or team building camp. The latter was always a thinly veiled way to make the girls feel like one of the boys. Once the new guy had his diversity training, some mild ribbing would follow and he was in the club.
ReplyDeleteThere was also something else. If you showed backbone and pushed back during the training, you got a lot of respect from your peers. Too much and you got red flagged, but just enough and you established your dominance. I got lucky with a few female coworkers by being querulous at diversity camp.
Similar, but different. I think the more appropriate analogy is the old-time traveling Baptist revival, where people would gather at the tent and be encouraged to confess their sins and repent. Rereading your excerpt of Wolfe, that’s what I’m reminded of. Or Alcoholics Anonymous; or Catholic sin confession (but that’s not really public). After all, one commenter a couple topics ago mentioned we are witnessing the birth of new religion.
ReplyDeleteHazing’s primary intent isn’t to make you confess your sins, but to challenge you to see if you are up to the standards of the club. Confessing your sins is secondary to proving you have the physical/moral/intellectual chops to enter the club. The more exclusive the club (Harvard Skull and Bones, US Paratroopers, Mensa) the higher the bar. To get religion, the bar isn’t all that high, you just need to confess your sins and accept your salvation in Christ (Christianity), just say there is but one God and his name is Allah and his one Prophet is Mohammed (Islam), or that we are all equal and good and White Privilege is to blame (your Harvard example) and you’re in.
And if you look at who makes the Forbes 400, it's hard to falsify it.
ReplyDeleteKennedy School grads generally don't become business magnates.
At any rate, the Forbes 400 is a lagging indicator, and there's been significant ethnic change in the Forbes 400 over the past few generations.
I think the Maoist humiliations of Political Correctness are very different from traditional initiation rituals/hazing. There is remoulding in both, but the latter are intended to test and ultimately strengthen the recipient, not destroy them.
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteThis Harvard ethnomasochism session is just our political class (our Dear Rulers, their Donor Class which owns Enemedia-Pravda which shills for our Dear Rulers, and the Marxist "intellectual" professoriate) training itself in the methods its members use to ignore and destroy the American middle class, so that the political class can get on, unobstructed and unchallenged, with its transnational globalist project of reducing Americans to nothing more than membership in the global cheap labor pool.
This phony "confessional" session might accurately be named AT.101, Introduction to Mastering Anarcho-Tyranny.
Liberal Logic:
ReplyDeleteIt's outrageous for Clive Bundy to compare welfare with slavery!!!
What Donald Sterling said is tantamount to plantation slavery!!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gYqZhdxxAA
ReplyDeleteScottish independence
“There is nothing quite so enjoyable as a huge, living, daily increasing grievance that does one no practical harm.”
ReplyDelete- Anthony Trollope, “Can You Forgive Her”
I'd argue this is NOT hazing. There is no group of White guys making guys "prove" their toughness, loyalty, etc. to join the group. I.E. higher costs to join, like Frat pledging etc. The group has value because not just anyone can be part of it.
ReplyDeleteRather, it is a ritual exclusion of power from the inner circle of White women, gays, lesbians, and NAMs who now make up America's ruling class.
Just look at the White House. You don't get more ruling class than the White House staffers. And who makes up the White House key staffers and Obama Cronies/Cabinet Members?
Susan Rice. Samantha Power. Eric Holder. Anita Dunn. Above them all, the "real President" Valerie Jarrett.
What has happened is a sea change. Sure there are old-line guys around, like Rahm Emmanuel, but those guys are toast. The up and coming White guys need to be married to Black women to get elected Mayor of NYC. Or pose as Conquistador Americans to get elected in LA. The newer crop of politicians is all Women/NAMs in the Democratic Ruling Party, our forever ruling part.
Outside Hillary Clinton, who is the main challenger for President in 2016? Elizabeth Fauxcahontas Warren. With a side order of Marco Rubio.
If you look at how power slots are occupied in politics, in government, in corporations, in everything but go-for-broke startups, its White women, NAMs, gays, and lesbians pretty much all the way.
The Kennedy School ritual hatred is akin to Whites only Lunch counters in the 1950s. Exclusion.
A hint: Hazing here has more in common with US military basic training than with Skull and Bones. Here the Preterite and the Elect alike are subordinated to the New World Idea.
ReplyDeleteAfter all, if the Prep School level of Elect training is not already in
place, the Harvard experience is likely to be wasted. If it is, the candidate will Understand what follows-
It'd be like the British saying, 'gee, we are sorry for taking over Palestine. We'll atone for what we did by inviting a whole bunch of Jews to come and settle.'
ReplyDeleteMuch good it to the Pallies.
"the inner circle of White women, gays, lesbians, and NAMs who now make up America's ruling class."
ReplyDeleteGeez Whiskey, you left one little group out. More of a tribe, really.
Yeah, sure. I can see it now: "take two steps forward if you're Jewish."
ReplyDeleteDoes that make sense? If indeed whites committed the great 'historical sin' of stealing and trespassing onto Indian land, how does it help Indians to have their ancestral land be furthered conquered and settled by more Hispanics, more Africans, more Asians, more Arabs, more Hindus, etc?
ReplyDeleteLibs are even stupider than they know, in bringing up the Indians.
The Indians fought back. They would have scalped any of their fellows who talked like liberal surrender-monkeys do. Open-borders and multiculturalism would've gotten Indians staked out for the ants.
The Indians are a great role model for American-Americans, so I hope the libs keep stupidly bringing them up.
The more pure Indians today (said purity being a holy thing in the eyes of liberals, the morons) are the descendants of the least multicultural, least open-borders Indians back then. The most multicultural, open-borders Indians back then disappeared, became something else.
The only important component of hazing is never transacted publicly but you could say, "Attending HKS is like being in the comments section of a nytimes.com article"
ReplyDelete(or Huffington, Jezebel, whatever)