#rather than how entrenched of a myth it is

[shirkers2018dirsanditan]

medical disparities for black people exist regardless of class not because racism exceeds class but because medicine as an institution was inherently constructed to validate class hierarchies in society, including and perhaps most importantly race. race really began to take shape and become what we understand it today at the same time that medicine became what we understand it today, and medicine was called upon to give legitimacy to race. the project was a medicalization of the social. and so these disparities, while i’m sure personal bias has its role, are largely about the inherent character of the medical institution. the problem is endemic. and in my opinion, it detracts from this discussion and other discussions on disparities to pretend as though class is a non-factor between black people because medicine is one of the original architects of the race myth.

#our present racial discourse is deeply essentializing. it often insists on the objectivity of race #rather than how entrenched of a myth it is #and that has created a lot of problems including another thing that i have been thinking about #to be continued lol

[susansontag]

a core theme a surprising amount of people miss in kiki’s delivery service is the ambivalence between tradition and modernity. kiki is a folkloric character, a witch who is entrenched in not only the magic of a past mythical time but who is deeply embedded in customs and traditions. she leaves home at the pre-ordained time for her people, dressed in traditional garb, with the illusion that she will find a neat spot in a new town and bring charm and magic to the locals.

but she is entirely out-of-step with basically everything around her as soon as she arrives: she can’t navigate the traffic with her (handed-down) broom, almost causing a car accident; she envies her fashionable peers dressed in the latest fashions and feels self-conscious; everyone is perplexed, rather than enchanted, to see her. they seem vaguely to have heard of witches but quickly go back about their busy day walking down the busy modern streets. almost a total contrast to kiki’s rural, traditional town (the rural being paired with traditionalism and custom vs the urban city being the site of modernity and emerging technology etc, very classic choice). she gets a place to stay based entirely off the kindness of a stranger; no one feels they owe her anything simply due to her being a witch and this leaving the nest to offer her services elsewhere being what she’s meant to do.

no wonder kiki wonders where she will find her place in this new world that is not at all what she’d expected. people always point out how kiki’s delivery service offers us a portrait of depression, especially in the context of losing passion for something one loves, especially after it’s made one’s job. but this angle of tradition vs modernity feels important to miss, because it’s undoubtedly one of the fundamental factors behind kiki’s eventual dissatisfaction: what does she, with her magic and traditions, have to offer this new, emerging technological world?

no one has made a place for her here. she dresses differently, is unaccustomed to how those her age behave, and her most fundamental and magical gift -- flight -- is no longer an extraordinary practice reserved for those of myths and legend; hasn’t she seen the fantastic new airship! she is invited to take a ride on it at one point and declines. 

if I remember correctly this is one of the last events that takes place before her fall into depression, a portion of the film characterised by kiki losing her ability to fly (and thus her magic). if even this doesn’t amount to much in this new reality, what does she have to offer? what makes her unique and worthy? the answer to this question is down to interpretation I suppose, though I’m guessing kiki realises she just has herself to offer. her customers like her, they return to ask her for favours and work because she is personable and good at what she does. she can’t offer them something fantastical and extraordinary anymore, but hopefully she herself is enough. and I think those feelings are also very potent for anyone who has struggled with feelings of lack of self-worth and purpose in their lives, just as much as getting tired of something you used to love. what about when the world gets tired of you? what do you do then, when life moves on without you?

#I suppose it's also a relevant theme when we consider post-war japan #but that's a v culturally specific reading that I can only just grasp the edges of #kiki's delivery service #studio ghibli #moth.txt #1k #2k #3k #4k

[filmstudentrambles]

Saltburn and the Liberal Myth that Rich People are Bumbling Idiots 

“If you could press a button that would give you a great deal of money, but it would cause someone you don’t know in a distant part of the world to die, then you would have a good model for how our current economy works.”

-Welcome To Nightvale episode 105

Saltburn (2023) is another quirky ‘eat the rich’ movie that is entrenched with liberal myths. The most predominant myth being that rich people are simply stupid and confused. That naivety and simple-mindness leaves them vulnerable to being exploited  punished by the clever, lower-class protagonist. Like other ‘eat the rich’ movies including The Menu (2022) and Parasite (2019), Saltburn plays into the ridiculousness of wealth disparity. The Catton family lives in a giant estate, while protagonist, Oliver Oliver, presents himself as solidly lower-class. Every shot of the Catton’s sprawling estate seems to say, “Look! All this wealth and lavishness, it’s SO excessive! The Catton’s don’t need this much! They don’t even know how to use it correctly.” That’s the liberal fantasy that ‘eat the rich’ movies love to parade out. Wealth disparity isn’t the problem, the real class issue is that some people don’t deserve the wealth they have.

There is this idea that rich people are naive and out of touch. Their sheltered lifestyle prevents them from developing the shrewdness and ‘street smarts’ of poorer individuals. That people who earn their wealth are good and noble, but their children are now lazy, selfish snobs. This idea that those who start from a place of poverty and oppression can rise above and become a member of the wealthy ruling class is truly one of capitalist Amerika’s most devious lies. It protects the current system from meaningful scrutiny by falsely implying that anyone can become rich and that those who become rich deserve to be rich. It ignores that fact that the wealthy ruling class only achieve their status through the oppression of other people. It implies that those who ‘do their own dirty work’ are good, but those who have since become removed from it, by being born into wealth, are bad. The issue, of course, is that this level of wealth disparity is bad regardless of how one achieves it.

Saltburn (2023) presents human relationships as transactional. Further positioning it as a truly liberal film which cannot imagine a world without capitalism. Barry Keoghan offers an unsettling portrayal of the film’s protagonist. Perhaps the audience’s unease at Keoghan’s performance comes more from seeing themselves as Oliver, rather than Keoghan doing anything actually disturbing. To see plainly, how every relationship Oliver has is superficial and cultivated purely for personal gain is upsetting for those who cannot imagine their existence outside of capitalism. The horror comes from knowing that there is something wrong, but not having any solution. For Jacob Elordi’s role as love interest and son of the wealthy elite, Felix Catton offers a nice contrast to the repulsive desperation that Oliver exhibits. Felix exhibits the cool, sophistication that the wealthy elites are known for. A kind of swagger that only comes from power that poorer folk will never possess. However, Elordi is conventionally attractive and Felix comes across as charitable, and that excuses the major character flaws we see unfold throughout the film.

None of this is to suggest that Oliver is a good person. The film���s ending reveals just how opportunistic Oliver actually is. This revelation weakens the film overall and undermines anything that might have been accomplished earlier. The film spoonfeds audience a play-by-play of how the events actually unfolded. Even without this hamfisted ending, the film falls flat. What is the purpose of Oliver? What is the purpose of this portrayal of rich naivety? The scenes of shocking depravity seem unmoored. As though the creators of this film wanted desperately to say something of substance but couldn’t come up with anything.

Like most ‘eat-the-rich’ films, Saltburn crumbles at the end because what is there to say if one isn’t prepared to actually confront capitalism? Saltburn wants to be a scathing criticism of the current system, but it doesn’t. The film does not examine the relationships between worker and capitalist, between rich and poor, between Oliver and Felix, in any meaningful way. Saltburn provides some shocking sequences and a promising plot, but has all the revolutionary power of liberalism. 

#saltburn #film analysis #liberalism #wealth disparity #eat the rich

[asad143]

Why is everyone wrong on internet

The internet is a vast and diverse space where people from all walks of life come together to share their thoughts, ideas, and opinions. However, it seems like everyone is wrong on the internet. From political debates to scientific discussions, everyone seems to have their own set of facts and beliefs. This phenomenon is not unique to the internet, but the vastness and immediacy of the online world amplify it to a significant degree. In this article, we will explore why everyone is wrong on the internet and how this affects our society.

The anonymity of the internet also plays a significant role in why everyone is wrong on the internet. When people are anonymous, they are more likely to engage in aggressive and abusive behavior. This can lead to online harassment and bullying, which can make it difficult for people to express their opinions freely. In addition, anonymity can make it difficult to hold people accountable for their actions, which can lead to a lack of accountability and responsibility.

One of the main reasons why everyone is wrong on the internet is the abundance of misinformation and fake news. The internet has made it easier for people to access information, but it has also made it easier for false information to spread. Anyone with an internet connection can create and publish content without any fact-checking or editorial oversight. This leads to a proliferation of false information that can be difficult to distinguish from the truth.

Another reason why everyone is wrong on the internet is the prevalence of confirmation bias. People tend to seek out information that confirms their existing beliefs and ignore information that challenges them. This leads to the formation of echo chambers where people only interact with others who share their views. In these echo chambers, people reinforce their existing beliefs and become more entrenched in their opinions, making it difficult for them to see the other side of an argument.

Social media platforms have also contributed to the problem of everyone being wrong on the internet. Social media algorithms prioritize engagement and keep people engaged by showing them content that they are likely to agree with. This creates a feedback loop where people only see content that confirms their existing beliefs, leading to the formation of echo chambers. In addition, social media platforms are designed to be addictive, leading people to spend more time on them and reinforcing their existing beliefs.

The lack of critical thinking skills is another reason why everyone is wrong on the internet. People tend to accept information without questioning its accuracy or validity. This can lead to the spread of false information and the perpetuation of myths and misconceptions. In addition, people are often swayed by emotional appeals rather than facts and evidence, leading to the formation of irrational beliefs.

The problem of everyone being wrong on the internet has significant implications for our society. It can lead to the spread of false information, the perpetuation of myths and misconceptions, and the formation of echo chambers. This can make it difficult for people to engage in meaningful dialogue and compromise, leading to the polarization of society. In addition, the spread of false information can have real-world consequences, such as the spread of conspiracy theories and the rejection of scientific consensus.

So, what can we do to address the problem of everyone being wrong on the internet? The first step is to be more skeptical of the information we encounter online. We need to question the accuracy and validity of information before accepting it as true. We should also seek out multiple sources of information and consider different perspectives on an issue.

In addition, we need to be more mindful of our own biases and try to overcome them. We should seek out information that challenges our existing beliefs and engage in meaningful dialogue with people who hold different views. This can help us to broaden our perspectives and understand different points of view.

Social media platforms also have a role to play in addressing the problem of everyone being wrong on the internet. They can prioritize accurate information and promote critical thinking skills.

[dogsliampaynedoesntinstagram]

Thought I’d add this quote from Pleasing’s launch statement: “We believe by exploring the contradiction around and within us we dispel the myth of a binary existence.”

It's fascinating to me that the same person could endorse both that statement and also the Exhale ad - which was very much rejecting contradiction and entrenching the myth of binary existence. It's not exactly surprising - people are complex and contradictory.

I think Harry probably would say that he wants to dispel the myth of the gender binary. But the question what does that mean for him? The Exhale ad set up men and women as opposites, had a very narrow version of what masculinity is, and suggested that men had to be masculine to be valid. That none of those set off alarm bells suggests that those ideas are not at the centre of what he means when he refers to the gender binary (or whatever is the language he would use for that). I think that's true even if it's signed off by his team, rather than him, because they would have an idea about what the centre of his concerns were.'

I wouldn't be surprised if we got more indications that for Harry the problem of gender is mostly about people being told that they can't do things because of their gender, rather than that they must do things because of their gender. But we only get hints at what's meaningful to him, how he feels, and how he understands the world.

#Oh Harry #I do find it very odd #that you would have a brand that says that you want to dispel the myth of the gender binary #and have your band wear gender binary uniforms

[buzzingswarm]

@imposingclaymore's story continues...

' Candyman. Candyman. Candyman. '

Even with the Entity's assistance in understanding modern languages, the mantra repeated upon his tongue felt foreign & stuck in his mouth not unlike the same ichor from the bottle his mother lovingly pressed against his lips so, so long ago.

And when he turned to meet the booming voice which called out his name, Tarhos understood how the ancient Greeks, long before his time, discovered their gods. The figure, shoulders draped in fur and with the exposed ribs of his chest which dripped with blood & honey, struck him as a visage of Dionysus adorned in a leopards pelt. He would have thought this man a king, surely, or some myth which grasped at his finger tips only to escape him.

It tantalized him more than the allure of violence in that moment.

Despite the knights apprehension to the world, the man made him feel safe. And when prompted to partake as a model, Tarhos felt strangely humanized — that he was seen as a person worthy of depiction, rather than a weapon.

Helmet set aside, the knight slowly nodded, and seated himself before the other.

Death and Candyman have always been involved in a scandalous relationship, much the same way that beauty and horror were. Tethered, because neither can exist without its other to compare it with, compare it to. But today, death can wait. For it was temporary to the point of redundancy, here in this phantasmal world, where the expectation was to endure cyclical suffering. It was common.

To be common was to be forgettable. And that was a sin whose price was too rich for Candyman's blood. Forgettable stories are not told in perpetuity.

Today, the old ways of immortalization needed to be called upon in order to leave a lasting mark. To capture a witnessed moment forever, by suspending it in portrait.

"A provocative subject like you," it surrounds them, his voice. Voices. As intense as a murmur right against the ear, as far as a gentleman providing personal space. Both, neither. "Will need no embellishments."

A ribbon of tree bark peels around the rustblood red of his hookhand, landing in a pile of its like: delicate curls of it about his elegant dress shoes. A naked canvas of pale, delicate wood was finally exposed after many minutes of fastidious shaving. Bees nestled into the nooks of the woodshavings, entrenching themselves as he, too, was entrenched. A gloved hand wiped away the dust, tracing invisible drafts along the seams of the trunk.

Dark eyes came up, over. Fixing to Tarhos, imposing him with the gravity that comes with being in their focus, to be taken wholly, and no detail left unchecked. Supple leather dips into the coat, bringing out a blunt, metal tool with an ornate handle. The first slice is taken from out of the tree's tender insides with it.

"But will it stay?" lowering his eyelids, but never faltering away from the haunted face of his muse, he spoke this thought.

#imposingclaymore #addressing the congregation. replies. #tbt. #survivors passing this tree later on: what the .. .. .

[ausetkmt]

The Guardian: Job discrimination faced by ethnic minorities convinces public about racism

Researchers believe they may have found the best way to convince the public that racism is a real problem and requires major change: tell them about an Oxford University study exposing discrimination faced by job applicants.

A groundbreaking project exploring how better to boost public support for action against systemic racism tested which messages best move people towards a more anti-racist position.

Reframing Race, a charity, tested dozens of arguments on almost 20,000 people and found highlighting research from 2019 showing ethnic minority applicants received less positive responses to job applications than white people, was the “blockbuster” in terms of making people more likely to agree that all races and ethnic groups are equally as capable as one other.

By contrast using well-trodden language about people “suffering” from “inequality” was less likely to convince people of the systemic problem and even sometimes backfired.

The need for better arguments was made clear by a survey for the study covering England and Scotland, which revealed widespread racist attitudes with 40% of people believing that “some races or ethnic groups are naturally harder working than others” and one in five think some races are more intelligent than others.

The research also showed it remained easier to get audiences to accept racism as a real and pressing problem than to get them to support particular solutions.

“If we want to end racism and entrench anti-racism it is critical to build public demand for deep and irreversible progress,” said Sanjiv Lingayah, report author and director of Reframing Race. “[This] shows there is still a way to go. The data shows significant attachment to deep-seated and debunked myths about ‘race’. More positively, the findings show that the public can understand systemic racism and that they can be rallied around far-reaching anti-racist solutions.”

The researchers found the message with the most potential was when people in England were told Oxford University researchers had applied for more than 3,000 jobs in the names of fictitious applicants, randomly varying the ethnicity, but keeping the skills, qualifications and work experience the same. White British applicants had to make four applications to get a positive response while ethnic minority applicants had to make seven.

“It is an almost watertight piece of evidence about the existence of racism in hiring,” the authors said. “The experiment ‘catches racism red-handed’. Naming Oxford University gives the results further credibility. And, additionally, the way that the fake CV ‘sting’ is outlined gives the message the feel of a compelling story – with plot, characters and a powerful ending.”

Other effective messages involved telling people about far worse maternal mortality rates for black women than faced by white women and even using a metaphor to describe racism as a birdcage which traps people all boosted public acceptance of racism as a problem.

An example of a message that made people less likely to think of racism as a systemic problem was one that said: “This country’s black and minority ethnic communities still suffer poorer outcomes across education, employment, health and in the criminal justice system. In order to achieve genuine racial equality, we must work towards an inclusive Britain in which we all feel valued, enjoy equal opportunities and share a common sense of belonging.”

The authors said “suffer” is “language of illness” and while it may provoke empathy “it does also suggest BAME victimhood rather than steadfastness and agency”.

#Job discrimination faced by ethnic minorities convinces public about racism #Racism in the uk #white supremacy #systemic racism

[socratetris]

New to Tumblies

Hello all, this account has already existed for awhile. Originally made to make fun of a specific "for girls" titled fighting game, and then reblogging anything I wrote on WordPress. Now I'm giving tumblr a go, because all my favorite video essayists are moving here after twitter was drenched in rat musk.

I write video essays about video games from a perspective of philosophy. But from the perspective that games are already philosophy just waiting to be expressed. Rather than trying to force a particular, famous philosopher onto a piece of media like some youtubes have done.

Been making video essays for about 7 years. I have published two books available on Amazon:

"Controller Revolution: Why video games are the future of philosophy" &

"LudoLectic: The gospel of games literacy"

I'm working on a few more books at the moment, and gearing my writing to be more about personal experiences. A little more gonzo.

I almost speak Japanese. I used to do Capoeira. I work in HR and Finance. I am autistic. I draw and sing... sometimes. I'm multi-racial, but also race is a socially constructed myth designed to entrench imperialist/colonialist power dynamics, so I'm also a racial anti-realist. I listen to too many podcasts; I will listen to your podcast. I am cishet, pronouns he/him/they - generally gender norms are not how I care to express myself. I'm Hatian... I have mixed feelings about zombies. And I need social media explained to me. I dont get it. Where do I go to ship sonic the hedgehog with spark the electric jester? I don't think they would like each other, but they might be good for each other, yknow? They should maybe date for only a few years.

#video games #video essay #autistic spectrum #author #philosophy #games #books & libraries

[mariacallous]

As the Putin administration struggles to field an army capable of holding occupied territory in Ukraine, state officials, propagandists, and pro-invasion pundits have resurrected historical analogies to notorious Nazi collaborator Andrey Vlasov in a campaign to discredit and intimidate Russians now fleeing mobilization. In a guest essay for Meduza, Dr. Jade McGlynn, a specialist in Russian memory and foreign policy at the Monterey Initiative in Russian Studies, explains how Vlasov’s memory has entered the Kremlin’s contemporary narrative and what it says about the course of the war.

Andrey Vlasov, the infamous Russian officer who switched sides to the Nazis during World War II, was executed by hanging in 1946. More than seven decades later, his specter still haunts Russian cultural memory, albeit drowned out by pobedobesie (Moscow’s hyperbolic Victory Day celebrations) and the Kremlin’s insistent efforts to straitjacket the tragic nuances of Russian history into a usable and unifying narrative. 

Speaking in 2012, which he decreed by executive order to be the Year of Russian History, Vladimir Putin argued, “The civil war still isn’t over for many people, and the past is extremely politicized. Our country needs some careful cultural therapy.” Instead of going to cultural therapy, however, Russia went to war in Ukraine in 2014. Seeking to reassert Russia’s ostensible right to buffer zones and Great Power status, Putin launched a full-scale invasion in February 2022, escalating a conflict that Moscow has framed using selective historical analogies — warped concepts that helped make the war imaginable in the first place.

The use of, and belief in, historical myths about Russia and Ukraine lay at the heart of the invasion’s early failures in the Battles for Kyiv and Kharkiv, deluding the Kremlin into thinking it could seize these cities with relative ease. The discursive return of General Vlasov as a hated figure reflects how Moscow’s political rhetoric and historical falsehoods have unraveled as its soldiers are driven back on the battlefield.

Vlasov created the Nazi-sponsored Russian Liberation Army, which had up to 800,000 former Soviet soldiers, mostly ethnic Russians. With the USSR’s demise came the rise of Russian ethno-nationalism and efforts to fill in the blank spots of Soviet history. Political figures like Boris Yeltsin and intellectuals like Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn dealt with the Soviet legacy by trying to externalize it from Russian identity. In Gulag Archipelago, for example, Solzhenitsyn evaluated not only Vlasov but collaborators generally through a nuanced, even sympathetic lens, foreshadowing the nationalist reassessment of Vlasov as a Russian patriot in the 1990s. 

But in the 2000s, as Vladimir Putin re-entrenched the Brezhnev-era’s Great Patriotic War cult, state-sponsored historical narratives once more depicted Vlasov as a villainous traitor whenever he or the Russian Liberation Army appeared in public discourse and popular culture (which was not very often).

When Russia annexed Crimea and sparked conflict in Ukraine’s eastern territories in 2014, Kremlin-affiliated media and politicians alike framed the fighting as a rerun of the Second World War, with Russian-speakers cast as Red Army soldiers battling banderite Ukrainians (a reference to the followers of wartime Ukrainian nationalist leader Stepan Bandera). Russian media outlets were happy to detail Nazi collaboration by Ukrainians and other nationalities (like Tatars and Chechens), but the same was not true for Russian treachery. For example, in an analysis of 3,509 comparisons between the 2014 conflict and WWII, Russian media and politicians referred to Vlasov just once. Reporters and the authorities compared the Russian opposition to Banderites rather than label them “Vlasovites,” avoiding anything that might besmirch Russia’s moral authority as heir to the Soviet Union’s Great Victory of 1945 and self-appointed defender of the war’s memory. 

Efforts to revise or reconsider Vlasov’s historical role must be understood within the context of the Kremlin’s battle against what it decries as “historical falsification.” Positive depictions of Vlasov are generally seen as part of broader attempts to rewrite history and undermine Russian memory and identity. Russia’s Education Ministry even stripped one scholar of his PhD for writing about the topic in 2018.

Since February 24, written references to Vlasovites have increased to levels that usually accompany the release of a popular new book on the subject. Some of the mentions are indirect references to the Free Russia Legion, a contemporary formation that by its own account comprises two battalions of Russian volunteers and POWs fighting for Ukraine against the Russian Army.

The parallels are obvious if imperfect. 

Invoking General Vlasov (and his fate as a traitor) is also a useful, indirect way to remind young men of the costs of collaborating with the enemy (still steep today). Thanks to recently adopted legislation, any Russian soldier who “voluntarily surrenders” during an armed conflict faces up to 10 years in prison, with “mobilization, martial law, and wartime” codified as aggravating circumstances. 

On social media, for example, prominent nationalist figures have branded Russians fleeing mobilization as Vlasovite deserters. Also, some reactionary news outlets have stressed the inextricable links between Vlasovites and Banderites. In fact, even before the February 24 invasion but increasingly so since, “patriotic” pundits have described imprisoned opposition figure Alexey Navalny as a Vlasovite, echoing the authorities’ allegations that he has committed various “memory crimes” including rehabilitating Nazism and offending veterans.

After criticizing Russia’s war on Ukraine, independent journalist Dmitry Kozelev received a flood of messages bearing the same text: “Only Vlasovites discredit the army.” But it’s not just the POWs and reporters who disparage Russia’s armed forces: military-focused bloggers and war correspondents have also shared vocal criticism, prompting the Kremlin to crack down recently on some of these writers, suggesting that the Putin administration may be losing some confidence in its own popularity (which has at times struggled to harness the unwieldy power of ethnic nationalism).

Russian ethnic nationalists could gain public appeal as Putin’s unifying “historical truth” shatters on contact with reality, but they’re unlikely to promote Vlasov or much nuance when it comes to the Great Patriotic War, and their support of the invasion probably ensures that the authorities will not brand them Vlasovites.

As ever in Russia, being on the right side of history is largely a question of being on the right side of politics. In today’s climate, Vlasov is firmly on the wrong side of both, and he remains beyond the bounds of acceptable debate. Just like in the USSR, this will remain true while the media focuses on Vlasov as an individual. It might not always be tenable, however, to invoke Vlasov’s collaboration while sidestepping attendant moral and philosophical questions that remain highly relevant today, such as the distinction between state loyalty and patriotism or the readiness to sacrifice large numbers of young men’s lives for paltry military gains.

[kerlonlol]

Verdun memorial

The motor for its construction was sorrow rather than an attempt to reach out to Germany even if there was recognition on the part of veterans that both French and German ‘common men’ had suffered at the hands of the politicians and officers that waged the war. In the immediate post-war years this memorial site was one that expressed national grief over the destruction of the war and mourning over the thousands of lives lost. And so at the site of the Douaumont fort a memorial site was built with a cemetery and ossuary. Yet, even after the first year of the war the terrain had begun to come to life as flowering plants and animals moved in. A landscape shredded by blasts, trenches and barbed wire, still heaving with unexploded shells and the unrecovered bodies of soldiers, was seen by war veterans as the only possible memorial to the suffering. The long drawn out deadliness of this battle, in which the front line barely moved, became synonymous with the horror of modern warfare and so presented a significant memorial challenge once the war ended in 1918. Two examples from the CRIC project show us what this means.įirst, we turn to the First World War and to the battle of Verdun in France, a battle which lasted 10 months and saw a total of more than 300,000 battlefield deaths with casualties comparably shared out between the French and German camps. So do memorials matter? Well yes, but not always in the ways we assume.Ī main question is the role of memorials in post-conflict reconciliation: do memorials foster reconciliation or do they prolong divisions and resentment? The answer that has emerged from our case studies is that memorials are not primarily about reconciliation although, after time they can be used for that purpose. We have learned that memorials evolve over time to suit new social and political needs. Our case studies in Spain, Germany, France and Denmark have identified the influential role of memorials and commemorations even decades after the events they were constructed to remember. Over the last four years, research for the CRIC project has focused on the wide ranging forms of memorial activities, how each is linked with distinct intentions and claims. So what roles can memorials play, how do they remain relevant and therefore important? When memorials become part of our surrounding landscapes and anniversaries are included in annual routines, it is easily assumed that memorials are unchanging. What’s indisputable is that both French and German forces lost a huge number of lives during this battle.As Armistice Day approaches, it is an appropriate time to consider how we choose to remember the past and what influence memorialisation can have on the way a society moves forward from trauma and loss. In reality, it’s unlikely that the soldiers were buried alive in the manner typically described by this common myth. Today, historians believe that a great deal of myth-making influenced the eventual construction of the Trench of Bayonets monument, which was built by an American patron. Under relentless bombardment, the soldiers had been effectively buried standing up, perhaps even while they were still alive. The bayonets were still fixed to their rifles. One of the trenches was discovered completely filled in, with only a neat line of bayonets sticking out of the ground. Years after the war, French teams exploring the battlefield uncovered the first clues of the horrific fate of this regiment. The 137th Regiment of French infantry was annihilated almost to the last man. The attack caught the French by surprise. On June 12, Germans unleashed a hailstorm of iron and lead upon French positions. In June 1916, this entrenched position was a part of Fort Douaumont, which the Germans desperately wanted to take. The most chilling place in this eerie landscape is by far the so-called “Trench of Bayonets.” The field of battle is today marked by the Verdun Memorial. In 1916, the nine-month battle of Verdun claimed over 300,000 lives, and left more than 300,000 wounded.

#Verdun memorial

[yournewfriendshouse]

to be perfect honest though folks, I’m really sick of this ‘reading will redeem you’ thing people seem to have adopted as like…the soul purpose of reading

like it is unarguable that reading can and has saved lives. I’ve watched and read and listened to too many stores of people who came across the right book at the right time and it changed their whole existence or way of thinking or literally saved them

but I’m so sick of the way people replace one god, one means of condemning people and raising themselves above another in morality with another

just as being a virgin or getting married or paying tithes won’t save your soul, neither the fuck will reading the right book

the problem I’m trying to articulate is that people often have done this in the past but in the last few years is that people keep making out that they choose the moral position because they’re smarter than evil people

and I’m so FUCKING sick of it

you’re not good because you’re smart! and you’re not smart because you’re good. the very notion of intelligence is fraught with bigotry, a genuine history of being used as an excuse to perpetuate atrocities, and just fucking wrong ideals and standards that are still being used fo this day.

this concept that is so deeply entrenched in our society is so fucked up, because it not only gives a lot of arseholes the means to think they’re superior to others; which is not what making right choices and fighting oppression is about at all (it’s literally the opposite), but it also gives people who continuously consciously choose evil to be given the out that it’s because they’re stupid.

and the flip side of that it’s perpetuating the myth that oppressors have put in place that disabled folk deserve to be disabled because lack of intelligence means lack of morality. That those who don’t have the education deserve to be trapped in poverty because they’re stupid, that people who are sick or disabled or just not as smart as other people deserve to be in that state in perpetuity. if only they read more, I’d only they did this or that or knew the right things, then tbeh would be able to lift themselves out of their circumstances. or, I don’t know, will themselves better with the strength of their fat brains or something

bitch I’ve read so fucking much in my life. but at this point I’ve forgotten so much of it! I hated half of them too! But I read them because I thought it was important. But I have several disabilities that make processing hard. And the ability to comprehend dense language and academic concepts of certain types is dwindling more every year. and before that my education wasn’t awesome anyway. it wasn’t the worst by any stretch, but none of my teachers were able to get the best out of me, there was no robin williams or whoever else to see the genius within or whatever the fuck, and I didn’t even know how much I was struggling, didn’t know that there may have been any help. thought it was just adolescent depression, and instead (or rather also) it was a whole pile of comorbidities and being queer in a fundamental christian environment; but even at my peak capability, when I could consume a few books in a day and do all kind of other human activities, I still struggled with so many things…and I’m like…middling. my situation isn’t abnormal by any means; it’s the same or worse for so many people in the world with addition to access, time, language barriers, all that stuff, which the same people who are supposedly fighting to make less of an issue…are using to make themselves feel better because if they’re smart enough or strong enough or right enough, it means they’re not…I don’t even know, what’s so scary about being stupid? other than you know getting treated like you people treat those you feel are less than yourselves

I’m very much not anti-intellectual. people who can, should be studying everything and discussing things and learning and growing. (and we all can do these things to varying degrees)

and I adore the written word. love it almost more than visual arts, actually. but. people who are stupid or less intelligent are not morally inferior. people are evil or bad because of conscious choices they make not because of what they do or don’t know or their ability to process complex issues, understand big words, pronounce them, or use them in a sentence

you are not good because you’re smart. and being good has fuck all to do with intelligence.

your intelligence isn’t a fixed state. you can lose it. it’s not actually as intrinsic to a person as people make it out to be. your thoughts are chemicals and electricity and they’re not going to get you to heaven or a higher state of being.

either every human has intrinsic worth and is worth fighting for, or…they don’t…

*this is written in the framework of western christianity because that is the context that I’ve been drenched in, and am still working on unpicking from myself. I don’t feel adequately able to frame this for other religions, spiritualities or philosophies, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t still a problem

#disability tag #seriously sometimes I want to wear a t-shirt that says ‘dare to admit you’re stupider than you would like’ lmao #admitting I’m not that smart has been a very agonising process #it feels…so vital and important #and it’s not like the world around us is going to argue with that #so many people have told me I’m smart #it’s one of the first things they say #maybe because I’m not shockingly good looking or something so they feel I need the reassurance? #but I was crying over Shakespeare one day #literally jsut struggle with it so much lmao #and came to the realisation that I jsut don’t have to keep trying to pretend I’m some intellectual when I got solid cs my whole fucking life #I’m introspective and often have a way of looking at things that people find helpful and I’m glad #but I’m not that smart #and that is actually ok #it’s not going to be what kills me #and it won’t be what damns me #like to be clear it’s not an excuse or cop out #it’s just not something to measure the worth of mused or anyone else by #actually autistic #intellegence is bullshit

[b00ket]

Hi World building time ❤️

Theres no fucking way after 20 years of lackluster rule and poor handling of a deadly disease would there NOT be a revolution. I’ll assess each section of Vesuvia individually to say how each handled Lucio’s rule and some better explanations to each. Along with some head canons. (Ngl some head canons deserve their own post to get people’s opinion ill make those later)

Heart District:

So this district holds the wealthy influencial people. Not much to say on protests or intentional corruption— in fact this place was most likely the source of corruption. Nobles are just as influential in shifting Lucio’s interests in Vesuvia as his consul.

Any funds or upkeep dedicated to places like the Flooded District were instead funneled into the Heart District. This place is leech for funding.

Heart District is the least diverse out of all parts of the city, with the usual monolith of the rich it is no doubt the rich intentionally widened the gap between other parts of the city and them, using Gold Grave to intentionally separate the poorer South End.

Visually a magical place. Very clean and red has since been a color of bad luck since the plague as discovery of what gave the red dye its vibrancy.

Education and Literacy are in the highest percentage here. (90% literacy) private teachers are a standard here. Along with plenty of public libraries.

The leech problem of the canals may be a myth if you live here. The eels show more of a threat (don’t worry they’ve hired people to handle those)

Center City:

The middle class and poor are in a mix here. The middle class being closer to the Heart District.

Lucio’s spies he most likely employed to learn about thoughts of descent and punish accordingly no doubt taught the people living there to stay quiet. Protests and gripes of the Count were shifted from verbal to books, art, music, and slang to refer to certain things. (Ex. The Parrot -> Count, Hounds -> Spies)

However the thoughts of unhappiness have only grown and become more concentrated as funds were even being shifted from them to the Heart District.

Education and Literacy are in a lower percentage here but still rather high. (40% literacy) The occasional private teacher was nothing unusual in the richer families, but most knowledge of reading and writing is now based from person to person.

Goldgrave:

Don’t have many thoughts on this one.

The creativity of this section of the city made spies ineffective.

Any pulled funding only made their creative ways to lampoon the Count stronger. Most books and music expressing anti government sentiment most likely came from here and spread. Literacy is higher here as well. (50% literacy) but these people are usually older and don’t have the patience to teach young thespians how to read a script

A sizable portion actually enjoys the lack luster rule (these are typically people who were deeply entrenched in the underground Red Market)

These people actually enjoyed the public executions. They were dramatic! And who doesn’t love drama.

South End

As shown in the game, sneaky and heavily dislike the government.

Similiar to Goldgrave, spies didn’t work.

Lack of funding only strengthened the illegal trade of goods that brought their own funding to this part of the city. (One reason they didn’t reach the same fate as the Flooded District)

The sense of loyalty and interconnectedness is strong here. Everyone knows the other.

Symbols are everywhere on the walls. While these could be mistaken for the graffiti of the Flooded District, these mean something to those involved in the Red Market. Signs for shop owners who are involved, places to leave deliveries etc. litter the walls.

Canals are often covered in boards for walking but guards remove these (just to fuck with people or to maintain law? Who knows)

Most new immigrants find a place here before moving to other parts of the city, though some do stay.

Temple District

The giving of money offerings and reliance on the rich religious Heart District citizens have left this part of the city well off despite being surrounded by the Flooded District and ash beach.

Religious leaders were Vesuvian red, showing the gods are on their side for them to avoid death. Many hold a negative opinion of Lucio, his disrespect of the dead being the core reason (he let Valdemar go ham with corpses and fed them to the plague beetles)

The poor are ignored. Though certain buildings host food banks and homes for the poor, they are growing more rare as Heart District regulars are pressuring for the removal of the homeless from the streets.

Flooded District

These people are bitter. They used to be the Shopping District, funding flowed through freely and they were well taken care of. The people here have a concentrated hatred for the Count.

Portions of the District are flooded, builders deciding to go up to avoid the sea floor. The constant erosion from waves threatens the stability of many of these buildings.

Makeshift bridges line the streets and some have been made to walk across buildings whose floor is below sea level. The water is teeming with leeches and eels (a blood drained rotting corpse or two is not uncommon.) and is generally dirty.

Funding is non existent here. And with the new areas of natural economy and trading being shifted away from them, its starting to resemble Ash Beach more by the day as more people abandon it. (To move to places of the city with more opportunity)

The plague wiping out large portions of the population. Increased moisture from flooded waters made the infection worse. Rodents and roaches quickly becoming a common sight. Parts of the district are said to be haunted, people with too much time on their hands go to investigate.

Graffiti is everywhere here. Abandoned houses lined with the vandalism of young people. Symbols are here as well, mostly obsolete as they were to mark off which places had infected/dead people (head-canon: not everyone wanted to be shipped to death island). Newer ones mark which buildings are too unstable to build or take refuge in.

Ash Beach

The smallest of all sections. Only a little larger than the lazaret.

The wiki does a great job of describing this place actually.

Also covered in graffiti with a distinctly younger style. There’s no meaning to them so they are more wild and colorful. Some magic circles have been made in the walls and floor. Most of them used to exude heat to keep warm.

Gangs made of children are common here. Has a Peter Pan vibe.

Less friendly gangs of sailors and washed up people also are here.

A bit more a communal energy to how people live.

[robertreich]

Who Benefits From Racism?

Jamie Dimon, chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, took the knee last week before cameras at a branch of his bank. Larry Fink, CEO of giant investment fund BlackRock, decried racial bias. Starbucks vowed to “stand in solidarity with our black partners, customers and communities.” Goldman Sachs chairman and CEO David Solomon said he grieved “for the lives of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and countless other victims of racism.”

And so on across the highest reaches of corporate America, an outpouring of solidarity with those protesting brutal police killings of black Americans and systemic racism.

But most of this is for show.

JPMorgan has made it difficult for black people to get mortgage loans. In 2017, the bank paid $55 million to settle a justice department lawsuit accusing it of discriminating against minority borrowers. Researchers have found banks routinely charge black mortgage borrowers higher interest rates than white borrowers and deny them mortgages white applicants would have received.

BlackRock is one of the biggest investors in private prisons, disproportionately incarcerating black and Latino men.

Starbucks has prohibited baristas from wearing Black Lives Matter attire and for years has struggled with racism in its stores as managers accuse black patrons of trespassing and deny them bathrooms to which white patrons have access.

Last week, Frederick Baba, an executive at Goldman Sachs who is black, criticized managers for not supporting junior bankers from diverse backgrounds.

Meanwhile, behind the scenes, the CEOs who condemn racism lobby for and get giant tax cuts and fight off a wealth tax. As a result, the nation can’t afford anything as ambitious as a massive Marshall Plan to provide poor communities world-class schools, first-class healthcare, and affordable housing.

The CEOs resist a living wage and universal basic income. They don’t want antitrust laws jeopardizing their market power, so consumers have to pay more. They oppose tighter regulations against red-lining or prohibitions on payday lending, both of which disproportionately burden black and brown people.

Perhaps most revealingly, they remain silent in the face of Donald Trump’s bigotry. Indeed, many are quietly funding the re-election of a president whose political ascent began with a racist conspiracy theory and who continues to encourage white supremacists.

This goes beyond mere hypocrisy. America’s super rich have amassed more wealth and power than at any time since the “robber barons” of the late 19th century – enough to get legislative outcomes they want and organize the system for their own benefit.

Since the start of the pandemic, the nation’s billionaires have become $565 billion richer, even as 42.6 million Americans have filed for unemployment benefits. Job losses have disproportionately affected black Americans, and America’s racial wealth gap continues to grow.

The oligarchy knows that as long as racial animosity exists, white and Black Americans are less likely to look upward and see where the wealth and power really has gone.

They’re less likely to notice that the market is rigged against them all. They’ll cling to the meritocratic myth that they’re paid what they’re “worth” in the market and that the obstacles they face are of their own making rather than an unjust system.

Racism reduces the odds they will join together to threaten that system.

This is not a new strategy. Throughout history, the rich have used racism to divide people and thereby entrench themselves.

Half a century ago, Martin Luther King Jr observed much the same about the old southern aristocracy, which “took the world and gave the poor white man Jim Crow. And when his wrinkled stomach cried out for the food that his empty pockets could not provide, he ate Jim Crow, a psychological bird that told him that no matter how bad off he was, at least he was a white man, better than a black man.”

Trump is the best thing ever to have happened to the new American oligarchy, and not just because he has given them tax cuts and regulatory rollbacks.

He has also stoked division and racism so that most Americans don’t see CEOs getting exorbitant pay while slicing the pay of average workers, won’t notice giant tax cuts and bailouts for big corporations and the wealthy while most people make do with inadequate schools and unaffordable healthcare, and don’t pay attention to the bribery of public officials through unlimited campaign donations.

The only way systemic injustices can be remedied is if power is redistributed. Power will be redistributed only if the vast majority – white, Black and brown – join together to secure it.

Which is what the oligarchy fears most.

#Trump #racism #blacklivesmatter

[uomo-accattivante]

Oscar Isaac and Robert De Niro in the same film! 🤯

EXCLUSIVE: Robert De Niro, Oscar Isaac, Donald Sutherland, and Anne Hathaway are set to join previously announced Cate Blanchett in Armageddon Time, the period drama that James Gray will next direct for RT Features.

Wild Bunch International will introduce the film to buyers at the virtual Cannes market and represent the film’s international rights. CAA Media Finance, which arranged financing, represents the film’s domestic distribution rights. WBI and CAA Media Finance are co-representing the Chinese rights.

Gray wrote and will direct, and re-teams with RT Features following their recent collaboration on Ad Astra, the Brad Pitt space thriller that co-starred Sutherland. RT Features’ Rodrigo Teixeira will produce, with Lourenço Sant’Anna and Rodrigo Gutierrez executive producing.

Gray crafted a drama based on his childhood memories, a big-hearted coming-of-age story that explores friendship and loyalty against the backdrop of an America poised to elect Ronald Reagan as president. It is very different from his recent pictures, and he hopes to shoot in New York as soon as post-pandemic opportunities make it possible. He spoke to Deadline about his ambition.

“Every film you make is different, but I’m trying to do something that is the opposite of the vast, lonely and dark void of the movie I just directed,” Gray said. “I’m anxious to make something that is very much about people, about human emotions and interactions between people, and I want it to be filled with warmth and tenderness. In some sense, yes it’s about my childhood, but an illustration of familial love really on every level. I’m of the belief that most people do their best and that they try their best under difficult circumstances and in some sense that’s a beautiful thing and very moving to me.

“In a grander sense if I may sound a little sententious and pretentious, history and myth always begin in the microcosm of the personal and though you are using something so small and specific in your life, the result can become universal if it accesses real emotion. I’ve tried to move to the opposite of a cold dark space. I want to be political and historic about it, but fill it with love and warmth. What happened with me, very simply, I got in big trouble when I was around 11, though the boys are 12 in the movie, and the story is about my movement from the public education that I got into private school and a world of privilege. This film is about what that meant for me and how lucky I was, and how unlucky my friend was and about that break meant for me and what it meant for him.”

Previous stories mentioned that the private school was one attended by future U.S. President Donald Trump.

“The private school, yes Donald Trump went there and Fred Trump was on the board of trustees,” Gray said. “It’s symbolic about what the school represented at the time, entrenched in this white protestant ethic. I found it very foreign to me, a product of the public school system in New York City of the ‘70s. It’s about that transition and how it reflects on what the American society was and sadly still is. How we are separated along the lines of class and ethnicity. The film is really about that, my transition in school from one to the other. The implications of it are quite large. The world really became clearly divided to me, based on the haves and the have-nots. I didn’t write the script last week, but rather many months ago and it’s weird in that a lot of what we’re seeing right now is playing out of many of the themes that it was my ambition to explore in the first place. This obsession I have with examining American ideas of class mobility, to do it in a context that is humane with social impact.”

Gray is bullish that when moviegoing returns, people will want to be moved, and he believes Armageddon Time will fit that bill.

“Films do intimacy and family relationships very well, even better than the theater, because in the theater your best seat is still 20 feet away from the actor,” Gray said. “In the cinema, the close-up has tremendous power. What I’m after is something really quite moving. My recollection when I think back on that moment, which is 1980 as the time frame of the movie, and what an important year it was in the history of the country and for me personally and how in some ways, I was pretty damn lucky.  My parents who were not wealthy at all as a working class family, used all the levers they could, to be able to go to this school. Which simultaneously saved my life, but also awakened me to real racism and anti Semitism. In some ways, the idea of presenting a story like this within the context of this family, told with great warmth, is sometimes your greatest Trojan Horse, to involve people emotionally that way. And story is a great weapon to be able to deliver some pretty harsh news.”

De Niro, Sutherland, Hathaway, Blanchett, Gray, and RT Features are represented by CAA. Hathaway is also represented by Management 360. Isaac is represented by WME and Inspire Entertainment.

###

#oscar isaac #armageddon time #james gray #robert de niro #donald sutherland #anne hathaway #cate blanchett #rt features

[studentstime]

GENDER BAISNESS IN LEADERSHIP FORMATION IN BANGLADESH

written by

Israfil Hossain

INTRODUCTION:

Bangladesh is undergoing phenomenal changes/reforms in its economy, governance, women empowerment, human resource development, poverty reduction, health, education, etc. Its economy is moving at quite a good pace, given the spurt in export earnings, mainly due to private entrepreneurs, and high remittance earnings mainly coming from the Bangladeshis working in the Middle East, Europe and America. Bangladesh has huge potentials, as the experts predict, even to reach to the middle income group of countries, given some more momentum in terms of improving governance, eradicating corruption and ensuring political stability. As is known, Bangladesh is often battered by natural calamities which cause substantial damage to its infrastructure, and its effort to eradicate poverty, not to speak of the loss to human lives. Bangladesh has certain advantages like homogeneity in terms of ethnicity, religion and a culture of tolerance which play a great impacting role in its integration process. It has a huge population, which may be called a comparative advantage that can be converted into competitive advantage like turning them into human resources. If the huge population can be turned into more literate, skilled, semi-skilled manpower, and utilized domestically and exported to developed countries then the country would greatly benefit economically and socially. Given the limited space of Bangladesh that finds it difficult to sustain such a huge population, this is one of the most feasible and pragmatic options left for Bangladesh. Otherwise Bangladesh’s human security will be in jeopardy.

TRANSFORMATIONAL LEADERSHIP TRAITS

Transformational Leadership is the latest and most promising phase in the leadership spectrum. “Here the focus is on leader behavior during periods of organizational transition and on processes such as creating visions of desired future state and obtaining employee commitment to change.” Transformational Leadership is a kind of leadership that can transcend the normal boundary management of an environment. It aims to walk an extra mile, or take a bit more risk, or take more responsibilities instead of passing the buck in undertaking a task. It should be able to improvise, if required, to reengineer or reinvent. Stagnancy or maintaining status quo is the job of a routine manager or a transactional leader but creating a new context in order to be more productive is the goal of a transformational leader. It should be able to take the team along who strongly upholds the visions, values and objectives of the leader to be their own and inspires them in such a way that they would carry out the tasks enthusiastically even at the peril of their life. They would not necessarily turn into rabble rouser. They should, as far as possible, reflect charisma, be able to inspire the subordinates and should be able to intellectually stimulate the subordinates or the stakeholders.

Charisma entails providing vision and mission to the stakeholders so that the team moves along the path the leader has foreseen. He should be able to instill pride and gain respect and trust from the subordinates or his constituency. Charisma reflects his personality, knowledge, wisdom, sense of justice and commitment. One may argue this is a born quality- a gift from God. This argument is largely not tenable since - many scholars term it as a myth – such qualities can be acquired through rigorous exercise, given a deep commitment. Next point is about inspiring the stakeholders in undertaking even the arduous jobs. The leadership is about understanding the environment, adapting to the environment and be able to communicate the contingencies commensurate with the environment to the stakeholders. Now the leader should be able to communicate the high expectations expected of the team members in a simple and understandable language. He may use different symbols at his disposal. Gandhi and Mao Tse Tung inspired the whole nation to fight for freedom and emancipation in such a way that hundreds and thousands of them were even ready to die for the cause at their every beck and call. However, such historical examples may not appropriately apply to every level, tier or environment of leadership. But one can always draw lessons from such examples.

A leader should be able to intellectually stimulate his team members. He should understand the context, environment, rationality of his cause or vision, and that would need deep intellectual exercise. He should be able to provide careful and creative problem solving techniques to his team members. All great leaders of the world are generally men of knowledge and wisdom. Henry Kissinger called Mao Tse Tung one of the greatest teachers of mankind. A leader must pursue knowledge-based critical thinking, especially in this globalized intelligent world. Practical knowledge has no substitute for a leader in order to inspire his subordinates with ideas, values, attitudes, perceptions, visions, missions and objectives. The subordinates are unlikely to accept one as leader if he cannot provide rational and creative problem solving techniques. Without such course, a leader might become redundant in the society.

The last point the author would like to make is personal touch a leader provides to his subordinates. This aspect of leadership practice is seriously lacking in Bangladesh environment. A leader has to give personal attention, and treat all his subordinates individually. He has to counsel and mentor his members, if possible. A leader has to care about the welfare, mental or health state, family problems of his subordinates. This works marvel in Bangladesh environment. Mere patting makes a lot of difference to an employee in the Bangladesh environment. Maslow’s Theory of Needs does indicate such directions in order to upgrade the motivation levels of the employees.

A leader should be an innovator apart from being an administrator only. He should be able to inspire trust than merely relying on control. A leader, depending on the tier he is holding in the hierarchy, should generally have a long range perspective and an eye on the horizon apart from having an eye on the bottom line. A leader should not ask how and when an event took place; he, however, would do better if he asks what and why of the incident. He challenges the system or status quo, of course not unsettling the environment. Conflict management is a good technique but that should not destabilize the system one is holding. In a nutshell, transformational leaders are seen as change agents, courageous, believing in people, having a strong set of values, life-long learners, capable of coping with complexity, uncertainty and ambiguity and visionaries.

BANGLADESH BUREAUCRACY IN PERSPECTIVE:

Max Weber, the chief architect of bureaucracy, provides certain features of bureaucracy like hierarchy, promotion based on professional merit, development of a career service, reliance on and use of rules and regulations and impersonality of relationships among career professionals in the bureaucracy and with their clientele. To a commoner, taking cue from Max Weber, bureaucracy would appear to be something to do with red tapism, inefficiency and abuse of power in the context of official-client relationship. It develops a system of authority, which is indestructible and an entrenched bureaucracy that can serve any interest. It shows allegiance only to the authority above it even if political changes have taken place. Webster’s New International Dictionary defines bureaucracy as a system that is narrow, rigid and formal, depends on precedent, and lacks initiative and resourcefulness. The essence of traditional public administration tends to be rigid, rule-bound, centralized, insular, self-protective and profoundly antidemocratic; and such traits often collide with the contemporary paradigm of bureaucracy that “allows qualified voters an efficient instrument through which the will of the people may be expressed; makes officers both responsive and responsible,” and thereby ensures common welfare.

Theorists and practitioners would like to emphasize bureaucratic paradigms like fairness, representation, participation, accountability, responsiveness, political neutrality, efficiency, rationality, and expertise. But the very nature of public administration poses problem to such value. The bureaucrats have a tendency to rely more on expertise and knowledge than over accountability, participation and democratic control. Now, therefore, a pertinent question arises: are the bureaucratic traits legitimate in terms of democratic principles. In this regard, David Rosenbloom opines that the legitimacy of bureaucracy occurs when bureaucratic policy making is subject to direct popular control. If bureaucracy is isolated from public accountability, bureaucracy can in no way be responsible to public interests and desires.

Again Merton, an American sociologist, goes deeper into the pitfalls of bureaucratic system. Bureaucracy’s adherence to rules originally conceived as a means, turns into an end-in-itself, thereby resulting in the displacement of goals. “In Bangladesh, the bureaucracy, to a large extent, conforms to the Weberian model....... Bureaucrats are not always assigned specific positions on the basis of their specialization or expertise but rather on the basis of belonging to a particular civil service cadre. Rationality is conceived in a narrow sense. It is primarily equated with administrative efficiency and economy both of which are considered ends in themselves rather than means to an end- the effective delivery of public service.”

Bureaucracy’s strict adherence to regulations induces timidity, conservatism and technicism. Bureaucracy’s avowed norm of impersonality and its dependence on abstract rules put it in conflict with the personalized consideration the members of public and clientele would expect. Bureaucracy’s entrenched corporate interests, which may be called espirit de corp, totally negates the concept of transformational leadership traits.

Given the traits as shown, bureaucracy, theoretically speaking, goes against the grain of transformational leadership. However, such theoretical branding may not always find true reflection in the practical application by an individual bureaucrat. He may have the charisma, vision or personalized consideration like that of a transformational leader and he may exert to establish his leadership, but the environment of the boundary around which he is operating may not permit him to realize his full potentials. Initiative of an individual bureaucrat is greatly circumscribed in decision making process; there may be ten tiers, in the Central Government, to be crossed, when the final decision is made. However, in most of the cases, all the ten tiers may not have to be crossed. Anyway, a kind of timidity thus sets in such a process. Initiative, dynamism, and creative and innovative thinking, the sine quo nonefor transformational leadership that should be undertaken by a bureaucrat are lost, at best diluted. Risk-taking is one of the hallmarks of real leadership. In a scenario like this, a bureaucrat will not take any risks since he has somebody above him.

It is reportedly known that a Secretary to the government puts forward a file to his Cabinet Minister seeking sanction of a paltry sum of Tk. 25,000 (equivalent to US$350) to be disbursed for the repair/maintenance of a small building in a remote village of Bangladesh. Now this brings to the fore another predicament where the authority is so much centralized that such a simple decision has to be taken by the Central Government located in Dhaka. ADB Country Governance Assessment (Draft), Bangladesh, May 2004, under heading ‘Centralization’ observes, “An additional constraint to good governance at the local level is the extremely centralized form of government now in place. Union Parishads (UPs) derive their authority and a substantial portion of their funds from national ministries whose effective reach to the level is constrained by intervening levels of government. For example, Union Parishads (UPs) must submit their budgets and work plans for review and follow-up action by several appointed officials at the Upazilla and district levels. As a result, the UNO and the Chairman of the Upazilla Development Committee have more de facto power over development projects in Unions than do the UPs themselves.”

Although Bangladesh is a unitary system, there are three administrative tiers and local government structure which could have easily taken care of such problem. Even for posting of foundation level officers like lecturer/teacher of a college/high school or a medical officer at Upazilla (Sub-district), the Central Government, where again so many tiers may have to be crossed, gets involved. Here again, timidity sets in and that delays the decision making process. This also gives rise to more probability of corruption and sufferings of the employees. Motivation, which is conditioned more by intrinsic factors than extrinsic ones, gets badly affected and the overall productivity of the government definitely suffers. However, the probability of corruption still remains valid even if decentralization in relatively important decision making is done at the administrative levels. Federalism is, however, a far-fetched idea at the moment since basic structure of the Constitution has to be amended and for that political consensus has to be reached.

Even if an individual bureaucrat would like to exert his dynamism, creativity or initiative, the system would not permit it. The system constraint has become a serious problem in transforming the officers. Delay in the system is unwarranted and is a recurrent phenomenon. This author learnt about a case where a simple clarification on a point, pending for last about six years, asked from the higher office of the Republic to a functioning ministry took about six months, that too after several reminders. Such delays are caused both vertically and horizontally. Horizontal delays (reasons for vertical delays are already pointed out) are caused mainly because of consultation or opinion seeking with the other line ministries. In the horizontal plane also files have to again move up and down the tiers as mentioned. And if there is a disagreement, the matters get further complicated. It further delays the decision making process. This author was shocked to learn a state of affair where an important appointment case remained pending in a functioning ministry for three years. The case could have been processed to the appropriate authority for his approval. As a matter of fact, the incumbent continued functioning presumably without lawful authority for three years. When, on the eve of a ceremony, it was discovered that the appointment was not validated and hence the subsequent actions that followed could be questioned, the Pandora’s Box was opened. How and why it happened was not looked into. The accountability and transparency, which are so much essential for good governance, were totally lacking in this case. The matter was, probably, somehow patched up. Even in a transactional leadership spectrum, the status quo is at least maintained. In this case, even the status quo or routine functioning was not maintained, let alone challenging and changing the status quo. So the creative or innovative ideas cannot be expected that are so critical in this globalized, intelligent 21st century world.

Transformational leaders are supposed to be intellectually sound, so that they can transmit to their followers their wisdom; and it results in two-way traffic. A leader has to command the respect through his personality, values, wisdom, and long-range view and make them think the way he thinks. Only then can the leader take the team along with him. He has to capture some of their styles or traits in order to be successful in his domain. And his own domain is to have contemporary and up-to-date knowledge and the ability to apply those in the field he is handling. If he is handling WTO matters, he should be a reasonable expert on the subject so that he can communicate, negotiate and be able to enter into agreements, keeping the country’s interests above everything, with his expert counterparts coming from both developed and developing worlds. This is a knowledge-based world, but sad enough Bangladesh has turned out be a knowledge starved society.

If our bureaucrats could be armed with more technical and appropriate knowledge, then the Government would not probably have signed the Production Sharing Contracts (PSCs) with the International Oil Companies (IOCs) where 72% of the revenue earnings are given to the IOCs in foreign currencies. Gas is stored in the territories of Bangladesh but it only gets a paltry 28% percent of revenue earnings. Again, because of the lack of adequate technical and appropriate knowledge or realizing the urgency Bangladesh, as yet, could not place its case before the United Nations regarding the maritime demarcation of the Bay of Bengal, although it ratified the UNCLOS in 2001. Bangladesh has not yet carried out necessary survey to decide about the extent of its continental shelf. The control points of its base line, both in the western and eastern sectors, have been contested by both India and Myanmar. Bangladesh is likely to get ‘zone/sea locked’ and if serious negotiations are not undertaken immediately with the actors concerned, mostly applying the equity theory as against equidistance theory, much of Bangladesh’s life sustenance resources and maritime freedom might get jeopardized. It is to be especially mentioned here that the neighboring countries like India, Myanmar, Thailand, Sri Lanka and Indonesia have settled their scores of maritime boundary demarcation.

There is a big question: is Bangladesh prepared for such serious negotiations with its neighbours in order to protect its interests? Or it is going to surrender its interests as it did during the last Hong Kong round of WTO negotiations because the Bangladesh team did not carry out enough home work for such negotiations? There can be a further question: is the person who is supposed to carry out his homework has the requisite ability and the right attitude to do so? There is a concern about it. The answer is simple: the person may not have the requisite expertise and the positive attitude that would take care of the national interest.

This author learnt about a case where a summary for an appointment to a very high office was placed in the higher office in such a way that the constitutional provision apparently got violated. When someone pointed out such violation, the reply given to him was that there was such a precedent earlier. To that officer, what was important was the precedent not the Constitution. It also shows lack of knowledge of the Constitution both by him and his predecessor. It could be also attitudinal tendencies to show what they did was right, not what the Constitution stipulates. It can be surmised that it was more of a lack of adequate knowledge of the Constitution. Superficial knowledge on such critical issues could be disastrous for the nation and on occasions national interests might get violated. Even a transactional leader is expected to have enough knowledge on a subject he handles in order to maintain the status quo; otherwise atrophy would take over. In a globalized interdependent world, specialist knowledge by the bureaucrats in their respective field of activities is essential even if we presume they are not transformational leaders. Intellectual stimulation is sine quo non for someone to be a transformational leader.

It is generally believed that the bureaucrats, especially officers from the Administrative Cadre, probably, acted as a pressure group (there could be other pressure groups also) to block the separation and independence of the judiciary and Anti-Corruption Commission. It also did not work favorably to institutionalize the local government system of Bangladesh. The Supreme Court, through its twelve point directive in 1999, asked the Government to completely separate the judiciary, especially the lower judiciary, from the executive. But the successive governments started dilly-dallying the process, presumably also at the behest of the bureaucrats. Bureaucrats might have apprehended that their power could get greatly curtailed by such action. This could also be true in the case of the local governments, as already pointed out. However, the local political leaders also had their vested interests in not institutionalizing and strengthening the local government structures.

Be that as it may, bureaucrats would not like to part with the control and superintendence they have on different aspects of the local government. Bureaucrats both at the local tiers and also at the central level have varying degrees of control over the local governments. It is a well nigh difficult task to meaningfully direct, control and monitor the activities of the local governments, from the capital city, spread in every nook and corner of the country. Personalized consideration would be totally lacking in such a scenario which goes against the concept of transformational leadership. Innovativeness, creativity and emotional attachment are essential in transformational leadership styles but sad enough such inputs may be absent in a scenario like this.

RESPONSE:

A thorough overhauling of the bureaucratic structure, span of control, style of work, motivation, values, attitudes, and mindset may be necessary in the context and environment of Bangladesh. There may be a necessity of strategic planning for this. Donor assistance, both in terms of money and expertise, may be necessary.

Firstly, flatter organization system, which generally goes with the modern management concepts, as against many-tiered vertical organization in the bureaucratic hierarchy of the Central Government, may be thought of. It could be brought down to four to five tiers that would facilitate better and faster decision making. However, the number of streams, dealing with limited subjects, within a Ministry/Division may be increased. This will help in faster decision making and specialization.

Secondly, similar types of Ministries/Divisions could be clustered together within which the officers/employees would generally rotate. Example could be the Ministries/Divisions of Finance, Planning, Commerce, External Resources Division, Expatriate Welfare Division could be clustered together, something like Strategic Business Units (SBUs), as practised in the business world, where the officers from their foundation level to even up to highest level would rotate during their stint of staff appointments. Another example could be the Ministries/Divisions like Foreign, Home, Defence, Disaster Management, Chittagong Hill Tracts, etc could be clustered together. The specialization that would accrue in such clustering would better take care of areas like WTO, maritime or land boundary demarcation, counter-terrorism, etc. where there are tendencies of faltering. This is given merely as a suggestion; one may not be sacrosanct about it. In a similar vein, Zafarullah’s categorization of ministries/divisions merits consideration, may be with certain adjustment. Those could be categorized, as he prescribes, like Executive (President’s Office, Prime Minister’s Office and Cabinet Division), Regulatory (Establishment, Finance, IRD, Local Government, Commerce, Home, Jute, Civil Aviation and Tourism, Shipping, Lands, etc), Service-orientated/Welfare (Relief, Special Affairs, Health and Family Welfare, Railways, Post and Telecommunication, Social Welfare, Women’s Affairs), Food, Labour and Manpower Developmental (Agriculture, Rural Development and Cooperative, Irrigation, Water Development and Flood Control, Roads and Road Transport, Industries, Power, Energy and Mineral Resources, Works, Fisheries and Livestock, Jute and Textile), Promotional (Primary and Mass Education, Education, Science and Technology, Environment and Forest, Information, Cultural Affairs, Youth and Sports, Religious Affairs), Advisory (Armed Forces Division, Planning, Law, Justice and Parliamentary Affairs, Parliament Secretariat), Research (Statistical and Implementation, Monitoring and Evaluation Division), and International (Foreign Affairs and Economic Relations).

Thirdly, Strategic Management Planning, along with Management by Objectives (MBO) technique, as practised in the business world, dovetailed to the culture of public service may be adopted for the Bangladesh Civil Service. Vision/Mission, long term objectives, strategies, yearly objectives, policies, feedback system for each Ministry/Division, Corporation and Department should be clearly spelt out in a realistic, achievable, time bound benchmark. This is not to say that broad objectives are not spelt out in the yearly /three yearly/five yearly planning processes. Bangladesh has a good macro level planning, but what it lacks is the micro level planning and implementation. It also lacks feed back loop which helps in further planning. Objectives are not set out in a realistic and achievable manner; as such Bangladesh generally falters in implementing the Annual Development Plans or in utilizing the foreign assistance. Strategic planning involves all segments, spectrum, activities, cohesion, top down and bottom up approaches, etc. It also involves participatory planning. All stakeholders should be consulted before deciding about an objective. Each Department/Tier/Local Government should be given their yearly achievable, tangible and intangible (to be quantified as much as possible) objectives that would, in totality, meet the yearly objectives of a particular Ministry/Division. Our foreign missions, as part of economic diplomacy, could be given the yearly objectives like export to the target country be increased by say 10% or so many skilled/non skilled manpower be exported to that country. Such objectives could be decided realistically based on past experiences and future trends. Management by objectives, although an American concept not fitting into our culture, may be followed at least in its spirit. Now any player who fails to meet a reasonable expectation of the objectives may be made answerable. Such lapses may be reflected in his yearly performance appraisal in clear terms which would ultimately impact on his career advancement. An independent team has to work out the details of modalities, in case the Government decides to implement the concept.

Fourthly, in order to attract the better graduates of the universities (private sector is now a better destination), their pay, perks and privileges should be greatly enhanced. ADB Country Governance Assessment Bangladesh (Draft), May 2004 acknowledges that the Civil Service no longer attracts the same calibre of entry- level officials that it did in the past. It prescribes salary reform, “mindful of the need to balance the prospect of competitive salary increases with the corollary need to reduce the overall costs of public administration”. If necessary, a portion of the Annual Development Plan may have to be diverted to the Revenue Budget in order to cater for the extra expenditure involved in salary increases. In the long term, it would prove to be more cost-effective. If the actors are not efficient, output would be always problematic. One cannot be expected to be efficient, if his/her physiological needs are not adequately met, when he is de-motivated.

Fifthly, since the quality of Bangladesh University education has deteriorated to a great extent, especially in relation to communication skill in English and latest developments around the world, there is a dire need for an exhaustive, realistic, up-to-date training package programme to be developed in the training institutions. This is borne out by the observations made by Shawkat Ali, a former career civil servant, “various studies have drawn attention to the deficiencies in the training of civil servants, specially post-entry and pre-entry training. Some of these deficiencies are as follows: lack of qualified and well trained staff arising out of posting unwilling civil servants in the training institutes and such postings do not take into account the qualification and experience of the civil servants which result in low quality of training and lack of motivation; the post-entry training and in-service training courses are not well integrated and scheduled to provide and continuously update the level of training and knowledge of civil servants. …Questions have already been raised about relevance of training, utilization of training and incentives for training. Training should be both class room and field based. Exhaustive training programme generally for greater duration than what is done today, especially at the foundation level would pay rich dividends in the long run. Training in the form of case studies, seminars, group projects especially at the field levels, presentations, research papers, In Basket Exercises, visits and orientation with varied types of installations, institutions, corporate world, NGOs, local government, industries, etc may be given more emphasis. Field trips and exercises, something similar to military system, could be given a consideration. For such extensive training system foreign advisory team from countries like Singapore, Japan, UK, and Australia as also from the Bangladesh Armed Forces may be sought.

Sixthly, for career advancement, successful field level appointments like Upazilla Nirbahi Officer (UNO) and Deputy Commissioner (DC), an independent assignment in a foreign mission may be given more credence. One who performs poorly in such appointments may not be given further enhancement in career. Based on the performance reflected in the Annual Confidential Reports, the officers in the promotion chain, at different tiers, may be required to go through the Assessment Centers where they would undergo various group exercises and individual tasks as well as psychometrics and interviews. Only the successful candidates would qualify for further promotion. This practice is followed in the U.K. Civil Service. This has relevance to military system of promotion as well. It is heartening to note that Bangladesh Government is already thinking of introducing similar system.

Seventhly, there is generally a degeneration of values in Bangladesh. Corruption is rampant in all segments of the society. Such situation should be arrested through greater transparency and accountability. Parliamentary standing committees may be more assertive to make the bureaucrats more accountable. Even the courts of law may, if not already doing, attempt to go into greater details of a case that involves the government projects and functionaries and make the public servants accountable. Higher bureaucracy may regularly visit the field level projects and offices to ensure better accountability and transparency.

Eighthly, E-governance or Digital Governance should be given especial priority. E-Governance has to be seen as a tool for good governance and human development. Good Governance occurs when Electronic Governance is able to enhance the “Public Value” of information supplied. The Civil Service members may be made aware of the necessity of E-Governance and be thoroughly armed with necessary competencies. Chandra Babu Naidu, a former Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, India, could be a role model for our system.

Lastly, as long as necessary expertise, required of a particular Ministry/Division, is not developed, a core committee of experts drawn mainly from the civil society, universities and research institutes may be formed, as a stop gap measure, to assist the concerned Ministry/Division in handling the technical/complicated matters that involve vital national interests. Of course, this has been done many a time. This now needs to be made more structured with definite terms of reference.

CONCLUTION:

In conculation, we presented a proposition of the transformational stage in the administration, bureaucracy, and state. In fact, it is emphasized here that all other organs and structure of the state are poised for change. Partisan polity in the transitional stage is about to introduce reforms after a huge paradigm shift. The quality of leadership in all spheres – politics, business, profession, bureaucracy – is in question and calls deeply for reform.

In the current reformist and transformational scenario, the bureaucracy has a critical role in enabling an orderly transition to provide the prerequisites for democracy and development. For achieving this, the bureaucracy may help establish the rule of law. Without this, the arbitrary and capricious decision making of the past could reappear.

Leadership in Bangladesh is definitely at a critical juncture and, needless to say, standing at the threshold of the 21st century, Bangladesh has to discard the old perception of it. In this regard, the author considers this phase of history as transitional and transformational. Whether we like it or not, the coming generations will complete the full circle of change that is needed to move from one level of development to the next and thank us for “beginning the beginning”.

[96thdayofrage]

The anti-racism consulting industry does deserve both some sympathy and some credit. Its intention, to prod white Americans into more awareness of their own racism, is beneficent. And their premise that white people are often unaware of the degree to which racial privilege has enabled their success, which they can mistakenly attribute entirely to merit and effort, is correct. American society is shot through with multiple overlapping systems of racial bias — from exposure to harmful pollution to biased policing to unequal access to education to employment discrimination — that in combination sustain massive systemic inequality.

But the anti-racism trainers go beyond denying the myth of meritocracy to denying the role of individual merit altogether. Indeed, their teaching presents individuals as a racist myth. In their model, the individual is subsumed completely into racial identity.

One of DiAngelo’s favorite examples is instructive. She uses the famous story of Jackie Robinson. Rather than say “he broke through the color line,” she instructs people instead to describe him as “Jackie Robinson, the first Black man whites allowed to play major-league baseball.”

It is true, of course, that Robinson was not the first Black man who was good enough at baseball to make a major-league roster. The Brooklyn Dodgers decided, out of a combination of idealism and self-interest, to violate the norm against signing Black players. And Robinson was chosen due to a combination of his skill and extraordinary personality that allowed him to withstand the backlash in store for the first Black major leaguer. It is not an accident that DiAngelo changes the story to eliminate Robinson’s agency and obscure his heroic qualities. It’s the point. Her program treats individual merit as a myth to be debunked. Even a figure as remarkable as Robinson is reduced to a mere pawn of systemic oppression.

One way to understand this thinking is to place it on a spectrum of thought about race. On the far right is open white supremacy, which instructs white people to fight for their interests as white people. (Hence the 14-word slogan, “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.”) Moving to the left, standard-issue conservatism tends to discount the existence of racism and treat all problems in pure color-blind terms, as though racism has been banished. To the left of that is standard liberalism, which acknowledges the existence of racism as a problem that complicates simple race-neutral solutions.

The ideology of the racism-training industry is distinctively to the left of that. It collapses all identity into racial categories. “It is crucial for white people to acknowledge and recognize our collective racial experience,” writes DiAngelo, whose teachings often encourage the formation of racial affinity groups. The program does not allow any end point for the process of racial consciousness. Racism is not a problem white people need to overcome in order to see people who look different as fully human — it is totalizing and inescapable.

Of course, DiAngelo’s whites-only groups are not dreamed up in the same spirit as David Duke’s. The problem is that, at some point, the extremes begin to functionally resemble each other despite their mutual antipathy.

I want to make clear that when I compare the industry’s conscious racialism to the far right, I am not accusing it of “reverse racism” or bias against white people. In some cases its ideas literally replicate anti-Black racism.

Glenn Singleton, president of Courageous Conversation, a racial-sensitivity training firm, tells Bergner that valuing “written communication over other forms” is “a hallmark of whiteness,” as is “scientific, linear thinking. Cause and effect.”

This is not some idiosyncratic oddball notion. The African-American History Museum has a page on whiteness, which summarizes the ideas that the racism trainers have brought into relatively wide circulation.

“White” values include things like “objective, rational thinking”; “cause and effect relationships”; “hard work is the key to success”; “plan for the future”; and “delayed gratification.” The source for this chart is another, less-artistic chart written by Judith Katz in 1990. Katz has a doctorate in education and moved into the corporate consulting world in 1985, where, according to her résumé, she has “led many transformational change initiatives.” It is not clear what in Katz’s field of study allowed her to establish such sweeping conclusions about the innate culture of white people versus other groups.

One way to think through these cultural generalizations is to measure them against its most prominent avatar for racial conflict, Donald Trump. How closely does he reflect so-called white values? The president hardly even pretends to believe that “hard work” is the key to success. The Trump version of his alleged success is that he’s a genius who improvises his way to brilliant deals. The realistic version is that he’s a lazy heir who inherited and cheated his way to riches, and spends most of his time watching television. Trump is likewise incapable of delayed gratification, planning for the future, and regards “objective rational thinking” with distrust. On the other hand, Barack Obama is deeply devoted to all those values.

Now, every rule has its exceptions. Perhaps the current (white) president happens to be alienated from the white values that the previous (Black) president identified with strongly. But attaching the values in question to real names brings to life a point the racism trainers seem to elide: These values are not neutral at all. Hard work, rational thought, and careful planning are virtues. White racists traditionally project the opposite of these traits onto Black people and present them as immutable flaws. Jane Coaston, who has reported extensively on the white-nationalist movement, summarizes it, “The idea that white people are just good at things, or are better inherently, more clean, harder working, more likely to be on time, etc.”

In his profile, Bergner asked DiAngelo how she could reject “rationalism” as a criteria for hiring teachers, on the grounds that it supposedly favors white candidates. Don’t poor children need teachers to impart skills like that so they have a chance to work in a high-paying profession employing reasoning skills?

DiAngelo’s answer seems to imply that she would abolish these high-paying professions altogether:

“Capitalism is so bound up with racism. I avoid critiquing capitalism — I don’t need to give people reasons to dismiss me. But capitalism is dependent on inequality, on an underclass. If the model is profit over everything else, you’re not going to look at your policies to see what is most racially equitable.”

(Presumably DiAngelo’s ideal socialist economy would keep in place at least some well-paid professions — say, “diversity consultant,” which earns her a comfortable seven-figure income.)

Singleton, likewise, proposed evolutionary social changes to the economy that would render it unnecessary to teach writing and linear thought to minority children. Bergner writes:

I asked whether guiding administrators and teachers to put less value, in the classroom, on capacities like written communication and linear thinking might result in leaving Black kids less ready for college and competition in the labor market. “If you hold that white people are always going to be in charge of everything,” he said, “then that makes sense.” He invoked, instead, a journey toward “a new world, a world, first and foremost, where we have elevated the consciousness, where we pay attention to the human being.”

Whether or not a world along these lines will ever exist, or is even possible to design, is at best uncertain. What is unquestionably true is that these revolutionary changes will not be completed within the lifetime of anybody currently alive. Which is to say, a program to deny the value of teaching so-called white values to Black children is to condemn them to poverty. Unsurprisingly, Bergner’s story shows two educators exposed to the program and rebelling against it. One of them, Leslie Chislett, had to endure some ten anti-racism training sessions before eventually snapping at the irrationality of a program that denigrates learning. “The city has tens of millions invested in A.P. for All, so my team can give kids access to A.P. classes and help them prepare for A.P. exams that will help them get college degrees,” she says, “and we’re all supposed to think that writing and data are white values?”

Ibram X. Kendi, another successful entrepreneur in the anti-racism field, has a more frontal response to this problem. The achievement gap — the long-standing difference in academic performance between Black and white children — is a myth, he argues. The supposed gap merely reflects badly designed tests, he argues. It does not matter to him how many different kinds of measures of academic performance show this to be true. Nor does he seem receptive to the possibility that the achievement gap reflects environmental factors (mainly worse schools, but also access to nutrition, health care, outside learning, and so on) rather than any innate differences.

Kendi, like DiAngelo, argues that racism must be defined objectively. Intent does not matter, only effect. Their own intentions are surely admirable. But the fact is that their insistence on denying that America provides its Black children worse educations inhibits working toward a solution. Denying the achievement gap, like denying the gap in how police treat white and Black people, seems to objectively entrench racism.

It’s easy enough to see why executives and school administrators look around at a country exploding in righteous indignation at racism, and see the class of consultants selling their program of mystical healing as something that looks vaguely like a solution. But one day DiAngelo’s legions of customers will look back with embarrassment at the time when a moment of awakening to the depth of American racism drove them to embrace something very much like racism itself.