Controversies around "Absence Day" Evergreen College Event

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There was a controversial piece of news about Evergreen College.
Actually, almost a non-news imo (since I suspect that those particular activists aren't representative of the majority of white and black american students).
--- If not for professor Bret Weinstein's attitude and comments.

I'm not interested in touching upon the racial white- black issues happening in the States.
--- I'm more interested in the fact that professor Weinstein's comments are reflective of the manner in which many political topics or issues are handled nowadays. (by both political activists or laypeople, by both liberals or conservatives)


Here's the thread that first approached the topic: http://forum.literotica.com/showthread.php?t=1431538

 

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'Day of Absence' was an anual Evergreen College event used as a symbolic stand against some of the racism faced by black students across campuses.
"In the past, it meant students and faculty of color leave campus to show how much they contribute, while white people attend anti-racism workshops. But this year, the event organizers are asking white students and faculty to leave campus".



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Here are prof. Bret Weinstein's comments:

Prof. Weinstein's email to other faculty re the planned event:

"'There's a huge difference between a group or coalition deciding to voluntarily absent themselves from a shared space in order to highlight their vital and under-appreciated roles; and a group or coalition encouraging another group to go away.
-- 'The first is a forceful call to consciousness which is, of course, crippling to the logic of oppression.
The second is a show of force, and an act of oppression in and of itself,' he wrote in the email."

His response to the student activists who confronted him about his email:

"'There's a difference between debate and dialectic. Debate means you are trying to win, dialectic means you are using disagreement to discover what is true,' the professor told the students gathered outside his classroom.
-- 'I am not interested in debate. I am only interested in dialectic, which does mean I listen to you, and you listen to me.'"


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4546704/Professor-called-racist-asked-resign-students.html

 

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Professor Weinstein recently gave a follow -up interview on http://podcasts.joerogan.net/podcasts/bret-weinstein

Here's part of the transcript:


"Bret Weinstein: The people who have talked to me privately and expressed concerns are actually quite a diverse group, so it’s not as if white folks are disturbed by this and people of color are united. It’s not at all like that.

Part of the hidden story here is that in order to advance certain policy proposals it has to appear that the community is united behind them and that anybody that stands against them is standing against them for illegitimate reasons. So that means that the number of people who are willing to express any sort of nuance about what’s taking place has to be small and they have to be dismissable. So what they did is they called me a racist. Which is ironic because I’m an anti-racist. I really have gone out of my way to, first of all, study the question of why racism occurs and I believe have been pretty courageous in fighting against it wherever I run into it.

Many of the terms that are being used have been redefined, but they haven’t been fully redefined. So one of the things that I’ve seen in several places is that a term like racist has been redefined so that the bar for being a racist is so low that you couldn’t possibly help but trip over it. But then, once you’ve tripped over it and you have accepted that you are a racist, then the stigma goes back to the original definition. So it is the dodging and weaving between the two definitions that actually does the heavy lifting.

Several people, in fact, many people, have started to now refer to what’s going on in the staff/faculty zone here as a cult. And I think, on the one hand, that could be tongue-in-cheek. On the other hand, the mechanisms at work that have people doubling down on absurdities rather than trying to get on the right side of history as quickly as possible, it is very cult like."


http://hotair.com/archives/2017/06/04/bret-weinstein-evergreen-theyre-not-waking/