Diversity course at University of Kent

coughs, the worst thing about the module is its SEXISM not the way that it teaches about race

Bling? They’ve never been to the ME then. Tastes differ...

Often class is confused with race. “Blingy” taste is common (excuse the pun) to some people of all races.Food choices are also class-driven just as much as heritage-driven.

This questionnaire might just as well be rooting out who is middle class. (Although who devised it is probably wholly clad in Oxfam chic and has a penchant for a quinoa latte.)

what you are talking about on this thread is actually the best of the "module". - At least its coming from a well intentioned aim of making student life easier for all. - The modules on sexual harassment (that ignore the fact that its women that are most affected) or on sex and gender (that tell students to agree with statements about the fluidity of sex, that the discrimination faced by people wishing to escape the roles placed on them through their sex is transphobia (sexisim is not given as an option) or on pronouns) are much more egregious. There is also a question on the racism quiz that tells students to agree with a specific model of systemic racism

I have very little idea what it is trying to say.

It looks like one individual's personal gripe list translated into a universal policy.

@NiceGerbil But there are plenty of students and academics who support and even identify as communism/communists despite it being the cause of 100 million deaths in the past 100 years of so?

Um. You mean in the past?

Because I have read about appalling behaviour by both those govts loads

Do you follow the news at all? Just out of interest.

Hope you're having a fab time on these boards tonight?

I have asked you a question about your views on paedophilia on another thread btw. Given your blanket statement that anyone who has experienced Oppression / esp due to sexuality should totally support all sexualities that are marginalised.

@andyoldlabour It’s not an accident, there has been a deliberate attempt to infiltrate further education with left leaning liberal types since the 70’s.

Thats why you rarely hear anything negative about far left political atrocities like those committed by China and Russia.

The swearing point is bizarre.

I thought it was well known that upper class types swear like troopers.

I read once that it's the the top and bottom (sorry) of the English class system who swear like mad. Because they don't care generally what anyone thinks of them.

It's the aspirational MC people who don't like it. Because they are concerned about the opinions of others and overly concerned about what others think.

Old school language etc.

IME this is true though.

Numpties.

Huh?

Loads of people wear second hand clothes.
Because don't have much money, because they are environmental types, or like unusual fashion combos...

I have NEVER IN MY LIFE heard anyone even suggest that anyone in second hand clothes due to poverty, bad morals (???!!!), or illiteracy of race (I'm not even sure what that means).

Ever.

So it's putting the idea into the students heads that this is a common standard way to view anyone in second hand clothes. Well done that training course!

If anything in the UK it's often the reverse. Being ostentatious is considered crass. When it comes to race, the fact that black people sometimes have a fondness for expensive things that are well known to be expensive is criticised. Often. That's racist. Interestingly the same complaint is/ was applied to Jewish people who enjoyed nice things that were obviously expensive. In home decor in particular. Garish. Ostentatious. Lacking class.

In short.

This course is not only going to make many/ most on it feel resentful/ unfairly maligned.

It doesn't even seem to match anything about the real world.

So it's not useless. It's WORSE than useless.

Privilege as a term has become overused and misused.

What was around intersectionality (also a term abused and misused) was not about this current accusatory thing. All white people are privileged. Etc.

It has ruined the original concepts and intentions of both intersectionality and privilege. Which were about recognising that there are many different things that are helpful, or less helpful when going through life. And that the ones we don't have we often don't really consider. It wasn't about angry accusations at whole groups of people for essentially being horrible bastards. And now naturally even the terms are enough to get the backs up of pretty much everyone who hears them.

Meanwhile the useful terms to think about social inequality have been rendered essentially useless. And still someone with the background education cash etc of Boris Johnson types, strangely, are very very much likely to do well in life in loads of different ways than eg a child of recent immigrants being raised in massive poverty, going to a struggling school in an area with loads of gang violence. Iyswim.

I mean the original thing was not to say that the Borises would ALWAYS find things easy, be wealthy successful etc. Nor that it's impossible for the girl to grow up to be very successful in all sorts of ways.

So the baby has been thrown out with the bathwater. Because certain groups like nothing better than to appropriate any and all terms and arguments from other groups. And twist them in order to help ONLY themselves.

I acknowledge no privilege.

Being treated not quite so shittily as someone else is not what I call a privilege.

Proper decent treatment by society is no privilege. It is everyone's right, regardless of background.

I'm more than happy to acknowledge my white privilege.

But some of this is utter bollocks. I grew up with Oxfam clothes because we were poor and was made to feel like shit for it by the rich kids and teachers at school. I'm ambivalent about the privilege of having attended a school full of rich kids. I'm sure my posh voice really does help but I also suffered for feeling utterly out of place and different.

We really don't talk enough about how working class people were treated in the not that distant past. Asylums, prisons for debt, orphanages if no father on the scene. These traumas leave scars that can be intergenerational.

What bollocks about second hand clothes. I worked in a charity shop for a while, they haven’t got a clue what they are on about. Our customers were incredibly varied.

Also I think acknowledging your privilege and acknowledging your guilt for the actions of your ancestors are very different things. The first is a good step towards being an empathetic person, the second one leads to irritating videos on tic tok where some posturing teen “apologises” on behalf of dead people for woke points.

...Made from square pigs. Easier to stack them on shelves.

And it's Black History Month, and as someone who made a specialist study of British Imperialism and Decolonisation, back in the day, I am starting to worry about the sort of crude victim-narratives that are starting to gain currency in this country.

Ok, with the plasters, food, and hair dye - I always wonder, what is the endpoint someone is imagining.

If a family from a small, obscure group moves to another place, where their culture or appearance is unusual, what's the expectation for not "othering" them?

My city has recently had a small influx from a cultural group that is new here. They are very dark skinned compared to the black people that live here, they have somewhat different food traditions, they have a history that almost doesn't touch on the history of this place until now, they have a language that no one else here speaks.

While I suspect they may be able to have some foods become more available, they are not going to find that suddenly schools are focused on the history of the country they came from much less the ethnic group, they are not going to hear their language much, they may have to search around for appropriate plasters or order online and may find the school doesn't have a large selection, and they are very unlikely to find a store manager of the same ethnicity.

I really struggle with the idea that these in themselves represent failings of a culture. And what's the remedy - not to allow people to come here? To import store managers?

And who does it help to tell people that plasters are "othering" or that realizing that your background is different from others where you live should be something that you find oppressive because of things like plasters? If people won't give you a job due to your ethnicity, that's oppressive. Not just realizing your family history is different, that's a fact and plasters won't change it.

I think there are different issues here, and after being prepared to find the whole thing laughable and offensive I thought some of it actually wasn't. I mean the plasters thing, for example - yes, it's not serious, yes, you can work a little bit harder to find ones that do match your skin better, but the combined weight of that sort of thing is an issue. It's like the default male setting on so many other items, or women's clothes not having pockets, or whatever - no, it's not comparable to VAWG but it is unfair and it's a mental tax on our time and headspace that we shouldn't have to pay. And highlighting that to people who have never thought about it before isn't fatuous, it's potentially useful if done in the right way (with nuance and discussion).

OTOH "acknowledging our guilt" for some unspecified, unchosen, involuntary privilege - even, yes, if we benefit from it - makes me fucking furious. If feminism has taught me anything it's that I will not apologise for things that I didn't do. Why can't people see how crazy this is? If you have a family dynamic where one parent blatantly prefers one child, would you ask the preferred child to acknowledge its guilt to the other? No, of course you wouldn't, you'd try to heal the rifts by acknowledging what had happened and working on how to redress the imbalance. On a personal level it's obvious - why is it different on a political level? Vague "guilt" for nothing they have actually done makes people feel powerless and resentful. (For the avoidance of doubt I am not talking here about acknowledging specific things you have done, or addressing past behaviour which could have been better - those are definitely good things. I just fucking hate this pattern of righteousness and abasement.)

The last and most important issue, of course, is how on earth do you find square sausage skins?!

...Or I suppose I could just tick tick tick, all right, gold star, and then write "under duress" at the foot of the paper.

“Acknowledging your personal guilt is a useful start point in overcoming unconscious bias.”

Two problems: I was taught that academic language needs to be hesitant and qualified in its judgements. 'May be' or 'is often' a useful start...'

(and it's 'starting point,' a point where something starts. A start point is a point you gain for starting.)

Secondly, use of the second person implies this is all about me, that is 'your' guilt, not 'one's' guilt or better still, just say 'acknowledging personal guilt,' or better still, personal responsibility rather than the very judgemental 'guilt' trip.

Now call me old-fashioned and pre-POMO, but the ability to pick stuff apart critically like that is what a university education ought to be all about.

Or if you read Shardlake, it's like people trying to keep ahead of Henry VIII's shifting thinking on what was doctrine and what heresy, so as to avoid being burnt at the stake.

Charity shop finds are trendy, I guess, and you have to be rich enough not to feel poor for doing it. If you are actually poor, the thinking goes, you'll buy bagfuls of cheap new tat from Primark and not dream of looking in a charity shop. That's all that makes sense to me.

It all starts to look and sound rather Maoist, cultural revolution, honestly. If the Woke could banish academics supporting free speech and students keen to think for themsleves to a state farm somewhere, I suspect they would.

St Andrews joining in with this:

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/dbb71c72-2223-11ec-8cb7-e60ba8dbca61?shareToken=855922f47dc5cbdc2c7138ca16e5def6

[quote Cailleach1]@NewMutiny , your friend's experience sounds absolutely horrendous. Awful in any event, but imagine if you had children with you to witness this?

This regression to people engaging in racist chants and attacks is unbelievable and the viciousness directed the footballers was beyond belief.[/quote]
Yes thank you it was. She is such a lovely person too and was very reluctant to even feel angry about it. She just sort of accepted it as something that happens. Which is just so so awful.