Hello faithful FRians!!! Very glad to have another post from Stephen, it’s been a while!! Thank you so much!
A recent video concerning some dialog between a student and a teacher regarding the subject of race referencing the picture depicted above went around the internet which a number of people commented upon. None of those comments did I find satisfying in expressing a proper understanding of the dynamics of the interactions presented.
When asked to identify the differences between the two young ladies the student steadfastly and repeatedly stated that he only saw two young people and he did not see any differences. The teacher repeatedly tried to prompt the student to discuss the differences between them, even to the point of telling the student that if he claimed to not see any differences then he was a liar.
There are many different things in play in this little scene, and it is is very illustrative of the broken nature of our society and the systemic murder of honest discourse.
Obviously anyone who has ever tried to spot the six differences in the comic strip pictures of the Sunday comics section is easily capable of identifying differences between any two individuals who are not identical twins, and even feels an inclination to try to identify differences even if they were identical twins.
To any rational mind it was glaringly obvious that the teacher was not wrong when he said the student was lying. So why were so many people on the internet applauding the lying student’s insistence that he so no differences at all?
Simply put, in the era of Cancel Culture, only a complete fool would go on live recorded video pointing out the racial differences between two people based upon their outward appearance knowing full well that in eight or ten years any statements he made would be thrown back at him to declare him a racist and get him fired or even unable to find work.
The culture and the lesson place the student in a proverbial “Catch-22″, or a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” scenario. The student is forced by the system to choose between being a fool or being a liar. And either way there is no room to pretend the outcome is anything else.
On the teacher’s side, how can he be expected to teach the students about racial differences if the student’s steadfastly refuse to acknowledge the blatantly obvious differences? The frustration is obvious in his tone of voice, he is placed in the position of agreeing with the student that the naked emperor is dressed in the most resplendent raiment or abandoning any pretense of actually being a teacher.
The lesson plan, devised by someone else, in a curriculum created by someone else, in a culture of which he has no control, have conspired to force the teacher into as much of a “Catch-22″ as the student.
However, don’t mistake the situation for something so simplistic. Look closer at the girl on the left and the right.
The fair skinned redhead on the left is clearly not merely of Caucasian descent, but of that northern European ancestry of the whitest of the white.
The girl on the right, in contrast, is obviously of a mixed race heritage. She has fairly light colored skin, almost a Mediterranean hue. Many of her facial features are European as well. Ask yourself which race is she supposed to represent with the caption “What is Race” beside the photograph.
She was obviously chosen as much for her Caucasian ancestry as her Negroid ancestry by the lesson planners to represent as little difference as possible between the two girls so that they could preach the dogma that race is purely superficial. That makes the lesson itself lying and deceitful, designed to force the students into the ultimate conclusion that the concept of race itself is purely fictional.
The lesson plan was thrown completely out of kilter when the student beat the lesson to the dogmatic conclusion prior to the start of the lesson. How can the erstwhile education establishment take credit for conversion of the heathens if the people they are trying to convert are already more zealous preachers of the dogma than they are? Very frustrating indeed.
This scenario catches our attention not because it is particularly unusual, but rather because it is so ideally symbolic of that which transpires in our “modern” anti-social society every day in many walks of life, threatening the very continued social viability of everyone involved in an identitarian minefield.
Upon any issue, if a person must speak they are offered to choice of being the fascist, racist, sexist, phobic, or hateful fool, or to be the obvious liar who casts away all self-respect, dignity, integrity, and honesty in Sisyphean pursuit of an elusive “wokeness” which cssible bind and the internet audience is set up to cheer for either the rebellious student or the frustrated teacher.
Understand that it is not possible only upon the foolish acceptance of the false premises which are bandied about, but it is equally dependent upon the Sword of Damocles hanging over everyone’s head because of the Cancel Culture threat. The severe, unstoppable, unreasoning retribution for anything deemed “wrong-think” is part and parcel of why the dilemma exists.an disintegrate with the very next issue presented.
Why? Because people erroneously esteemed to be knowledgeable have constructed a cathedral of foolish and false dogma in their cultural religion which threatens to shatter into a million pieces if even a single buttress is damaged, and they have built their lives under this crystalline canopy where they will all be crushed together if it falls, a mutually assured destruction of shared non-sense.
“Race doesn’t exist, so let us prove you are a racist by demanding that you identify people by race.” “Gender is whatever a person wants it to be, and if you don’t agree then you a sexist even though sex doesn’t really exist.” “You must not tolerate the intolerant.”
If race does not exist, then no one can be racist. If gender does not exist, then no one can be sexist. If all sexual proclivities are acceptable, then aversion to those sexual proclivities is itself a proclivity and must be accepted, thus cannot be phobic. All leftist ideologies become existential impossibilities if leftists premises are first assumed to be true.
Back to the starting issue, the no win scenario where every person is put into an impo
Only if a person is free to state their opinion free from consequences, being mere words, can any false dogma be challenged. We too often hear that Freedom of Speech is not Freedom from Consequences. Yet that is precisely what Freedom of Speech requires. A person is not free to speak their thoughts if doing so costs them their liberty, their livelihood, their property.
Freedom of Speech can only exist where one faces no retribution for speaking a truth unpopular.
Such is not to be confused with that fundamental Freedom of Association, because if you say something stupid, I’m not required to associated with you. That is another kind of “Catch-22″, because association or disassociation is a kind of consequence which will always impair true freedom of speech.
