At first you say sometuing akin to “to become part of the elite you need to accept the elite's point of view and beliefs”, citing higher education as a gateway for elites, and the you use the discourse “social justice” as an example of what young people must believe in to get to higher education. But “social justice” is definitely not a foundational belief of the elite, because otherwise the US wouldn't work the way it does otherwise, for the elite is the one who actually shapes the society.
If anything, it's much more likely that Yale wants to attract young people by advertising values the young care about (young people being naturally much more progressive than older ones).
But anyway, even if this is true, that doesn't mean that it's the current Elite's views, just likely to be the future Elite's views (assuming that higher education pays a significantly higher role than the set of other Elite's beliefs they'll encounter later in their lives and that they'll mimic too in order to be successful later, since the process you're describing occurs over and over and over in someone's life).
The selection committees at universities certainly believes in social justice or they wouldn't consider race so heavily for admissions.
So, higher education is definately bad, and whether social justice is bad or not depends on whether you open the box and find out if the cat is a Republican or a Democrat?
That's P ^ !P, which is a contradiction. Your reading doesn't make any sense.
They're complaining about people doing the right thing. And they know that. So they have to complain they're doing the right thing wrong, or doing the right thing for the wrong reasons. Or the right thing is only a cover for a nefarious plot.
Which only re-inforces that it's the right thing, even before you examine the decades long track record of people arguing against it.
I don't personally subscribe to that narrative - dividing the losers of the new economic reality might have been an incidental goal, but the idea that social justice is a solution to elite overproduction[1] makes more sense to me. And as a means of curbing elite overproduction I actually like it - just as Edwardian scandal culture selected for self-control, cancel culture selects for a lot of the qualities we'd want in a successful elite. But I've yet to hear a good argument why it's not a cynical play by the elite to divide the poorest citizens against each other. Most who subscribe to the tenets of the system refuse to acknowledge the argument at all.
It's very hard to argue that social justice isn't designed to divide the poorest people against each other, since intended or not that's an effect it has[2]. I imagine the best counterargument to the belief I put forth in my first paragraph would be an alternate explanation for why these ideas arose when they did - does anyone who doesn't believe it's a cover for a nefarious plot have one?
[1] as argued very eloquently by, I believe, Charles Eisenstein in an essay I wish I could locate.
[2] and it puts one in the position of arguing that Yale isn't a racist institution, which is a losing position from the outset.
Would you want anything less in an academic institution? That's the entire point of places of higher learning.
Is it really "higher learning" when LITERAL groupthink is required?
(Maybe you're being sarcastic and I'm just not getting it)
A mayor was once asked what he was doing to help minorities in his city. He replied “I don’t have minorities in my city, we all are all equal”.
You can decide you -disagree- with the ideas of 'social justice', or the implementation, or whatever, but I think you'll need a stronger case than "it's political" to warrant the dismissal of an educational institution trying to incorporate the term.
Kids are supposed to be in universities to learn and develop their critical thinking, not to be brainwashed by the most fashionable ideology of the time. Sorry if this is such a provocative line of thinking these days.
Woke Racism is a really good book about that. Don’t worry it’s written by a black guy who’s been fighting for social justice for decades. The fact I have to say that is one of his points/arguments.
Try this sometime - choose a position (in politics or whatever). Use the terminology and dog whistles of the "other camp", but argue the opposite policy.
Then he wrote a book called "Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America".
So, they were right after all?
People opposed to social justice aren't apolitical or morally neutral. Banning books, getting educators fired, and forcibly de-transitioning children are all charged political agendas in and of themselves. They all fall under the umbrella of "anti-SJW/woke" brigadism.
I also know some 18 year old robotics kids that are just truly indifferent about this stuff. I suspect some of them will grow out of it, but even for the ones that don't, I don't think that says much about their qualifications for Yale. Climate change is a massively important issue yet we don't ask random humanities students what they've done to improve climate research.
However, I'm not sure I'm okay with the idea that feeding complex hormones to children who are not old enough to vote, drive, or get tattoos and/or piercings, or as you so put it is wise, and if this is what you mean by "forcibly de-transitioning children", then I'm actually okay with it.
Hormone therapy, like tattoos and/or piercings has a very permanent effect of the body. I believe such long term changes should only be allowed if the person is old enough to take the decision as an "informed adult".
Put more bluntly, if all of a sudden some new condition is discovered called "un-inked skin skin dysphoria", where not having a tattoo is believed to cause deep psychological trauma, I'd still make my kid wait to be a legal adult before they get a tattoo.
As the parent indicated, they're not willing to even communicate with people who don't parrot their own ideas.
> As the parent indicated, they're not willing to even communicate with people who don't parrot their own ideas.
That's the exact opposite of what I quoted. They invite criticism of the status quo, and push for greater justice in the world. Most decent human beings agree with that.
Since you seem to know enough to call it lip service, I assume you went there. what do you think should be done to ensure that those in charge actually made changes that you and your peers advocated for?
"Think about what it takes to claw your way into America’s elite strata. Unless you were born into the upper-middle class, your surest route is to pursue an elite education. To do that, it pays to be exquisitely sensitive to the beliefs and prejudices of the people who hold the power to grant you access to the social and cultural capital you badly want. By setting the standards for what counts as praiseworthy, elite universities have a powerful effect on youthful go-getters."
"As the senior assistant director of admissions at Yale recently observed, “for those students who come to Yale, we expect them to be versed in issues of social justice. We encourage them to be vocal when they see an opportunity for change in our institution and in the world.” Picture yourself as an eager high schooler reading these words, and then jotting down notes. You absorb, assuming you hadn’t already, what it takes to make your way in contemporary elite America. And as you grow older, you lean into the rhetorical gambits that served you so well in the past. You might even build a worldview out of them."
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/08/the-utilit...