Hit Bottom And Keep Digging Dept.

     If I were asked to concoct a program that would permanently extinguish all possibility that American Negroes would ever rise to the attainments of American Caucasians, I would set to work on destroying their ability to communicate with whites.

     If Smith cannot communicate intelligibly with Jones, the two will not be able to interact in any meaningful way. They won’t be able to buy from one another or sell to one another. They won’t be able to collaborate on any project of mutual interest. They won’t be able to resolve any disputes between them. Indeed, Smith will be incapable of telling others anything sensible about Jones, and vice versa.

     It would produce a permanent state of unease between them.

     Now imagine the problem in eight digits: the 40 million or so American blacks unable to communicate with the 270 million American whites. Given that trade in a large and varied market and the ability to get along peaceably with the majority of one’s neighbors are absolute requirements if one wants to prosper and be safe, what do you think would ensue?

     Facility of communication is the basis of a harmonious society.

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     Regard the following, which I found at Power Line this morning:

     Grading Ain’t Just Grading: Rethinking Writing Assessment—Ecologies Towards Antiracist Ends

     With
     Asao B. Inoue
     February 1st, 2019

     SCHEDULE OF EVENTS

     PLENARY SESSION: THE LANGUAGE STANDARDS THAT KILL OUR STUDENTS: GRADING AIN’T JUST GRADING

     9:45 AM -11:00 AM
     MGC 3-5

     Open to all faculty who preregister

     This plenary will argue against the use of conventional standards in college courses that grade student writing by single standards. Inoue will discuss the ways that White language supremacy is perpetuated in college classrooms despite the better intentions of faculty, particularly through the practices of grading writing.

     Take a moment to ponder the utter, vicious psychopathy of the notion that the writing of college students of whatever race should not be graded according to a uniform standard. Aren’t the implications of such a policy as plain as mud? Isn’t the outcome of a state of affairs in which black Americans cannot communicate intelligible with white Americans easy to foresee?

     Now ask yourself what the motives of the persons who’ve proposed such a state of affairs must be. Take your time; I’ll wait right here.

---

     Given Asao B. Inoue’s name, I expected him to be non-white. However, his official photo is ambiguous. So this...person, whose self-description runs thus:

     I do research that investigates racism in writing assessments (e.g. writing programs, writing placement, etc.), which includes classroom writing assessments. About half of my work is theoretical, while the other half is empirical in nature. I've published articles and chapters on validity, classroom writing assessment, grading contracts, assessment as rhetoric, reflection practices, failure in writing assessments, among other things. In the past, I've paid close attention to the Hmong racial formation and their writing and reflection practices.

     ...is promulgating a development in college writing assessment that would utterly cripple the communications capabilities, and therefore the futures, of American blacks, most of whom reach college with below-par language abilities because of the lack of attention to such things in the government-run schools. He has a doctorate in “Rhetoric and Composition.” He’s published articles and books. He’s holding seminars. He’s apparently getting respectful attention from his “colleagues.” And he’s proposing a change to higher-educational grading standards that would completely isolate American blacks from their white countrymen.

     You couldn’t do as much damage to the prospects of American blacks with tanks and artillery. If I were black, I’d regard him as my race’s worst enemy. I have to wonder: who’s backing him? Who is it who thinks his prescription is a good thing, socially?

     Whoever it is that’s propelling this man’s lunacies, I want him caught and hanged.

---

     Perhaps you remember the promotion of Ebonics a couple of decades back. It was seriously proposed at some schools on the West Coast that Ebonics be recognized as valid language to be shown respect equal to standard American English in primary and secondary education. While the public foofaurauw died down after a while, as a de facto matter this has been the treatment of urban black street dialect for at least twenty years. It correlates strongly with the amplification of racial tensions in the United States.

     I’ll say it a second time: Facility of communication is the basis of a harmonious society. But our “educators,” the majority of whom deserve to be hung upside-down by their genitals and beaten with staves, have permitted the vulnerable children of American blacks to become isolated from their white coevals. The situation does not improve with age. Rather, it intensifies, because the young black has been confined socially to those with whom he can communicate.

     I’ve seen enough mindlessness in my sixty-six years to persuade me that unthinking stupidity in institutional policymaking is the rule rather than the exception. Recent developments have only strengthened that opinion. But I can distinguish between stupidity and unmitigated evil. The subject of this piece belongs in the latter category.

     Power Line’s Steve Hayward has this to say:

     [N]othing will marginalize a struggling student more than telling them they are exempt from academic canons of excellence and achievement. But this is the Orwellian world of higher education today, where the real racists parade under the banner of anti-racism.

     Indeed.