I don’t know what to make of this except to scratch my head in incredulity at the “virtue signalling” of today’s college students. As reported by Mediaite and the University of Oregon student paper The Daily Emerald, the student union building has for some time had a quote by Martin Luther King Jr., one you’ll recognize from his famous “I have a dream” speech:
“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. I have a dream…”
When the building was being renovated, there was discussion about maybe deep-sixing those words. As the Emerald reports:
However, this hasn’t always been the quote that filled the entrance of the EMU and there was talk of the quote changing again. The quote is not going to change, but that decision was not made without some hard thought by the Student Union Board.
Laurie Woodward, the Director of the Student Union said that when she approached the union with the question of if they wanted to keep the current MLK quote or supplement a new one, one of the students asked, “Does the MLK quote represent us today?”
“Diversity is so much more than race. Obviously race still plays a big role. But there are people who identify differently in gender and all sorts of things like that,” sophomore architecture major, Mia Ashley said.
Until 1985, that space was occupied by a quotation from a former dean that referred to “the good life for all men” and “man’s aspiration”; and I can see how, by using “man” instead of “people,” it could be considered offensive to women. But although one might argue that the King quote discriminates against people who are being marginalized for issues other than skin color, in reality it reflects the goal of inclusion of everyone: judging people not by superficialities but by character. Remember how that speech ends?:
Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.
And when this happens, and when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”
So really, do we need quotes about the transgendered, about the Jews and Muslims, about the disabled, about every marginalized group in society? Can’t we use King’s stirring words to represent the goal of equality for everyone? No, because every snowflake must have their day (and their say).
Sadly, it doesn’t look that this is the end of it. The Emerald has a few ominous words:
Woodward says she has no idea if the quote will change again in the near future, but she’s merely excited that important discussions like this are being held on campus again. “What words are is important,” she says, “but what’s more important is that people think about what the words should be.”
If it were to happen, this would be a feat that would bring in the entire University of Oregon student population to some extent, which is a big reason she thinks the Student Union wasn’t ready to take it on.
Imagine what a dog’s breakfast it would be when the student body is ready to take it on! When that happens, I suspect that entire building will be covered with competing quotations.
sub
There is probably a building somewhere inscribed with the famous line…
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal..”
This inscription is now endangered.
Well, I think maybe this shows how little a certain segment of college level students don’t understand the historical progress of civil rights. Yes, DR. King spoke of the color of skin, Elizabeth Cady Stanton spoke of gender, Harvey Milk spoke of sexual orientation; none of them included all marginalized groups, nor do I think it would have been possible for them do so and still make progress. Rather than take down DR. King’s great hope of equality of the races, perhaps maybe add additional quotes from other civil rights leaders. Maybe even another one from King, ” The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”
Also, when you are trying to market an idea, short and snappy works best.
A line with +infinite addendums so that you include everyone ends up diluting the message.
That last quote offends me somehow. Not sure if its because I believe in the Turtle view of the universe which of course makes it problematic. Now I need my safe space.
That’s a good quote, too!
It’s a terrific quote.
Martin Luther King was paraphrasing Theodore Parker, 19th century abolitionist, Unitarian, and Transcendentalist who wrote
“I do not pretend to understand the moral universe; the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways; I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience. And from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice.”
from “Ten Sermons of Religion”
They should have a competition to compose their own all-inclusive inspirational motto. I strongly suspect that the winning (or perhaps, “preferred”; having a winner would be discriminating against non-winners…) motto would be the least memorable, least inspiring and blandest piece of writing ever seen….
Doesn’t having a written motto discriminate against the illiterate. Oh, and the visually impaired?
cr
Yes. Now get on with the task given!
[Taps nightstick meaningfully into palm.]
OK. Here’s my inspirational motto, applicable to all races, colors, genders, gender-benders, professions (oldest or otherwise), ages, ethnicities, religions, non-religions, species, philosophies, and any other category we haven’t thought of:
“Shit happens.”
cr
Well, depending on what the doctors give me to clear out the worms …
+1, cr.
*Evolution in action*
Ideas or activities will succeed or fail depending on their context. So be nice to each other.
I have a dream that one day poor people will have access to medical care.
I have a dream that one day people without rich parents will be able to take the internships that lead to top jobs.
I have dream that one day working-class people will be able to go to university without running up massive debts.
Silly, I know.
I have a dream that one day people will consider ideas not for what they omit but for what they include.
When reading about these student unions, I often feel like I’ve enterend the Twilight Zone. To the student unions, standing up for equal rights now means criticizing Martin Luther King for not being inclusive enough. Should I laugh or cry now?
An SJW twit told me that student unions should have all the power because they:
1) have the least power
2) their decisions will have the least impact
3) unless the student union is composed of white cishet males, in which case, they have all the power cuz the wider culture is behind them, in which case they can DIAF.
4) this conversation was in regards to whether or not it was right to no-platform Namazie at Goldsmiths. Apparently the Muslim student union was the most powerless, ergo, they were the most *right*.
That guy was exceptionally stupid. If Student Unions get all the power, then they will have the most power in society and their decisions will have the most impact on society. That means the reasons for giving them power would just evaporate.
Being a student of the humanities I’ve seen a lot of crazy ideas. But the idea that the validity of a statement is dependent on the power and powerlessness of the debaters is uniquely ridiculous. How do you cope with these people?
It was a woman.
She ‘fights for the rights of the oppressed’
On Patheos blogs. And on a site called “The Mary Sue”
What a brave warrior.
She did in fact state, quite clearly, that decisions etc should always default to the powerless, as ‘if you are not oppressed, you cannot have an opinion on what it is like to be oppressed’.
The conversation started out regarding cultural appropriation, and then moved on to Mizzou and Namazie.
She also told me that it is illegal to take photos of strangers in public (without their consent (which is why the behaviour of Melissa Click et al. was totes legit).
If the powerless get power to make decisions, then they are by definition not the powerless.
Nevertheless, I do wonder if she has the same position on Bangladeshi bloggers being hacked to death by islamic terrorists. Surely she agrees that Bangladesh needs secularists in power?
Well we can add the law to the long list of things she is clueless about. It is NOT illegal to take pictures of strangers in public.
Yes, I corrected her, and then she said that it was illegal to take photos of people in public if they withdraw consent.
/sigh
I can only talk to these people from time to time.
It is traumatizing.
I went to Love Joy Feminism (the blog that PCC profiled wherein the author blamed CH for their own murders) and heard, over and over again, that ‘women rape just as much as men and that everyone rapes equally’ so why pick on the poor oppressed migrants?
So a far-right fascist group which has 3 members and zero power should make all the decisions?
Or is it only ‘people who I agree with’ should make all the decisions?
And this shows how far they are from what is called (in parts of Europe, if not here in NA) the libertarian left. That is, the goal of these movements (e.g., the anarchists) is to *abolish* the “power over” relations, not transfer them. I am not sure the goal is realizable, but one doesn’t do anything like it by blythly reassigning power.
Its worth remembering that these are 17-21 year olds, trying out social activism for (in many cases) the first time. So when they do something (we old fogies think is) hairbrained in the name of social justice, we should chalk some of it up to the learning experience and not get too upset about it. Our goal as adults should primarily be to help them learn what other people have thought and done before, get them to think critically about these notions, and to ensure they don’t hurt others as they learn how to do that. As long as they don’t hurt others, the occasional embarrassing flub seems fine to me. So IMO: bad quote-picking = example of a mere flub. We stay out of it, even if we think they’re being idiotic. Demanding someone get fired = example of damaging mistake, time to step in.
Well said. How many of our generation’s self-evident truths started out as outrageous student ideas in the ’60s.
You make an excellent point. What we are seeing on college campuses is a typical example of youthful idealism. I saw much of the same silliness on college campuses in the 1960s. Those ideas that have merit, such as the rise of feminism in the 1960s, will eventually gain widespread support. The bad ideas will quickly fade.
And, yes, teaching youth critical thinking and an understanding of history (hopefully not distorted by ideologues)will help. You should not be surprised to learn that in 2012 the Texas Republican Party had this plank in its platform.
“Knowledge-Based Education – We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/texas-gop-rejects-critical-thinking-skills-really/2012/07/08/gJQAHNpFXW_blog.html
The Republican party, the party of religion, now has no shame in publicly announcing its support of stupidity.
I think the “idealism”, as compared with that of the students who fought for civil rights or against the Vietnam war, is far more self-centered and solipsistic than before. Seriously, do you think that the woman who yelled at the Christakises in Yale was really concerned with greater society, or with her own comfort, virtue, and entitlement?
–An old fogie
I agree with PCC.
Students, and many people today, are just far more narcissistic, period.
They don’t have anything real to fight for, so they invent things.
Also, they want to stand out. Many people want to be noticed. They want to be the special snowflake on the internet.
I saw a hilarious and very illuminating youtube series on the subject of special snowflakes.
Simply google:
Tumblrisms
InternetAristocrat
And I know *plenty* of SJWs who are in their 30s and 40s who are just as clueless as these students.
So no, sorry, i am not buying the ‘youthful if clueless idealist’ line.
Something else is going on.
It’s a social movement that is entirely different from the idealism of the 1960s. The SJWs of today don’t have real ‘evils’ to fight, so they are inventing them. (and they wall want to be special snowflakes)
But the sad thing is (at least in my view) there are *many* things worth fighting for, including some of the things these folks claim are important (e.g., racism). So … what’s a non-violent metaphor equivalent to “shot oneself in the foot”?
I am sure that many of them think that they are doing good, but no, I really think that it’s wrong to say that they are just youthful idealists like the students of the 1960s.
A lot of SJWism is simply virtue signalling. A lot of these people don’t actually put their butts on the line. They just go on the internet and proclaim that they are ‘on the right side of history’, and attack others for not being as ideologically pure.
A huge part of it is about social status. Letting the world know that you are ‘better than those other guys’ by proclaiming your moral superiority at every opportunity.
I would agree that most of the demonstrations today on college campuses dwarf in importance or “rightness” compared to the civil rights and anti-war demonstrations of the 1960s. But, my argument is that the psychological imperative that drives the current day protestors is the same as drove the protestors of the 1960s or the current anti-abortion protestors. I believe that all these groups believe they are fighting for a better world as they define it. I wasn’t commenting on the moral validity of these protests. The current college protestors argue that respect for diversity trumps just about every other value, including free speech. I don’t agree with this and believe that this obsession with diversity will eventually fade away, but I understand how youth in particular could come to believe in such a cause. So, yes, I do believe that these protestors, in part, believe they are concerned with a greater society as they would like to see it.
I do think she was really concerned with greater society. She’s just authoritarian-left on the political compass rather than libertarian left: she wants to impose her generally (but not always) leftist values on others by coercion and force. “Ve haf vays of makink you socially aware.”
I also think that Historian is right about our selective memory. You’re remembering all the 1960s-70s protests that have stood the test of time. But there were probably a bunch of much more idiotic protests too, we just don’t remember them because they have faded from our personal memories and the history books as unimportant. (One example may be the Black Panthers showing up at the California State Assembly heavily armed. Their hearts were in the right place, but does anyone here really think that allowing citizens to attend legislative sessions with M-16s is a good idea? Moreover I know of that one because it made the national news. Who knows how many even crazier things happened at the local level and just never made it into the national papers).
In the same way, a person in 2066 will probably look back on this era and see gay rights as one of the defining fights of the 2010s. This woman’s protest to have someone fired for suggesting that college students can pick their own Halloween costumes without regulation will disappear from personal memory and from the books as insignificant. In a past era where news content space was a limited resource, it probably wouldn’t even have made the national news; it would’ve been relegated to the town paper and nothing more, and then effectively disappeared as those papers disappeared. Today, of course, it will be present on the web for (essentially) forever. But to make a medical analogy, we should be cautious not to mistake better detection/identification of a disease for an increasing rate of disease.
My apologies for the html fails.
I was just about to write a deriding comment about these students, but then I read yours and changed my mind. Well said, thank you.
I’m going to put on my snarky hat and suggest the plaque be replaced by this quote and picture
“We have all heard that no two snowflakes are alike. Each snowflake takes the perfect form for the maximum efficiency and effectiveness for its journey. And while the universal force of gravity gives them a shared destination, the expansive space in the air gives each snowflake the opportunity to take their own path. They are on the same journey, but each takes a different path.
there are so many transitions and changes that take place along the journey of the snowflake. But, no matter what the transition, the snowflake always finds itself perfectly shaped for its journey.”
https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-CnGIvmptEXw/UQfwCYjB6ZI/AAAAAAAA0mY/1sShh809NHI/w797-h449-no/nakaya_snowflake.jpg
+1
That was, I suspect, written by an arts stundolt (a local neologism for a stunningly doltish student). Since the growth environment of an aerial ice crystal is extremely dynamic (uh, gravity!), then ANY crystal you capture is almost certainly out of equilibrium with it’s immediate environment. Just as a ferinstance, shapes R1 and R2 have clearly had a change in conditions during growth, resulting in the change from wild dendritic growth to the slower growth of the “clubs” on the ends of each arm.
Do arts students not learn anything about the thermodynamics of crystal growth in kindergarten these decades?
But these are *special* snowflakes.
And the arts students are more likely to learn about the therapeutic powers of crystals…
cr
The sharp edges are blunted by the fabric of the sock.
Hmmm, can I get a mesh sock … Oh, tank mesh, of course. I’ll just go and get one off a tank.
In other words people are alike and different. And *both* are important.
“Mostly I like to see how the world works. Meet people. Learn how they’re different – and the same.”
That’s a cool picture, and the quote would lend itself nicely to a Jonathan Livingstone Snowflake parody.
For me, the mystery with snowflakes is the near-symmetry between the arms of the crystal, implying practically identical (time-varying) conditions acting at their apices up to several mm apart.
Following a comment in another forum, I checked out the ‘no two snowflakes are alike’.
Apparently, at the atomic level (and taking into account the positions of isotopes), that is correct.
Geometrically, for very tiny snowflakes (ice crystals), it’s probably false – they only have so many shapes available.
For larger complex snowflakes, it’s apparently probably true. Just based on the astronomical number of possible shapes.
http://www.its.caltech.edu/~atomic/snowcrystals/alike/alike.htm
Of course there’s no law of nature that forbids two snowflakes to be identical, just like there’s no law that prevents two people from having the same fingerprints.
cr
“i have a dream…”
So…Dr. King gets to have a dream…. What about MY dream?
Last night I dreamed of a magical place where ALL people and animals and plants and rocks and solids and gases of ALL types lived TOGETHER in eternal infinite peace and harmony and everyone’s favorite music played ALL the time and their were plenty of NAPS and no microaggressions and then I’m suddenly sitting in fifth grade biology and we start to take a test and I realize I am completely naked and no one has noticed…yet…and I’m wondering if I can get to the gym and put on my sweats and the then the teacher is MY MOM and she says just…gobbledygook and she’s pointing at me with an american flag and just SCREAMING AND then I woke up.
Depak?
The vortex into madness continues.
At the same time, far to many actually WANT people to be judged by the color of their skin, callinor their gender, or their self-made-up gender… because it’s no longer about equality, or color blindness
diversity, dontcha know?
They’re just afraid that someone who doesn’t have good character (society’s fault, of course) might be offended!
I keep wondering where in the hell these high minded folks will ever find gainful employment outside the university? I work for a very safety conscience company that works towards being more socially forward but at the end of the day you had better produce or you will be shown the fork in the road.
That’s just so typical of productively-abled people to strew the path with shrarp cutlery and warnings and make it UNSAFE for everyone else.
It’s not that I always *want* to be productive – I like a lazy nap as much as the next oaf – but my kids are addicted to food, clothing, and shelter. In the good ol’ days kids weren’t so dang selfish!
I feel a Four Yorkshiremen coming on.
Here you go, Obidiah.
loooxury
Is this where they filmed Animal House?
I thought the complaint was going to be the implication that we need to ignore skin color. In this day and age saying you judge people based on their character, and don’t see race, is considered a microaggression. Since you are supposed to see skin color otherwise you don’t act in accordance with your relative privilege.
I have been told, by regressive leftists, in the very same conversation, that:
1) race/sex etc are all social constructs and were invented by white patriarchal oppressors to keep people down
2) but we cannot abolish these social constructs, in fact ,we must keep them in order to help the marginalized overcome their oppression
Such mental gymnastics!
Good point.
I’m confident that before they pick a quote they will run the person they steal it from through their cultural grinder and make certain no one breathing is offended. And regardless of how many years ago this quote was first applied they will review it with their almost perfect 21st century values.
If the text has changed once, then it can change again. I really don’t see it being a big deal.
I think the King quote pretty much covers everyone, but people disagree over many things, and perhaps there is a quote somewhere that is better. There is no rule that says all such things are forever.
Woodward’s quote was just one person’s opinion, and I dare say if you look you can find someone with strong opinions, even silly or absurd ones at every university.
Clearly the majority of the council disagrees with Woodward, otherwise she would have won the vote.
Nuts tend to get power on small councils because the regular folk get sick and tired of dealing with them, and a lot of people simply don’t want the bother of these positions. It can be very draining dealing with these kind of people. When I was in a workplace union executive I was getting calls from one person every other day because she always wanted things her way. If she was over ruled, she went over our heads all the way to the top of a fairly large organization.
When I went to college the union could have been proposing the sacrifice of rabbits to Satan on the quad and I wouldn’t have known or cared. I just wanted to get my education and get on with my career.
Must not forget to include polydactyl kittehs
Such earnestly literalistic thinking, unable to take a quote and apply its principles to their own situation without having every potential group it could apply to explicitly spelt out. FFS, do some of the thinking yourselves!
My thought exactly. Are we raising a generation that takes everything so literally that they cannot infer greater meaning from an abstraction?
Actually, for some people the Gettysburg address has it’s problems. Four score and seven – would be correct if you think the nation began in 1776…but it didn’t.
Sure, we could go with other events as the founding, but the Declaration of Independence is as good as any and much better than most.
In any event, it may be a bit little late to complain, since we celebrated our Bicentennial in 1976. (If not, you may want to raise this before the nation gets too deep into preparations for its Bicenquinquagenary in 2026.) 🙂
Declaring independence does not make a nation, it’s just a nice time to shoot some fireworks. Would you use the date of your divorce to mark the anniversary of your next marriage? The new wife probably wouldn’t like that.
They did not go to Philly in 1787 to play cards. Lincoln knew that a new nation was not conceived in 1776, but 3 score and 16 does not exactly have a ring to it.
1776 was also the year that the Second Continental Congress adopted the Articles of Confederation binding the 13 colonies into a “perpetual union.”
The 1787 drafting of the U.S. Constitution did not create the United States; it instead replaced the Articles of Confederation, as the preamble states, “in Order to form a more perfect union.” (emphasis added)
Or, to carry through with your marriage analogy, if you and your spouse renewed your vows would you start counting anniversaries afresh?
“….and all sorts of things like that,”
Jesus wept – is this the best she can say to articulate her opinions?
The Ducks’ student union could avoid the diversity problem if it would simply construe “color of their skin” as synecdoche for all biologically based differences.
I’m confident Dr. King would be down with that.
This definitely not an inclusive quote, because it excludes several letters of the apbabet and a million other words of the English language, not to mention all the other languages.
I would like to see in writing a pledge by these students that they will stick to at least some of their high principles and not end up ripping off the public as Lawyers or on Wall Street.