Love him or loathe him, it\u2019s difficult to find fault with Donald Trump\u2019s Executive Order on Combating Race and Sex Stereotyping, issued on September 22, 2020.<\/p>\n
It is intended to tackle \u201cthe pernicious and false belief that America is an irredeemably racist and sexist country; that some people, simply on account of their race or sex, are oppressors; and that racial and sexual identities are more important than our common status as human beings and Americans\u201d.<\/p>\n
Its concern is that \u201cthis malign ideology is now migrating from the fringes of American society and threatens to infect core institutions of our country\u201d.<\/p>\n
Therefore it prohibits the promotion of \u201cdivisive concepts\u201d\u2014the notion that one race or sex is inherently superior to another race or sex.<\/p>\n
It is not an attempt to stifle academic debate, or limit free speech. People and institutions are still able to discuss and critique ideas to their hearts\u2019 content.<\/p>\n
What they\u2019re no longer allowed to do is \u201cto promote race or sex stereotyping or scapegoating in the Federal workforce or in the Uniformed Services\u201d.<\/p>\n
This Executive Order was essentially attacking \u201cCritical Race Theory\u201d (CRT)\u2014a currently fashionable hotchpotch of half-baked hocus-pocus to which the notion of inherent \u201cwhite privilege\u201d is central.<\/p>\n
If the EO was a watershed moment in the States, then the Equalities Minister\u2019s October speech denouncing CRT in the House of Commons was our closest equivalent in the UK. Kemi Badenoch reminded educators that they would be breaking existing legislation if they teach politically contested ideas such as \u201cwhite privilege\u201d as facts.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, an intervention such as hers is all too rare and with Dominic Cummings and Lee Cain now out of Number 10, the government is reportedly looking to move away from the culture wars and to present Boris Johnson more in line with a Joe Biden-style approach. Why a centre-right party with an 80-strong majority in a small \u201cc\u201d conservative country would want to lean more towards the ideologies of a particularly left-wing politician is anyone\u2019s guess.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a great shame because after a long time people are finally beginning to wake up to what the Marxist sociologist Rudi Dutschke called \u201cthe long march through the institutions\u201d\u2014the idea that left-wing \u201cprogressives\u201d have to infiltrate public bodies in order to push through their ideologies. The long march is now well underway and it will take a huge effort to reverse it, particularly in the education system.<\/p>\n
The \u201cwoke\u201d infiltration is evident everywhere one looks. Cambridge University recently proposed a rule which would require academics to be \u201crespectful of the diverse identities of others\u201d which sounds well-meaning but could essentially prevent the debate of ideas that\u00a0 one disagrees with. It is an attempt by the Left to stifle free speech and silence dissenting views.<\/p>\n
Universities UK has published recommendations suggesting that universities must \u201cgo beyond\u201d unconscious bias training and implement anti-racist training on \u201cwhite privilege\u201d, despite Badenoch\u2019s statement.<\/p>\n
And up at Manchester University, students are demanding the banning of the word \u201cblack\u201d; the colour is no longer appropriate because it has been \u201cused for bad and unsavoury situations or objects\u201d.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, exam bodies, apparently unaware that \u201cblack\u201d is verboten, propose giving GCSE History a \u201cBlack Lives Matter makeover\u201d. Edexcel says: \u201cWhile we always work hard to design history qualifications that are diverse and inclusive, this year has rightly generated a renewed focus on what history is taught to our young people, and the sector needs to keep challenging itself.\u201d According to AQA: \u201cWe\u2019re always looking at how we can make our qualifications as representative as they can possibly be.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a recent survey by Channel 5, 93 per cent of respondents said that the school curriculum was not diverse enough to reflect society. Ninety per cent believe that teachers lacked adequate training to deliver an anti-racist education. But it\u2019s not the job of the curriculum to reflect society. It certainly shouldn\u2019t be presented in a superficially \u201cdiverse\u201d way. Surely, a curriculum should be knowledge-rich and planned according to educational principles, not rapidly reshaped as a reaction to current events.<\/p>\n
In a similar vein, a recent report by the Black Curriculum (it describes itself as \u201ca social enterprise founded in 2019 by young people to address the lack of Black British history in the UK Curriculum\u201d) claimed that the national curriculum \u201csystematically omits the contribution of black British history in favour of a dominant white, Eurocentric curriculum\u201d. It will be useful to get a firm understanding of what exactly is meant by \u201cblack history\u201d. Hitherto we haven\u2019t taught history based on complexion but rather based on key events that have shaped our nation. And the fact is that this nation has been a majority white country for most of its history. Obviously a significant portion of the history curriculum will feature white individuals of influence. That does not make it racist, it makes it accurate.<\/p>\n
Also, consider this. The largest number of immigrants joining our schools are of Eastern European descent. The larger groups of minorities in this country are no longer within the 13 per cent BAME category, and actually fall within the 87 per cent white group. Why do we never hear demands for more Polish history on the curriculum?<\/p>\n
CRT really is insidious. It has seeped into our institutions like a toxic miasma. Thankfully, the general public are becoming aware of its baleful influence. Now it is time for the establishment to start standing up to it rather than pursing a policy of appeasement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u2018After a long time people are finally beginning to wake up to \u201cthe long march through the institutions\u201d\u2014the idea that left-wing \u201cprogressives\u201d have to infiltrate public bodies in order to push through their ideologies. The long march is now well underway\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7000,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[651],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-695","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-open-season"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/695","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=695"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/695\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9199,"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/695\/revisions\/9199"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7000"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}