February 17, 2021
MY CORNER by Boyd
Cathey
The Curse of Canine
Racism Threatens Dog Lovers Everywhere!
Friends,
Most Saturdays I drive in to the nearby town to do my weekly
grocery shopping at the local Food Lion. As I go in I sometimes tune my radio
to the local NPR station and catch a bit of the programming. It’s about the
only time I listen to public radio—as a general rule I can only take NPR in bits and
small doses. Its programs tend to be outrageously “woke” and condescending to
those of us out in the hinterland, anyone mired in a traditional lifestyle who
might have voted for Donald Trump and who doesn’t share the latest hip views
spouted by the featured guests.
This past Saturday as I listened to “Wait! Wait! Don’t Tell
Me,” which advertises itself as a quiz program, the panelists began with an
especially noxious and vicious attack not just on Trump, but also on anyone and
everyone who possibly supported him. It wasn’t just the normal invective which
I have come to expect from America’s taxpayer-supported public radio system; it
conveyed a certain and real venom and dripping hatred that surpassed all previous
times I had heard the program.
You would think that with the Donald now outside of
government, and now impeached twice with even leading Republicans (e.g., Mitch
McConnell) solemnly and dourly condemning him as if we needed somehow to
reconvene the Nuremburg Trials, that the invective would lessen. But no; it was
even worse this Saturday, on steroids, as it were.
It betrayed, I think, just how nervous and fearful our elites
in entertainment, the media, politics, and in corporate America still are, not
just of Trump, but of what was arguably his major accomplishment while at 1600
Pennsylvania Avenue. Although not successful in some of his promised reforms,
he actually, perhaps unwittingly, tore the mask off of the “deep state”
managerial elite establishment which has increasingly exerted almost inexorable
control over every aspect of our lives. Their grimacing and barbaric faces were
revealed, their foul activities and crass manipulation of nearly everything
exposed as never before.
That was an unforgivable sin, and as such only a stake through
the heart of the man responsible would suffice, and, likewise, that stake must also
be driven into the hearts of all those who partake in what one CNN pundit
called “the Trump cult.” Thus the calls from prominent Democrats and media
personalities for something resembling a “ministry of truth” or massive “re-education”
programs (i.e., modern Gulags?) for those who dissent from the new “reality”
proclaimed—and enforced—by our elites.
Have those folks not read Orwell? Or, maybe they did…?
It would be easy to dismiss such calls as outliers or isolated
demands, but they are uttered in all seriousness by significant and powerful voices
on the Left. And the Harris-Biden administration, ever sensitive to the demands
of its progressivist wing, now evokes the language of “equity,” which carries
the ideologically-armed language of “racism” and “white privilege” much farther
than anything envisaged even a few years ago, as my friend Dr. Paul Gottfried
pointed out recently (January 26) in his essay “Multiracial Whiteness Is the
Latest Leftist Branding Iron,” at American
Greatness.
Whites are now informed that they are guilty of the sin of “white
supremacy” and racism until they prove
their innocence. Indeed, being white may mean that one can never really prove his innocence, that the sin may be ineradicable.
Thus those multiple examples of white “woke” academics—mostly women—who have
tried to actually change their race and pretend that they were black (e.g.,
Rachel Dolezal), and thus escape the horrible onus of whiteness.
This feverish anti-white hysteria pervades our educational institutions
with a vengeance. Nothing is sacred,
nothing is off limits. Already we know that standard English is a “white
construct” and therefore must be abandoned. Teachers can no longer grade a
student for what once was considered bad or faulty English or grammar. We are
told that the works of William Shakespeare are shot through with racist imagery
and must be purged if employed in the classroom, if not banned outright. In
England there are calls to purge Winston Churchill’s name from institutions and
monuments—he was both a colonialist and a racist.
Two recent instances of this frenzied cultural barbarism—and eventual
cultural genocide—should come as no surprise, but I must admit that I was not
ready for them.
First, a new
mathematics guide sent out to teachers in Oregon by the state Department of
Education declares that traditional math, you know the kind that states
unequivocally that “2 plus 2 = 4,” projects a form of white supremacy. Titled “A Pathway to Equitable Math
Instruction,” the 82-page instructional guide lists the ways that this is
perpetrated in the classroom:
“White supremacy
culture infiltrates math classrooms in everyday teacher actions….Coupled with
the beliefs that underlie these actions, they perpetuate educational harm on
Black, Latinx, and multilingual students, denying them full access to the world
of mathematics….”
The guide offers a
year-long framework for “deconstructing racism in mathematics,” and calls for
“visibilizing [sic] the toxic characteristics of white supremacy culture with
respect to math.” Examples of this racist toxicity “include asking students
to show their work, focusing on getting the right answer, tracking student
success, and grading students.” No longer should a teacher ask a student to
show his work—no longer is an answer to be considered “right” or “wrong,” as such
responses only reinforce “paternalism” and the “worship of the written word,” more
signs of the oppressive white culture.
Well, math was never my best subject in school—I wish those
guidelines had been around fifty years ago when I was taking algebra! I might
have gotten an “A” instead of “C’s”—Oh, wait, under that system there would be
no grades. Darn it!
The second example has to be read and reread carefully to be
believed. It seems that loving
your dog, protecting him and allowing him to sleep inside is an act of
white privilege and racism. According to Katja Guenther, Associate Professor of Gender and Sexuality Studies at the
University of California, Riverside (where else?), in her new book The Lives and Deaths of Shelter
Animals:
“…allowing
dogs to sleep inside is a privilege reserved for the white and wealthy and that
policies against keeping dogs chained up in backyards are intended to oppress
people of color by imposing ‘middle-class norms of animal keeping in which
companion animals are considered family and treated accordingly,’ which ignore
the fact that people of color ‘are themselves trapped in poverty, may have few
options for legitimate income generation and possibly rely on their dogs for …
status’.
Additionally, the good professor
argues that laws against canine mistreatment discriminate against “anyone in
the US other than white, middle class and upper-class individuals.”
Take that! dog lovers everywhere!
And I can do Professor Guenther one better: not
only does my cocker spaniel, Jasper, sleep inside—a clear indication that I am
guilty of white privilege—but since reading that report I have noticed that
little Jasper, who is white, also projects all the tell-tale signs of white supremacy; he
insists on being the boss over all the neighborhood dogs (especially those of a
darker hue) and has a patriarchal attitude towards them. Most egregiously, he
only eats prepared Cesar Prime Rib and Filet Mignon, and barks ferociously if
I don't provide it for him at the appointed dinner hour. I must be at his
beck-and-call at all times, or face unwanted and undesirable deposits in my
hallway! Alas, perhaps some "woke" researcher should do a
government-financed study on "Canine racism"?
And what about cats? I would think they are even
more stained by privilege and racism.
Where all this madness and insanity ends—most of
it supported by taxpayers and government largesse—I won’t hazard a guess.
But I will admit that I exult in my blatant canine paternalism
and, as the saying goes, if this be racism, I damn well will make the most of
it!
Well said Dr. Cathey. I can no longer do NPR, not for years now though WWDTM used to be an amusing background noise in the machine shop on a Saturday morning. NPR showed their true colors when they threw Garrison Keillor to the wolves. I don't miss the smug mountebank, his act had grown quite stale but he brought an enormous number of listeneners to that station through PHC. The corporate ingratitude is jaw dropping.
ReplyDeleteIt may soon be a mark of white privilege to find fault with those less afflicted by such privilege who choose to raise dogs for bloodsport. Wait for it.
Huh, you're cool. I'm going to keep reading this stuff.
ReplyDelete