It’s not OK to be white.
My first task is to see through my own biases, and Fox News’ biases as well, so as to present this fairly.
I still hunch that it was as if I sat down in a mandatory business meeting, only to discover it was actually a religious service where I would be called on to worship gods I’d never heard of.
On November 30, 2022, Washington governor Jay Inslee sponsored a “2022 Governor’s Equity Summit” in Tacoma. It included a number of presentations, including the one to be discussed here, which was given by the Professional Educator Standards Board. The actual author of the presentation is not named. Who, if anyone, was mandated to attend, also is not named.
I could not find any other news report about this “summit.”
The gist of the presentation was as follows: Justice requires that the people of European descent of Washington give up their belief system, to adopt instead a belief system attributed to the aboriginal people whom people who look like their ancestors displaced. This was portrayed as a moral debt.
All things pertinent the former are labeled “White supremacist,” and all things pertinent the latter “indigenous.” It is difficult for me to even use the former term here, given its overtones of injustice and racial hatred; but so it was used in one of the sources for the presentation, a polemic by Tema Okun published on a platform that invites polemics.
Cusco. By Diego Delso, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=43175184
I question whether any one set of attributes can be said to be uniform or universal among all “indigenous” peoples. In the 1970s and 1980s, when liberation theology was in its heyday, I read one report after another as to how all “indigenous” peoples — whether in Central America, Hawaii, Papua New Guinea or Australia — practiced communism, the humane system that Nature or God intended, living in Edenic bliss, until the invaders of European descent came and imposed the unnatural, dehumanizing concept of private property. How those evil people came upon that evil concept was never explored. And the non-white empires of China, India, Japan and KwaZulu were likewise never explored. I doubt that the Incas who built Cusco had the exact same belief system as the Sioux.
Questions can also be asked of the presentation’s portraits of “White supremacist” beliefs.
For instance, perfectionism is when “making a mistake is confused with being a mistake, doing wrong with being wrong,” according to the presentation. One way to remedy this, it said, is to “develop a learning organization, where it is expected that everyone will make mistakes and those mistakes offer opportunities for learning.”
I am not sure that perfectionism necessarily teaches that.
The presentation argued that “worship of the written word” discriminates against certain people, because “those with strong documentation and writing skills are more highly valued, even in organizations where ability to relate to others is key to the mission.” It suggested that state agencies “work to recognize the contributions and skills that every person brings” to the table.
The word “worship” here may be polemic hyperbole. I don’t recall ever working in an organization where what is described here was true.
Who leaked? Why? How?
Reporter Jessica Chasmar goes into great detail and much depth, providing many slides from the presentation and direct quotations from the presenters; so that I wonder how she came upon all this information, if she did not happen to attend the presentation herself. I wonder how in the world she even found out about the presentation. Who leaked all this to her? Some disgruntled attendee? In so much detail? And how did that person convey all this information? (On her phone?)
The article includes several links as to sources; at the time of this writing, they’re all still active:
Invisibilities
See the separate post with that title. Its concluding paragraph:
Whether or not I had some obligation or duty or responsibility to stay there and watch Tom’s things, beyond the ten minutes, beyond my available free time; to stay there in interference with my own needs — was and is an invisible thing, if it had any real existence at all. Maybe it existed on the astral plane, as a thing. But it is analogous, I think, to the invisible debts or obligations the organizers of that conference seemed to think that the non-indigenous residents of the state of Washington today, have toward the indigenous persons who previously inhabited that land.
If it’s invisible, is it real? Only the facts, the concrete What Is, is real.
In the face of anxiety, confusion or conflicting claims, I am prone to want to focus on What Is, on facts — the mere facts, as they are — and seek to accept them as they are. The implications of the facts may be subject to various opinions, and those opinions may conflict. But the facts themselves merely are what they are; in this case, that one ethnic group currently constitutes the vast majority of the citizens of Washington, and there is no obvious reason for them to give up their belief system in favor of another.
Peace of mind
From my diary for 2022-12-14:
13:48. [Peace of mind] came over me last night during final smoke break; and again during a smoke break earlier this afternoon. It certainly is a different way of seeing the world, and of being in the world. I like it. Maybe coming on again just now. Much more peaceful way of moving in the world.
Anyway, it puzzles me that it would assert itself again just at this juncture. I have not been doing anything that I know of, that would bring this on. I see nothing in my circumstances that would be prone to bring it on.(*)
16:53. * * * (*) It may have come in response to the Jay Inslee article linked to yesterday. I have my view; they have their view; what they say is immaterial; what are the FACTS? None of us know them. So, I can get on with my life.
Some more has come today. I can worry about what influence, what effect, their POV may have on society. Regardless what effect they may have that I may not like, I can get on with my life just however I like. Nothing will come that I can’t face.
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