The Washington Post's Darkest Hour

[DonRocks]

I keep trying to believe this story wasn't written and published.

[Ericandblueboy]

I read that article and read some of the comments.  It is a vindictive and vicious piece and that's how most people felt (or so it seems to me).

[DonRocks]

20 minutes ago, Ericandblueboy said:

I read that article and read some of the comments.  It is a vindictive and vicious piece and that's how most people felt (or so it seems to me).

"Apparently I Don't Understand the World Anymore, Because this Story, from and about The Washington Post, Makes No Sense to Me at All (Or Maybe It Does)..." on ethicsalarm.com

Last night, the Post was monitoring and withholding every comment, releasing them only in small batches, and deleting many of them (including the words I typed in the initial post above (which I had originally submitted as a comment at around 9:30 PM)).

---

Oct 13, 2006 - "You Be the Columnist: Culpeper Steak" by Marc Fisher on washingtonpost.com [one of the authors of this article]

Michael Landrum's response on this website.

[eatruneat]

When I see navel gazing articles like that, I think back to this Sally Quinn article from 2010, which I still cannot believe made it to print. 

[deangold]

I am sorry, but the current Post article to me seems to be the kind of exposure to the causal nature with which white people accept racist behavior. 

I had customers at the Grotto and Dino make comments about my staff based on race. They were kicked out or told off in no uncertain terms. I banned a regular customer from Dino over his unacceptable statements towards a team member of mine with visible challenges. It is unacceptable and you cannot accept it. 

Here was a quasi official affair and something unacceptable happened. When two BIPOC called out the woman in blackface, the hosts of the party were already in the wrong.She should have been asked to leave already. That one of the hosts did not provide the harrassed woman the full information and lied about it, he became complicit. If this had been a dinner party with just friends, the fact that the hosts were insensitive and complicit in a racist act could have remained private or could have become an issue affecting attendees. But that is not what happened here.

This is one of those parties where you have a large number of people who work at the post attended. It became a quasi official affair because of this. Workplace harassment can happen on the job, but it can happen at social events. And this workplace is the Washington Post. And Toles is a Pulitzer prize winning member of the Post's editorial page. And he blew it. 

What should happen? To me, this article is the bare minimum. I do think HR at the post should be investigating it if they are not already. I think Mr. Toles has opened himself up to public scorn. Should he be fired? I am not doing the investigation and I do not have input from the harassed employee. But this should not be swept under the rug and especially Mr. Toles does not get a pass because of liberal cred.

This situation is very similar to me as outing. There are a lot of people who think outing a political figure with a track record of anti LGBT action is wrong. I am not one of them. When people in power use their positions to harm and hide, there need to be consequences. Aaron Shock was outed not because he was gay, but because he was actively harming gay families by lying about who he was and using his position to inflict that harm.

This case is not the same, and Mr Toles offence not at the same level. But his outing is a good thing as was Shocks. 

I don't know if this offends any one, but if it does so I will be glad to know and eliminate you from my life. I don't have time for casual white supremacy. Our country does not. 

[DonRocks]

23 hours ago, deangold said:

I don't know if this offends any one, but if it does so I will be glad to know and eliminate you from my life.

I can only speak for myself, but I cannot imagine anyone of intelligence being offended by this.

22 hours ago, deangold said:

Thanks

Don't thank me: Just to be clear, I wrote, "being offended by," not "disagreeing with."

[DonRocks]

"'WaPo' Blackface Story Takes Cancel Culture to New Extreme" by Rob Williams on mediapost.com

[DonRocks]

"Why Did the Washington Post Get this Woman Fired?" by Josh Barro and Olivia Nuzzi on nymag.com

[DonRocks]

"Amy Coney Barrett Served as a 'Handmaid' in Christian Group People of Praise" by Emma Brown, Jon Swaine, and Michelle Boorstein on washingtonpost.com

A Handmaid? You want to talk about Trump and his "dog whistles?" The first thing that popped into my mind when I read this was David Howard.

Note also the semi-crosseyed photo of Barrett.

[Keithstg]

11 hours ago, DonRocks said:

"Amy Coney Barrett Served as a 'Handmaid' in Christian Group People of Praise" by Emma Brown, Jon Swaine, and Michelle Boorstein on washingtonpost.com

A Handmaid? You want to talk about POTUS and his "dog whistles?" The first thing that popped into my mind when I read this was David Howard.

Note also the semi-crosseyed photo of Barrett.

Was "Handmaid" not her official title in the group? If (as reported) Handmaid was Coney Barrett's title, the WaPo is just reporting accurately. Also see no semi-crosseyed photo, but am looking at the web edition and have found that the pictures on the mobile version sometimes differ.

[Ericandblueboy]

Quote

A Georgetown law professor was terminated and a second was placed on leave after a video clip showed a conversation between the pair that included what an official called “reprehensible” statements about Black students, officials said Thursday.

The conversation between adjunct professors Sandra Sellers and David Batson had triggered an investigation by Georgetown University’s Office of Institutional Diversity, Equity and Affirmative Action. The school’s Black Law Students Association had called for Sellers’s firing.

The video clip — which was shared on Twitter this week — showed Sellers discussing student performance.

“I hate to say this. I end up having this angst every semester that a lot of my lower ones are Blacks,” Sellers said in the video. “Happens almost every semester. And it’s like, ‘Oh, come on.’ You get some really good ones, but there are also usually some that are just plain at the bottom. It drives me crazy.”

Law Center Dean William Treanor said Thursday that he informed Sellers she was terminated and that she had indicated she had planned to resign. Batson was placed on administrative leave pending the investigation, Treanor said.

The dean said the incident underscores the school’s needs for more anti-bias training. He said officials are taking steps to ensure that students in Sellers and Batson’s class are graded fairly.

Sellers shared a resignation letter with The Washington Post in which she apologized for the “hurtful and misdirected remarks” that were part of a longer discussion about patterns in class participation.

“I would never do anything to intentionally hurt my students or Georgetown Law and wish I could take back my words,” Sellers said in the letter. “Regardless of my intent, I have done irreparable harm and I am truly sorry for this.”

Batson did not did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday.

Hassan Ahmad, a Georgetown Law student who posted clips of the remarks on Twitter, said the conversation happened at the conclusion of a negotiations class around Feb. 21 that was being recorded so that students could view it later. Sellers and Batson stayed on the call after students left, so their conversation was recorded, as well, Ahmad said.

The recording was online for about two weeks before students noticed the conversation between Sellers and Batson, Ahmad said. The video was reported Monday morning and then taken down soon after, he said.

In a statement Wednesday evening, Treanor said he had learned this week about a conversation between two faculty members “that included reprehensible statements concerning the evaluation of Black students.” He called the content of the video “abhorrent.”

In a petition, the Black Law Students Association also called on the law school to conduct an audit of Sellers’s grading and student evaluations. It also wants the school to assess and improve its “subjective” grading system and commit to hiring more Black professors.

“These racist statements reveal not only Sellers’ beliefs about Black students in her classes, but also how her racist thoughts have translated to racist actions,” the group of Black law students said. “Professor Sellers’ bias has impacted the grades of Black students in her classes historically, in her own words.”

The group has urged Batson to publicly apologize for failing to condemn Sellers’s statements.

Although years removed from law school, Tiffany Wright said she was disgusted by the news from her alma mater.

Wright, a former Supreme Court law clerk, graduated from Georgetown Law in 2013.

“I can’t say I was surprised by it,” she said, adding that in academia and in practice, “there is sort of this perception that maybe the Black folks, like, we just don’t belong.”

Wright, now a practicing attorney and co-director of the human and civil rights clinic at Howard University’s law school, said she has been dealing with the kind of microaggressions espoused by Sellers since she was a student. She’s used to people doubting her abilities and seeing Black people held to different standards than their White peers. “It also has an effect over time on our mental health,” she said. “You start to absorb and believe those lies.”

The recent incident comes months after Black law students said Carrie Menkel-Meadow, professor emerita at Georgetown Law and professor at the University of California at Irvine School of Law, used the n-word in a class she was teaching at the California school.

In September, the Black Law Students Association said: “Professor Menkel-Meadow’s offensive words and rationalizations are dangerous and unacceptable. She claims to understand the pain that offensive epithets cause, yet will not apologize for the harm her own usage of the n-word has caused for her own students.”

In an email Thursday, Menkel-Meadow denied using the word but said it was in an article she assigned to students about regulating hate speech.  Menkel-Meadow said that the article had been used for several years and that no one had objected to it or the assignment.

By Lauren Lumpkin.

I thought Sellers was concerned that her black students were not performing as well as others, not that she gave black students bad grades because she's racist.  But the school, the Black Law Students Association, and the article suggest that it's Sellers' fault that the black students don't score as well as the others, implying that she gives biased grades.  However, my understanding is that the tests are graded anonymously.

Link for those with Wapo subscription and want to read the comments.  

[zgast]

9 hours ago, Ericandblueboy said:

Link for those with Wapo subscription and want to read the comments.  

Don't ever, ever read the comments.  Anywhere.

[Bart]

I like the comments!  Check out the comments to this Glenn Kessler/Fact Checker article on Biden's address last night where he's desperately looking for something to be horrified over:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/03/11/fact-checking-bidens-address-nation/

 

This comment pretty much nailed the article in a nutshell:  Kessler's summarization that the speech was "light on facts" was more misleading than either of the two things he complains about.