The Onion or TIME?

Oh. You can’t make ledes like this up. Can you? From what-could’ve-been-The-Onion:

In nature, most seals are black, with relatively few white ones. The Navy’s SEALs have exactly the opposite problem – they’re overwhelmingly white, with hardly any blacks. So they’re trying to do something about it.

Dear God. Let’s screw up yet one more thing and enforce affirmative action quotas within a specific volunteer branch of an all-volunteer force. So now the Navy will spend more money we don’t have hiring a contractor to appeal to specific minority groups nationwide in an effort to bolster the number of minority SEALs.

I’m near speechless. Read the rest.

Theater of the absurd: white paper leads to racist attitudes

Of course. From the UK Telegraph:

Another staple of the classroom – white paper – has also been questioned by Anne O’Connor, an early years consultant who advises local authorities on equality and diversity.

Children should be provided with paper other than white to drawn on and paints and crayons should come in “the full range of flesh tones”, reflecting the diversity of the human race, according to the former teacher.

Finally, staff should be prepared to be economical with the truth when asked by pupils what their favourite colour is and, in the interests of good race relations, answer “black” or “brown”.

The measures, outlined in a series of guides in Nursery World magazine, are aimed at avoiding racial bias in toddlers as young as two.

According to the guides, very young children may begin to express negative and discriminatory views about skin colour and appearance that nursery staff must help them “unlearn”.

If children develop positive associations with dark colours, the greater the likelihood that the attitude will be generalised to people, it says.

Ah, but it’s across the pond. Where’d they get these crazy ideas anyway? Oh:

The advice is based on an “anti-bias” approach to education which developed in the United States as part of multiculturalism.

Fabulous. Now we export idiocy, too.

Will they ban the white crayons before or after the realization that white crayons mark on dark paper best? I’m sure that’s racist, too. Somehow.

Witches will wear pink. To avoid any negative connotations.

The Scarlet Letter has already been banned, I’m sure. The woods are too dark. Evil lurks in bright white spaces after all. Hell, better toss out all of Hawthorne. Dark and twisty soul, that man.

Oops. Pink and twisty, right?

It’s all a union plot to extract more money anyway. Colored paper costs more than white.  Oh, I suppose “colored paper”–even if it refers to blue or red–is now a slur. Non-white.

Speaking of unions, money and terrible state-run education: Pundette, About that “investment” in government schools.

Howard Zinn’s legacy: American students fail history, don’t care

Howard Zinn’s advice to teachers:

Don’t obey the rules… you have to play a kind of guerrilla warfare with the establishment in which you try not to be fired… You have to depart from the curriculum… outside the lines that are set for us by the school administration, or the politicians.” 

Leftist teachers don’t have to be renegades, departing from the curriculum because Zinn’s brand of Marxist social-justice anti-American revisionist history is part of the curriculum in many schools:

According to the Oxnard Union High School District, Zinn’s on the California Department of Education Recommended Reading List.   

He’s taught at the San Lorenzo Unified School District Re-Entry Intervention Program, which targets kids coming back to school after being expelled, students with ten or more days of suspension who are on track for expulsion, students coming back to school from Juvenile Hall – in short, the worst of the worst.  This makes perfect sense – after all, what better way is there to teach borderline-criminal kids about good citizenship than pillorying America and giving them delusions of victimhood? 

He’s taught in the Los Angeles Unified School District, at the Stern Math and Science School, where teacher Benjamin Weber’s curriculum is designed to focus on various minority groups struggling against the repressive evil of the American system. 

He’s taught throughout the Seattle School District; in 2002, pressure from liberal interest groups forced the school district to adopt Zinn’s work in a stated attempt to include “cultural diversity” in the curriculum.  Not coincidentally, the district came up with an action plan that included “more aggressive recruitment of minority teachers, better training of teachers about students’ varied cultural backgrounds, and racially proportionate admissions of students to special education and ‘highly capable’ programs.”  He’s also taught in the Philadelphia School District, which recommends all of his books. 

The list goes on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on.

Is it any surprise after decades of union-run education, of multiculturalism at the expense of civics, that students have no real knowledge of history?

Among our present crop of high school seniors, only one in four scored at least “proficient” in knowledge of U. S. citizenship. Of all the academic subjects tested, civics and the closely linked subject of history came in last: “a smaller proportion of fourth and eighth graders demonstrated proficiency in civics than in any other subject the federal government has tested since 2005, except history, American students’ worst subject.”

With leftists teaching, it’s no surprise. It was the goal all along:

Another [high school student] replied, “I don’t want to belong to any country. It just feels like you are obligated to this country. I don’t like the whole thing of citizen…I don’t like that whole thing. It’s like, citizen, no citizen; it doesn’t make sense to me. It’s like to be a good citizen—I don’t know, I don’t want to be a citizen…it’s stupid to me.”

Global citizen, beholden to no country, responsible for the earth.

A recent Department of Education study found that only nine percent of U.S. high school students are able to cite reasons why it is important for citizens to participate in a democracy, and only six percent are able to identify reasons why having a constitution benefits a country.

If no one can identify why a constitution benefits a country, it’s that much easier to destroy the constitution, no?

DOD to open PC multiculturalist code-naming department

So no one’s panties get twisted too hard. Onagonda Nation leaders blast ‘Geronimo’ code name for bin Laden. From the story:

Onondaga Nation Territory — Leaders of the Onondaga Nation blasted as “reprehensible” the code name used for Osama bin Laden in the commando assault that killed him: “Geronimo.”

“We’ve ID’d Geronimo,” U.S. forces reported by radio Sunday to the White House. Later, word came that “Geronimo” was dead.

Geronimo was an Apache leader in the 19th century who spent many years fighting the Mexican and U.S. armies until his surrender in 1886.

“Think of the outcry if they had used any other ethnic group’s hero,” the Onondaga Council of Chiefs said in a release Tuesday. “Geronimo bravely and heroically defended his homeland and his people, eventually surrendering and living out the rest of his days peacefully, if in captivity.”

“Geronimo is arguably the most recognized Native American name in the world,” the chiefs said, “and this comparison only serves to perpetuate negative stereotypes about our people.”

Of course. Geronimo out. I’m sure Shaniqua would have been equally defended by the likes of the Rainbow Coalition and vehemently denounced by the honorable Reverend Al Sharpton. Likewise, Horatio was scratched lest Latinos get miffed, especially given Obama’s rapid decline in Hispanic support. Nancy would have been a perfect code name for Osama, except for the fact that he never flip-flopped so publicly. Ditto for John. So where does that leave us? Whitey. They should have code-named Osama Whitey. Because the white man is, after all, the source of all evil and the originator of all Osama’s angst. Can’t offend anyone that way!