Sometimes, I just shake my head

Working at a major state university, "political correctness" and "diversity" are a part of the daily landscape.  But today my email contained one that just caused me to facepalm.  I was reading an email conversation from a Listserv I belong to for network administrators on campus, and one of the topics was whether or not there were a list of email addresses from our SAP implementation project, so they could be put into what is called a "whitelist" on a departments email server.  For those who don't know, in the email server world, a "whitelist" is a list of email addresses that are always allowed through, while a "blacklist" is a list of addresses that is never let through (usually because they are known spammers or attack sites).

So one guy gets on and requests that everyone use the terms "allow lists" and "deny lists" because of the racial connotations that are attached to "whitelist" and "blacklist".

I don't understand why otherwise intelligent people continue to subscribe to destructive philosophies like "diversity", which is not about equality and inclusion, but about divisiveness and exclusion based on external physical characteristics that no one can do anything about.  It pigeonholes people based on these characteristics, it makes broad assumptions about what they think and how they think based on these characteristics, rather than promoting understanding and reconciliation.

I have been through all the seminars and heard all the slogans and experienced the attempts at indoctrination over my twenty plus years at this institution, and it has always revealed itself as a philosophy that is empty of meaning and substance, promoting of strife, and frankly rather paranoid.

Not for me, thank you very much.

Thus spake Moses:

If you talk about race, it does not make you a racist. If you see distinctions between the genders, it does not make you a sexist. If you think critically about a denomination, it does not make you anti-religion. If you accept but don't celebrate homosexuality, it does not make you a homophobe.

Charlton Heston

Sheffield shows his ignorance

In a bit of a departure, I'm going to talk baseball today. Unfortunately it has nothing to do with the game itself, but with the ignorant comments of one of it's players. What makes it even more painful is that the player is one of my beloved Detroit Tigers - Gary Sheffield.

Here are the remarks, from an interview in GQ Magazine:

"I called it years ago. What I called is that you're going to see more black faces, but there ain't no English going to be coming out. … [It's about] being able to tell [Latin players] what to do -- being able to control them."

"Where I'm from, you can't control us. You might get a guy to do it that way for a while because he wants to benefit, but in the end, he is going to go back to being who he is. And that's a person that you're going to talk to with respect, you're going to talk to like a man.

"These are the things my race demands. So, if you're equally good as this Latin player, guess who's going to get sent home? I know a lot of players that are home now can outplay a lot of these guys."

Thus we see the racism that pervades the "Diversity" camp, which teaches us that we must first look at the color of someone's skin and what part of the world them come from to determine how we think about them and how we treat them, rather than treating all with respect and dignity.

Here's a news bulletin, Gary. It's probably a repeat of what your first Little League coach told you, but you were probably too busy thumping your own chest and demanding respect to listen: respect is nothing you can demand from anyone - you must earn it. It isn't automatic And I suspect any respect you were getting from those "Latino" players on your team just went out the window. Why do you want to tear up the clubhouse that has been so good to you, and whose most productive players are "Latino": Ivan Rodriguez, Magglio Ordonez, Carlos Guillen, Placido Polanco. Not to mention an organization who has had may great players who were not white: Willie Horton, Guillermo (Willie) Hernandez, Aurelio Rodriguez, Ron LeFlore, Gates Brown, Aurelio Lopez. Your ego is getting in the way of your brain, Gary.

Here's another thought for you, Gary. Perhaps these "Latino" guys want it more than you do, and are willing to accept coaching and counsel from those who have been successful before them, so they can be successful too. Perhaps they are more concerned about improving themselves and having the whole team be successful (with the respect that follows) than they are about feeding their own egos first.

I love my Tigers, and I have since I was a little leaguer in the 60's and 70's, but I would rather see them lose 120 games and have a team that represents itself well than to go to the World Series with this kind of player. There is no room for this kind of racism in baseball, and I call on the Tigers and Major League Baseball to deal harshly with Gary Sheffield, for the good of the sport.