Victims of ‘Cissexist Heteropatriarchy’

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Let me state clearly what should be obvious to longtime readers: I don’t like it when kids at elite colleges claim to be victims of oppression.

Self-pity as a basis for political activism is a very bad idea and should be discouraged. Generally speaking, young people are ignorant and foolish. Being highly intelligent is not a substitute for experience, and youthful enthusiasm should never be confused with actual knowledge. Do not tell me you are a victim of oppression if your Daddy is rich enough to send you to a school where tuition is $50,586 a year:

There are too many white musicians in the Oberlin College jazz band. This was among the numerous complaints — “concrete and unmalleable demands” — in a 14-page manifesto issued last week by the Black Students Union (BSU) at the elite private liberal arts college in Ohio. The second item on their list of demands was “a concerted effort to increase the percentage of Black students and specifically Black female identifying instrumentalists in the Jazz department. We would like to reiterate the demand for a 4% annual increase in the enrollment of Black students in the Jazz Department starting in 2016 to accumulate to 40% increase by the year 2022.”
Underrepresentation of “Black female identifying instrumentalists in the Jazz department” might seem a rather odd choice of student grievances to those of us old enough to remember when campus radicals focused their attention on serious issues like the Vietnam War. The seemingly trivial nature of the Oberlin BSU complaints contrasts starkly with the group’s dramatic denunciation of the college as an institution that “functions on the premises of imperialism, white supremacy, capitalism, ableism, and a cissexist heteropatriarchy.” . . . .

Read the rest of my column at The American Spectator.

 

75 comments

  1. Should we take the left at their word, couldn’t some of the non-“black female identifying” simply identify as the approved race/gender/whatever? The left’s shahada demands no more than that, and Fanny’s your aunt, problem solved.

  2. College jazz bands? What about rodeo and hockey, and landing Hot Wheels on a dime on Mars? What about captaining oil tankers and designing forklifts? My, my, my. The giant shoehorn of equality certainly has its work cut out for it. In about 10,000 years they should be able to manifesto their way into every nook and cranny of “whiteness” while giving nothing in return. Good luck.

  3. An old friend of mine (now an Episcopal ministrette who has taken up lesbianism in middle age) is an Oberlin alumna. Many years ago, she offered an assessment of the place as she experienced it ca. 1988: comically PC. The place is a latrine, it’s a latrine that just stinks worse and worse over time, and there’s no solution there but to let the market destroy it the way it destroyed Antioch College.

  6. “Oberlin” needs to be popularized as a term to describe someone or something gone round the PC bend. “What an oberlin that guy is,” “they just oberlinned the whole thing.”

  7. The other controversy at Oberlin at the moment concerns the on campus menu. Note the complaints and aggressions: al dente sushi rice; steamed rather than fried chicken for General Tso’s Chicken; shitty Banh Mi.

    N.B. the simple expedient of not purchasing a campus food plan or eating something else or cooking for themselves does not occur to them. Note well also, that none of the students seem to acknowledge the cost of providing the food at a market price which the students will pay. Evidently, perfect Banh Mi spring fully formed periodically from the head of Vo Nguyen Giap’s head.

  8. It’s true enough that jazz is a music form which had its origins in the black community, something which might encourage Students With Small Minds to believe that the jazz band should have more Students of Colour.

    However, it’s also true that Johann Paschelbel was a German composer who might never have even see a Negro, and his compositions were, contemporaneously, intended to be played solely by white musicians and listened to by white audiences.Using the logic of the Students of Small Minds, ought not the Oberlin groups which play classical music be restricted to white musicians?

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Af372EQLck

  10. The specificity of that demand seems as if the real issue is that somebody (a girl) in the BSU tried out for jazz band and didn’t make it. Of course, this could not possibly be due to lack of talent. No. Rather, it must, by the definition of the loser, be due to bigoted racism. The fact that no one screamed about raaacism to begin with means that everyone else knows she’s not talented either. But yet, faaaairness demands that somehow black musicians must be found somewhere, talent be damned.

    Problem is, actually talented black jazz musicians will say, “Wut?? Oberlin? Ohio? Don’t think so, dawg.” So Oberlin will be forced to pad out their jazz band with minority losers, thus turning the entire band into a joke. Then the really good musicians will quit, and the band becomes widely mocked as the “short bus band”.

    Unless, of course, the administration grows a spine and ignores the BSU demands. But this IS Onerlin, so what’re the odds of that?

  12. As a part-time transblack person I reject jazz as an appropriation of white genocidal metallurgy and instruments which have nothing to do with my lived-experiences. Clucking my tongue and warbling are far more authentic.

  14. On our second date, my very white wife and I went to a concert by the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, which was on tour, and playing in Lexington, Kentucky. Did you know that every single member of the PHJB was a Negro? And somehow, despite being out with the whitest white girl in town, I didn’t even care?

  15. Not necessarily a lack of talent, but the problem is, quite obviously, that a Person an Oppressor of Whiteness™ was better than said Person of Colour.™

  16. Let the question be asked, “What is the total number of top-ranked high school jazz musicians who graduate each year in the United States?” Suppose that the number is 1,000. Now, not all of these musicians will go to college. Some of them are good enough to go straight from high school into the field of professional performance. But still, they might be recruited by colleges offering full scholarships. Are there 1,000 full scholarships available annually to talented jazz musicians? And how many of those musicians have the kind of GPA/SAT numbers to qualify for admission to an elite school? Isn’t it true that ALL elite schools are eager to have the kind of “diversity” that a highly qualified black student could add to their campus? So isn’t it likely that the young black jazz musician who would be recruited by Oberlin is also recruited by many other schools? And if there are not enough black jazz musicians at Oberlin to satisfy the BSU, isn’t that a reflection of the competition among elite schools for highly qualified black students? Rather than evidence of “oppression,” you see, this actually indicates an opposite phenomenon. However, facts and logic are tools of the cissexist heteropatriarchy, I guess …

  19. Ah, but African populations have the fewest Neanderthal genes overall (Middle Eastern/European populations have the most, IIRC).

    (And anyway, Dr. Yakub created white people 6,600 years ago).

  20. There’s a 24-hour Vietnamese deli by where I live, you can get Bahn-mi that would make the Diem brothers weep for under five bucks a pop. That said, I can completely understand protesting college food, that is uniformly awful.

  21. Of course you didn’t care! You’re a cisheteronormative white patriarch with no sensitivity to the macroaggressions you shed where ever you walk.

    Deem yourself roundly denounced!

  22. One of my middle son’s H.S. classmates is now studying jazz percussion. He had a 34 ACT, was a National Merit Scholar and won a boatload of other awards in addition to being fabulous musician. He is not attending a typical “snooty” college. In the performing arts, the question is not “where you studied,” but rather with whom you studied? I cannot speak to all jazz studies, but I know one of the top ten jazz percussionists is at a university no one would ever guess.

  23. I’d say that Asa Mahan and Charles Finney are spinning supersonically in their graves.

    For many years, Oberlin was the only northern college that would admit negro students on the same basis as whites. Much of the current student body are simply morons and idiots with no attachment to reality.

  24. Pachelbel was Bach’s teacher. I find it interesting that the only composition by Pachelbel that became famous is Canon in D major. It seems strange that as productive as Bach was that Pachelbel didn’t produce more.

  25. Antioch College (Yellow Springs, OH) went around the bend before Oberlin did. Antioch is also closed as a direct result of it’s PC stupidity. I guess Oberlin is bucking for the same fate.

  27. Did you ever notice how every one of our current problems in this country cropped up after passage of the 19th Amendment?

  28. I read somewhere that the beef centers on one instructor. Evidently, some of the demands center on requiring courses in music theory, something which every person with a performance BFA/MFA in music has to undergo. In jazz, theory is as important as performance as a good improvisation is dependent upon a knowledge of theory. Jazz only sounds like it’s random. It’s not. In fact, it’s very mathematical and studies have shown that great musicians are adept at understanding mathematical concepts.

    These people are typical Leftists/Progressives. They desire the accolades without doing any of the foundational work necessary to be truly successful in their field. Are there savants who can play a jazz riff without reading music or knowing theory? Sure. But those people appear once in a generation. The rest of the greats have to slog their way through the trenches, learning the craft and paying their dues. That’s what these people can’t stand.

  29. I’m a mathematician and a musician (guitar, mandolin, bass) and I slog at both. Some people say “suck”, but I say “slog”. 😀

    I’ve been slogging so long that you could drive nails through the callouses on my fingers and I wouldn’t feel it.

  31. I rather think that one of those individuals would be offered a scholarship automatically, and one of them wouldn’t, and yet still somehow there’s apparently a shortage of oppressed individuals at Oberlin.

  32. A girl? Are you sure? Note the strange construction, “female identifying instrumentalist.” Also note that as our host reminds us, “cissexist” is as opposed to transphilic.

  33. I thought of that, but then I thought, what are the odds? Now I’m thinking that I was flashing back to the real world rather than the progressive fairyland we now live in.

  34. Some said the same thing about the 13th Amendment.

    Me, I blame much of the problem on the 16th and 17th Amendments. And that the 22nd should apply to Senators and Congressmen as well.

  35. I think that’s a canny observation and one which goes for jazz singers as well. That’s why it’s sad when miseducated people try and sell both Adele and Amy Winehouse as jazz singers. Whenever Winehouse sang it was like listening to a history of jazz singing. With Adele it’s just an impersonation.

  37. So, you are saying that I was so secure in my white supremacy that I viewed the black musicians as just more inferior people providing a service for me, right?

    You are so right: I should be roundly denounced, and thoroughly condemned!

  39. Oh, believe me, you got it right with both the 16th and 19th Amendments. The income tax, and expanding the franchise beyond white male property owners were the greatest mistakes we ever made.

  41. What if they don’t get enough Black applicants for Jazz instrumentalists? Will they FORCE Blacks to attend Oberlin and demand they major in Jazz?

    Will they expel non-Black students to get to a certain percentage?

    What is the correct percentage of Black students enrolled in Jazz majors at Oberlin?

    Must the Black students be African-American or would it be permissible for the administration to bring students from Africa?

    Will the administration get extra points by demonstrating all the African-American students were in fact descendants of slaves?

    Would the African students count less since they were not descendants of slaves held in bondage in the Americas? What if the African students were descendants of slaves in Africa held in bondage by other Africans or Arabs?

    Would non-Black students be able to share bathrooms and water fountains with the Black students? Would the college need to erect signs that say “White Only” or “Colored Only?”

    It is not clear that they have fully considered all the variables here.

  42. Posted this above, before I saw your comment, but it probably “belongs” here.

    What if they don’t get enough Black applicants for Jazz instrumentalists? Will they FORCE Blacks to attend Oberlin and demand they major in Jazz?

    Will they expel non-Black students to get to a certain percentage?

    What is the correct percentage of Black students enrolled in Jazz majors at Oberlin?

    Must the Black students be African-American or would it be permissible for the administration to bring students from Africa?

    Will the administration get extra points by demonstrating all the African-American students were in fact descendants of slaves?

    Would the African students count less since they were not descendants of slaves held in bondage in the Americas? What if the African students were descendants of slaves in Africa held in bondage by other Africans or Arabs?

    Would non-Black students be able to share bathrooms and water fountains with the Black students? Would the college need to erect signs that say “White Only” or “Colored Only?”

    It is not clear that they have fully considered all the variables here.

  46. When Senators became popularly elected, it turned them into de facto political bosses. Add the “campaign finance” reform, and you have 100 hundred individuals with slush funds who answer to no one except the political parties.

  48. Is it necessary that any of the students who are to be “Black female identifying” register any particular tonal reflection in a light meter? I mean, is it necessary that they merely self-identify or does an onlooker have to identify them as black females as well?

  50. If the option of not purchasing campus food hasn’t occurred to the students, it may be only a matter of days before it occurrs to the camlus commissary to stop providing it, solving the problem in what the STEM students there wilk recognize as an elegant solution.

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