February is Black History Month, and to celebrate, UVA Health has organized activities around the theme, “Racial Healing: The Heart of Racial Equity.”
Racial healing activities include:
- Kultivate Connection. An emotional wellness break and space facilitating racial healing through a connection with colleagues, shared experiences, and cultivation of authenticity and kinship.
- DEI Book of the Month Discussion. “The Racial Healing Handbook: Practical Activities to Help You Challenge Privilege, Confront Systemic Racism, and Engage in Collective Healing.”
- Guest speaker: Jodie Geddes, co-author of “The Little Book of Racial Healing: Coming to the Table for Truthtelling, Liberation, and Transformation.”
- Guest speaker: Dr. Michael McCreary, president of the New Brunswick Theological Seminary, on “Trauma and Race: a Path to Wellbeing.” The topic covers “trauma-informed counseling for racially traumatized African (Black), Latino/a/x, Asian, and Native (Indigenous) Americans (ALANAs).”
- Guest speaker. “My Story, My Voice,” featuring Gene Cash, executive director of the Counseling Alliance of Virginia, on racial awareness and sensitivity.
To do his bit to bring about racial healing, Mr. Cash addressed the topic of White Supremacy. In the clip atop this post, he asks participants if they can name the tenets of White Supremacy. He draws mostly blanks, although one lady hesitantly suggests that “perfectionism” is such a tenet. Cash agrees, describing perfectionism as a tool for White control, rule, and the disregarding of “Black and Brown spaces, transactions and interactions.” He goes on to discuss the horrors of slavery and lynching.
— JAB
I have to relate that in all my private and off the record conversations with current UVA employees they will readily express to me their disdain and disgust in having to undergo the DEI training and exercises that Ryan and his apparatchiks have imposed on them.
Do these “healers” ever mention that these horrible events occurred in the past? That laws have been passed, equal OPPORTUNITY codified into American law 6 decades ago? That slavery still exists, but NOT in America but rather China (Uyghurs) and Africa (Nigeria and Somalia)?
Of course not. They relentlessly dwell on the past injustices blacks endured in America as if no progress were ever made or even contemplated. America is the least oppressive nation in the world with the most opportunities for advancement of any nation in the world.
To paraphrase Al Gore, those are the “inconvenient truths.” But racial hucksters don’t deal in truth. They make a living out of fabricating non-existent current oppression.
Black History month should decry past racial inequity while also praising current progress and racial harmony and opportunity. By only myopically harping on the former DEI bureaucrats have created an industry that only creates divisiveness.
Lastly, “perfection” is not a vestige of white elitism. If this, do the purveyors of DEI suggest blacks should settle for mediocrity or ineptitude? I would hope not, but that would be the logical conclusion. But then, their arguments were never based on logic.
Link to modern slavery in the world to back up my facts above: https://pathfindersji.org/2023-global-slavery-index-reveals-rise-in-nigerian-survivors-of-modern-slavery/?amp=1#origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F&cap=swipe,education&webview=1&dialog=1&viewport=natural&visibilityState=prerender&prerenderSize=1&viewerUrl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2Famp%2Fs%2Fpathfindersji-org.cdn.ampproject.org%2Fc%2Fs%2Fpathfindersji.org%2F2023-global-slavery-index-reveals-rise-in-nigerian-survivors-of-modern-slavery%3Fusqp=mq331AQIUAKwASCAAgM%25253D&_kit=1
This would all be a very bad joke were it not for the fact that it is causing a serious racial divide. As a Hispanic I feel offended by the emphasis on racial divides. Very offended.
Yes. These policies are inherently divisive. I believe by design – on purpose – for power.
You don’t make the general environment more “inclusive” by dividing the student body into all sorts of sub-groups, saying look at me and accept me for my differences, and THEN complain “Why are you treating me differently (for the things I made you notice and accept)?”
The policies are designed to inflame grievance, constantly and repeatedly pulling off the scab before it heals.
This seems to be people creating jobs for themselves by using young people as their springboard. Teaching the history of African Americans in the US and the world is a good thing; making a present day psychological war out of it isn’t. The attack on perfectionism ignores the fact that striving for perfection is crucial in the professional arenas of today, where many have wellbeing and lives on the line.