The Competence Downshift and Liberal Tokenism
A Yale study has found that white liberals tend to dumb-down their speech when speaking with minorities, and our political class may be the worst offenders.
In a shocking turn of events, a Winnipeg indigenous group feels it's inclusion in a Winnipeg ballet company amounted to little more than tokenism.😲
Meanwhile, back in the real world, those who have been paying attention over the last decade or so are left scratching their heads and wondering why it took them so long to see it.
The website of the Royal Winnipeg Ballet used to say that the purpose of the Indigenous Advisory Circle was to make the company a “more equitable, diverse and inclusive organization.”
Of course it was. And the fact that these words made an appearance on their website is apparently all the proof that was needed to illustrate its success.
That, of course, was before the entire committee resigned last week. Now those words are no longer on their website but have been replaced with the usual drivel about how they “regret that the trusting relationships that had been established came to such an end,” and, “We commit to doing better,” etc, etc.
As I said, observant individuals have noticed for years that the bulk of DEI initiatives are precisely that - virtue-signaling and tokenism. And they do much more good for the trumpeters of these ideals than they do for those they claim to help.
I wonder if it has ever occurred to these DEI gurus that maybe they should just try treating everyone like normal people. Yes, everyone - even *gasp* black and indigenous people.
If only that was the purpose of DEI.
I'm not sure I've seen a better example of how these people thrive on this kind of tokenism than ex-NDP hopeful Amanda Zavitz.
According to the Western Standard, the following quote was uttered at a recent debate for the upcoming Ontario provincial election, though other sources say it comes from a conference in New York last year. The quotes are slightly different so it's more than likely there are a few of them out there. Anyway, get a load of this zinger:
As a Caucasian woman, I wish that I could identify as a black woman so I could actually live that experience of living in poverty, facing addiction and alcoholism every single day.
NDP candidate drops out after saying she wants to be black to better understand alcoholism, poverty
Just for the record, as someone of sound mind and body, I really wish I could identify as a woke progressive so I could actually live that experience of mental illness, tokenism, and thinly disguised racism. Every. Single. Day.
Like, where do these people come up with this shit? In her presentation from March of 2024 at the UN Status of Women Conference in New York, she proclaims very clearly that she has “really thought this through,” and it is “100% true”. She wants to be a black woman.
Zavitz says she would like to be bell hooks. No, not several curved pieces of metal on which to hang her bells, but the author, bell hooks (aka Gloria Jean Watkins), who was a black woman and who did not use capitals in her pen-name. Hooks is a self-described “reformist feminist” and believed that our existing system is an “imperialist, white supremacist, capitalist patriarchy.” Shocker.
Oh, and did I mention that Amanda Zavitz is also a sociology professor at Western University? Another shocker, I'm sure.
Here's the video. Better check it out now because as is the norm for these sorts of things, the videos are disappearing:
'My secret is that I want to be a Black woman,' NDP candidate at past UN conference
One can only presume that she must have bounced this thought off at least one or two of her “progressive” friends and colleagues in the faculty lounge at Western University over the years. And undoubtedly she was unanimously affirmed in this belief because affirmation is what these people do amongst themselves and what they demand of others. So it's no wonder that she and others like her have no problem voicing these opinions in the public square, fully expecting (and often demanding) that same affirmation. It must have come as quite a shock to her when she found out that most Canadians aren't really much into this sort of thing. At all.
She said that in the last year:
I've been passed over for a few speaking engagements and positions because I'm not part of an obvious equity-seeking group. Sure, I'm a woman, but that's not enough these days. I'm not really a minority.
Wow, join the club, Amanda. I think there are many white people in this country (women and men) who've experienced that. Probably not many that decide they want to change their skin colour though. And are you not aware that it's people with views like your own who have created this reality?
Zavitz said that it's not right for black people to be “passed over” because they're black or for a lesbian to be passed over based on her sexual identity, then added:
However, I'm not sure that being restricted based on the colour of my own skin, or the unfortunate fact that I'm heterosexual, or that I don't appear to be disabled is right either.
On this we agree, although I believe this statement goes right to the heart of this toxic ideology. The fact that she felt the need to call “her heterosexuality” an unfortunate fact speaks to the self-hatred these people seem to be addicted to. Couple that with the rest of her statement that she wants “lived experiences of poverty and living in addiction and alcoholism,” and I can only imagine how miserable she must be. Undoubtedly she would feel extreme guilt to be anything but miserable knowing the kind of “privilege” she enjoys. And you have to know it would be the worst kind of guilt - white guilt. What could possibly be worse?
In reality, gaining this kind of lived experience is a remarkably quick and easy task to achieve, especially in Toronto where the federal government hands out all manner of deadly, addictive hard drugs - for free! A couple weeks at one of the many “safer supply” sites in the city would all but ensure the kind of lived experience she apparently craves. And it really doesn't matter that she qualifies that statement with, “I want to be able to share my ideas without the barrier of looking the way that I do." Does she really see herself as that much of an impediment? Does she really believe that having any amount of success disqualifies her from helping the less fortunate, or from offering advice consistent with what has helped her in her own journey? Or is it that what she really wants is for people to recognize her as some kind of hard-working overcomer who defied the odds and became a huge success story despite the whole of society constantly putting her down? As in, the female protagonist in a blockbuster superhero movie.
Zavitz is a university professor so she must have put in at least some work to get where she is. Does that not count for anything because she wasn't forced to drag herself through the mud and the blood for it? Puhlease. She won't find much sympathy here. And maybe that's what really bothers her.
Another thing that's really bizarre about this story is that if she would have said, “I want to be a man,” there would not likely have been much of a kerfuffle at all (although bell hooks would probably have done several revolutions in her grave). And if she would've stood there and boldly proclaimed that she actually was a man, she would have been congratulated by the same crowd that now wants to crucify her. No one would have even asked for clarification, in fact there would have been people falling over themselves on their way to affirm her courageous stance.
But no, she wants to be black. And this, seemingly is the gravest sin - that she would deign to even presume to enter the lived experience of an oppressed minority. And most of the headlines focus mainly on this. The way I see it, her desire to be black is a non-issue. The real issue here is that in her mind being black is synonymous with addiction, poverty, and domination.
In The Competence Downshift By White Liberals, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Cydney Dupree of Yale University and Susan Fiske of Princeton found that:
White liberals self-present less competence to minorities than to other Whites - that is, they patronize minorities stereotyped as lower status and less competent. In an initial archival demonstration of the competence downshift, Study 1 examined the content of White Republican and Democratic presidential candidates' campaign speeches. Although Republican candidates did not significantly shift language based on audience racial composition, Democratic candidates used less competence-related language to minority audiences than to White audiences.
In other words:
White liberals dumb down speech when talking to minorities
Amanda Zavitz is the embodiment of this profile.
And really, this now seems like the default mode for anyone who believes that the world is made up solely of oppressors and victims. If whites are always the oppressors, then blacks (or, in her words, any “obvious equity-seeking group”) are always the victims. And in all likelihood, when she looks at someone whom she considers to be part of one of these groups, it is with pity, and with the notion that she can save them because she is privileged enough to have that ability. Yes, she is the White Savior who wishes she was black. Because it's really all about her.
And sadly, it is this same ideology that is destroying the lives of thousands of teens in Western nations who are taught to hate who they are because either they are part of the oppressor caste, or because their preferences are different than their peers and therefore they must have been born in the wrong body.
Maybe the answer for someone like Amanda Zavitz is to begin to identify as a gay man. Then she could continue to be attracted to other men and yet still be part of an equity-seeking group. Win-win.
I mean, if it's fantasy you want, and if being a woman is “not enough these days,” then that may be her best bet. Let's just keep the patronizing comments to a minimum.
These people are mentally ill. She is also guilty of the soft bigotry of low expectations for minorities.
This stuff is so mind-twisting.
In her twisted thinking, she fails entirely to imagine her own racism and bigotry. “I wish I were black so that I could experience poverty and addiction.” Leave aside that she treats alcoholism apart from addiction, and the just plain bizarreness of her statement, does she really believe poverty exists only in non-white people? Does she really believe addiction only exists in non-white people? Does she believe she is immune from alcoholism because she’s white? (I wonder what her doctor thinks.)
If she really does believe those things, she is a racist and someone (NDP, no less) who, doesn’t understand poverty. However, my guess is that, if she was asked directly if she believes poverty, drug addiction, and alcoholism are troubles specifically limited to non-white people, she would be clever enough to respond, “Of course not!”
Of course she doesn’t believe that. Much as I hate tossing the term around, whether she believes what she said and spoke it believing it to be true, or whether she knows poverty and addiction are not limited to racial groups, either way, she comes up a racist.
If anything makes me see “white privileged”, it might be this. It is self-righteously donning a white robe and declaring, “I will make sure that I can never and will never be seen as ‘other’ by I ensuring someone else always wears that label.”