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Wednesday, November 20, 2019

Empowering Students to be Anti-Racists - And the "Perils of Indifference"

  • When reflecting on The Holocaust and Elie Wiesel's words, I head his warning about the "Perils of Indifference" - and how we must pay attention to the rise in hate crime violence.  
  • We must recognize the coercive propaganda spread online by white nationalists that are actively soliciting minors. Just as Hitler manipulated Germans to blame the Jews, white nationalists and the alt-right are blaming immigrants, people of color, and Jews today. Yet the language of white supremacy seems subtle and seductive in tapping into emotions of frustration and disillusionment. 
  • White nationalists have long believed that Jewish “outside agitators” are behind every left-leaning protest and political cause. Indeed, in his article “Skin in the Game: How Antisemitism Animates White Nationalism,” scholar-activist Eric K. Ward explains that anti-Semitism is a core component of white nationalism. Rather than understanding that fights for racial and economic justice represent the interests and ambitions of groups that are left out by a dominant culture that is white and Christian, white nationalists hold that Jews are “manipulating the social order behind the scenes,” Ward notes. Two examples are particularly illustrative: Last October, a flier was posted at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York, stating: “Every time some anti-white anti-American, anti-freedom event takes place, you look at it, and it’s Jews behind it.” Depicted on the flier were several Jewish public figures, including Soros, with Jewish stars superimposed upon their foreheads. Former Gov. Paul LePage was making the same point when he recently claimed that the Democratic Party is funded “for the most part” by Jewish people.



  • Recently on November 19th on the PBS NewsHour: 
  • The FBI reports that hate crime violence in the U.S. is at a 16-year high. The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, meanwhile, says the highest percentage of hate incidents since the 2016 election occurred in elementary and secondary schools. Special correspondent Charlayne Hunter-Gault takes a look at how this problem has manifest in northwest Oregon -- and what tool teachers are using to intervene.
  • EXCERPT:
  • Charlayne Hunter-Gault:
    Well, Lindsay, this is where you come in.
    There does seem to be, by all accounts, a rise in white supremacist speech. How is it that you came to deal with that, and how did you — what did you come up with?
  • Lindsay Schubiner:
    We also know that white nationalist and alt-right movements are intentionally recruiting young people.
    The editor of a neo-Nazi Web site has written that he designs his Web site to recruit children as young as 11 years old. We're talking about young people who are — who don't yet have fully formed views and opinions about the world. And that's a big reason why white nationalists and alt-right groups are working to recruit them.
  • Charlayne Hunter-Gault:
    So you have come up with this kit, a kit that you have used in your classes. What does this kit do?
  • Lindsay Schubiner:
    So, this toolkit provides some context and some guidance around the issue of white nationalist and alt-right recruitment of young people. And it also provides a number of scenarios, possible things that might happen in a school community.
  • Charlayne Hunter-Gault:
    It also contains definitions and a road map to alt-right symbols to help teachers, administrators and community members strip the secrecy from white nationalism.
    So how have you used the toolkit?
  • Patrick Griffin:
    So, I like using the toolkit in my classrooms with my lesson plans, whether it be talking about definitions or scenarios.
    The toolkit has been useful in, heck, conversations in the hallways with students as they're coming up to me to talk about, hey, Mr. Griffin, what do you think about this or that meme or whatnot, whatever's current in their life.
    We're also using the toolkit to create advisory lesson plans that the entire school body, student body will be using.
  • Lindsay Schubiner:
    One thing the toolkit tries to do is empower students that they do have a voice. But it's not their responsibility to take this on. There are adults in the community, and it's our job to take this on.
  • Charlayne Hunter-Gault:
    And do your students, the students that you're talking with, do they understand? Especially those who are embracing these white nationalist tropes, how do you deal with them and prevent them from moving into the direction of violence?
  • Patrick Griffin:
    If a kid is going through that, then you have got to make them feel known, valued, loved, part of the community, because so much of this is this isolationism that they're experiencing, while also educating some of their ignorance about the greater context of it.
  • Charlayne Hunter-Gault:
    How — reaching the students in your classroom doesn't address what they're getting at home, so how do you deal with that?
  • Lindsay Schubiner:
    For people who are already deeply involved in white nationalism, this toolkit is not for them.
    But it also, we hope, will help create communities that are openly talking about issues of white nationalism, white supremacy, racial justice, and reinforcing values that include everyone.
  • Charlayne Hunter-Gault:
    To both of you, how hopeful are you that the kind of extremism that this toolkit is trying to address can be contained or even defeated? Are you hopeful at all, or is it just moving too fast?
  • Patrick Griffin:
    I have a lot of reasons to not be hopeful, I guess. That said, I have a lot of reasons to be hopeful too.
    And it is that these kids are willing to engage in these conversations in a nuanced manner that I don't think some previous generations have been as willing to engage in. And so, if you just keep doing it, eventually, you get an entire new generation in charge, and I suppose there's a lot of hope there.

More related stories:

"Derek Black grew up as a white nationalist. Here’s how he changed his mind"
Nov 5, 2019 6:25 PM EST


"WATCH: Domestic terrorism threat is growing, U.S. officials say in hearing"
Nation May 8, 2019 2:10 PM EST





 "At 14, Christian Picciolini went from naïve teenager to white supremacist -- and soon, the leader of the first neo-Nazi skinhead gang in the United States. How was he radicalized, and how did he ultimately get out of the movement? In this courageous talk, Picciolini shares the surprising and counterintuitive solution to hate in all forms."

 "For the next eight years, I believed the lies that I had been fed. And though I saw no evidence of it whatsoever, I didn't hesitate to blame every Jewish person in the world for what I thought was a white, European genocide being promoted by them through a multiculturalist agenda. I blamed people of color for the crime and violence and the drugs in the city, completely neglecting the fact that I was committing acts of violence on a daily basis, and that in many cases, it was white supremacists who were funneling drugs into the inner cities. And I blamed immigrants for taking jobs from white Americans, completely neglecting the fact that my parents were hardworking immigrants who struggled to survive, despite not getting help from anybody else."

 Picciolini concludes:
And the way I do that is not by arguing with them, not by debating them, not by even telling them they're wrong, even though, boy, I want to sometimes. I don't do that. Instead, I don't push them away. I draw them in closer, and I listen very closely for their potholes, and then I begin to fill them in. I try to make people more resilient, more self-confident, more able to have skills to compete in the marketplace so that they don't have to blame the other, the other that they've never met. I'd like to just leave you with one last thing before I go. Of all the people I've worked with, they will all tell you the same thing. One, they became extremists because they wanted to belong, not because of ideology or dogma. And second, what brought them out was receiving compassion from the people they least deserved it from, when they least deserved it. 
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Elie Wiesel on "The Perils of Indifference"



Elie Wiesel
delivered 12 April 1999, Washington, D.C.

"In a way, to be indifferent to that suffering is what makes the human being inhuman. Indifference, after all, is more dangerous than anger and hatred. Anger can at times be creative. One writes a great poem, a great song. One does something special for the sake of humanity because one is angry at the injustice that one witnesses. But indifference is never creative. You may even at times respond to hatred. You fight it. You publicly criticize it. You disarm it.

Indifference elicits no response. Indifference is not a response. Indifference is not a beginning; it is an end. And, therefore, indifference is always the friend of the enemy. It benefits the aggressor. It never benefits his victim, whose pain is magnified when he or she feels forgotten. Think of the political prisoner in his cell, the hungry children, the homeless refugees. Not to respond to their terrible condition, not to relieve their loneliness by offering them a spark of hope is to send them away from human memory. And in not seeing them as humans, we become less human, too.

Indifference, then, is not only a sin, it is a punishment.

And this is one of the most important lessons of this ending century's wide-ranging experiments in good and evil.

In the place that I come from, society was composed of three simple groups. There were the killers, the victims, and the bystanders. During the darkest of times, inside the ghettoes and death camps, we felt abandoned, forgotten. All of us did."




Elie Wiesel held his Acceptance Speech on 10 December 1986, in the Oslo City Hall, Norway.
(The speech differs somewhat from the written speech.)







Martin Niemöller (1892–1984)

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—
     Because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—
     Because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
     Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

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Tuesday, November 19, 2019

Cal Newport on Deep Work and Digital Minimalism

Lately, I have been obsessed with the wisdom of Cal Newport.

After recently reading...

Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear


I have revisited Cal Newport's books, especially DEEP WORK: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World. 
Here's a brief summary.

Cal Newport first came onto my radar via his TED Talk:

You probably don't realize that right now, you're actually looking at something quite rare. Because I am a millennial computer scientist book author standing on a TEDx stage, and yet, I've never had a social media account. How this happened was actually somewhat random. Social media first came onto my radar when I was at college, my sophomore year of college, this is when Facebook arrived at our campus. And at the time, which was right after the first dotcom bust, I had had a dorm room business, I'd had to shut it down in the bust, and then, suddenly, this other kid from Harvard, named Mark, had this product called Facebook and people being excited about it. So in sort of a fit of somewhat immature professional jealousy, I said, "I'm not going to use this thing. I won't help this kid's business; whatever's going to amount to." As I go along my life, I look up not long later, and I see everyone I know is hooked on this thing. And from the clarity you can get when you have some objectivity, some perspective on it, I realized this seems a little bit dangerous. So I never signed up. I've never had a social media account since. So I'm here for two reasons; I want to deliver two messages. The first message I want to deliver is that even though I've never had a social media account, I'm OK, you don't have to worry. It turns out I still have friends, I still know what's going on in the world; as a computer scientist I still collaborate with people all around the world, I'm still regularly exposed serendipitously to interesting ideas, and I rarely describe myself as lacking entertainment options. So I've been OK, but I'd go even farther and say not only I am OK without social media but I think I'm actually better off. I think I'm happier, I think I find more sustainability in my life, and I think I've been more successful professionally because I don't use social media. So my second goal here on stage is try to convince more of you to believe the same thing. Let's see if I could actually convince more of you that you too would be better off if you quit social media. 



Then, I bought his book DEEP WORK (that I gifted to a colleague as I moved before I read all of it).

However, I also bought his books:

How to Be a High School Superstar: A Revolutionary Plan to Get into College by Standing Out (Without Burning Out) Jul 20, 2010 by Cal Newport
And...

So Good They Can't Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love





In my travels and interstitial time, I have listened to more than a couple podcasts with Cal Newport as a guest...


Here are just three:

1. ON RICH ROLL's PODCAST
EPISODE 447
CAL NEWPORT ON DIGITAL MINIMALISM: WHY FOCUS IS THE NEW SUPERPOWER





“Simply put, humans are not wired to be constantly wired.”
CAL NEWPORT
It’s become increasingly harder to just put the phone down. Because the latest apps and digital platforms are specifically designed to addict, we have become slaves to their irresistible allure.
Our precious attention is being hijacked. The ability to focus — to concentrate on that which is most meaningful — simply cannot compete with the magnetic pull of our Instagram feed. No longer need anyone ever be bored. Alone with one’s thoughts. Or simply present with one’s self. 
The result is a global epidemic of distraction. A fomenting of loneliness and isolation. And a degradation of our humanity.
The solution isn’t Ludditism. Instead it’s agency. We need not be victims of technology. We have the power to liberate ourselves from the tether of digital dependency. And the freedom it creates isn’t just the salve to what ails us, it’s the gateway to that which we seek most. Meaning. True human connection. And a reconnection with our innate humanity.
Indeed, there is no substitute for real relationships. Boredom is useful. And focus is the new superpower.
Cal Newport is someone who has spent a lot of time thinking deeply about these issues.




2. The Ezra Klein Show
Cal Newport on doing Deep Work and escaping...
84 MINS

APR 18, 2017


Episode Info

I was asked recently to name a book that changed my life. The book I chose was Cal Newport’s “Deep Work,” and for the most literal of reasons: it’s changed how I lived my life. Particularly, it’s led me to stop scheduling morning meetings, and to preserve that time for more sustained, creative work.Which is all to say that I’m a bit obsessed with Newport’s work right now, and especially his account of how the digital environment we inhabit is training us out of concentration and into distraction in ways that are bad for us, bad for our work, and ultimately bad for the world. Most of the conversations on this podcast are how to think about things differently. This one is too, but it’s more importantly about how to do things differently, and why you should do them differently. We discuss..."



3. #188: Digital Minimalism, Cal NewportTen Percent Happier with Dan Harris

    • Mental Health

It's hard to deny our society's increasing dependence on, if not addiction to, email, apps and social media. If we recognize it as a problem, then how do we fix it? Cal Newport is a computer science professor at Georgetown University and the author of the New York Times bestseller: Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World. Newport writes about our growing dependency on technology and its negative consequences. From deleting apps on your phone to spending time alone with your thoughts, Newport provides valuable steps to break away from our increasing digital dependency.


Next, I want to read Newport's latest book:
Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World




And revisit  Charles Duhigg's book: The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business
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