Deconstructing the UMB Library

No, not the dilapidated red building with a telescope on the top and thin legs growing from its bottom, It will probably fall soon anyway. Just its land acknowledgment

We found the following message on UMB library webpage and its Instagram:

We wish to acknowledge that the University of Massachusetts Boston is situated upon the traditional, ancestral, and unceded land of the Pawtucket and Massachusett First Nations. We pay respect to the elders, both past and present, as well as future generations. This acknowledgement demonstrates our commitment to working to dismantle the systems of oppression that have displaced Indigenous Peoples and the ongoing legacies of settler colonialism. 

The text above speaks for the whole university, not just the library. The text is dense, and it invites the reader to uncover its second and third layers of meaning. In other words, it begs to be deconstructed, with the deconstruction being the primary epistemological weapon of the Social Justice Warriors (SJW). Yes, we are going to use their methods as our tools to crack and break the incomprehensible.

But first, we need to learn the art of deconstruction. Unfortunately, the writings of the father of the “deconstruction” method, Jacques Derrida, cannot be understood, nor can they be deconstructed, due to their inherent lack of structure and, possibly, meaning. Luckily, a ready-to-use manual: “How to Deconstruct a Text,” can be found on WikiHow. It has everything we need, in 13 steps. Step 10 advises to “examine the text in another order.” Assuming that this WikiHow manual is allowed to be self-referential, we start from step 10.

[10] Examine the text in another order

This acknowledgement demonstrates our commitment to working to dismantle the systems of oppression…

Whenever a SJW is asked to provide a recent example of oppression, s/he usually mumbles something about redlining. When gently informed that redlining ended some fifty years ago, the SJW would stutter even more, but then, “Eureka!”… We have an example! “SAT, of course!” …

[1] Look for hidden assumptions

“SAT is oppressive and racist, look at all the disparities it produces!”. The hidden assumption here is something that may be called “the law of the upstream house,” patented by St. Ibram Kendi, the author of Antiracist Baby and How to Be an Antiracist. It states that if a river is dirty, the pollution always comes from the house just upstream. For example, immediately upstream of the SAT test house lies the house of low school performance of black students: the 2019 National Assessment of Educational Progress showed that 66% of black 12 graders demonstrated zero mastery of basic math skills. Further up sits the house of the chronic underfunding of public schools in poor neighborhoods. Maybe this one is the true polluter? No! for Kendi, whoever is close to him (the SAT boogyman) is the racist.

Here is another interesting example. Here, Kendi himself applies his law to explain the racial disparities in the results of admission tests to Boston exam schools (which are in a pretty bad state by now, thanks to Kendi and others); it contains a curious slip of the tongue pointing to a self-contradiction within (emphasis ours):

We need to stop putting down Black and Latinx and Native children. We need to stop putting down low-income White and Asian children. There’s something wrong with the test; there’s something wrong with the admissions policies—not the kids.

—Ibram X. Kendi in support for suspending the admission test for Boston’s three exam schools, Boston School Committee meeting, October 21, 2020.

Ah, maybe the low-income and the underfunded schools are the key, not the tests or the race of the applicants. But when it comes to school funding, everybody becomes fiscally conservative, even the socially liberal¹.

Overall, the “house immediately upstream” method is a win-win: (a) all institutions are racist anyways, so why not start from the one that is closest; (b) when you punish any institution, regardless of its actual guilt, the other establishments get scared, and here comes Kendi’s constitutional amendment that would “establish and permanently fund the Ministry of Love Department of Anti-racism (DOA)” to make sure that they all fall in line.

[9a] Embrace contradictions

We have no other choice. Contradictions are part and parcel of postmodernism. The “unceded land” implies an unresolved issue: If we give the land back, where do we move? To England? Are the British nice? Are they friendly? Will they just let us in? What if we don’t have any English ancestry at all? Our Supreme Leader of Color never mentioned moving. Did we miss his e-mail? …

[9b] Embrace multiple meanings

… Aha, there we have it. It’s not that anyone was LITERALLY going to give the land back and move, certainly not the library employees with their cushy jobs. It’s all about guilt tripping the evil “settler colonialists” into submission. “Settler” implies a non-native, the Other. “Colonist” implies a militaristic expansion and slaves. These settlers are the worst, with their disgusting Scientific Method, logic, and punctuality. More importantly, as we all know, no other civilization ever had colonies, and no other peoples ever had slaves.

[6] Accept multiple truths

In this aspect of the story, the UMB library land acknowledgment is more progressive than Derrida himself, for whom “meaning — as in the ultimate meaning of things — is a human psychological creation, not a discovery or divine revelation of absolute truth.” Per the land acknowledgment text, there is actually only one truth: colonists/oppressors - bad, natives/oppressed - good². And we ask - is the statement “there is no absolute truth” in itself an absolute truth or not?

Beyond WikiHow

The fallacy of the “house just upstream” relieves the SJWs from the obligation to meaningfully help the aforementioned 66% of black students who struggle with math: “What help? the tests are biased and racist! Abolish them!” Abolishing tests is cheap and efficient: no financial investment is needed and literally everybody is content… at least until the post-SAT generation hits the job market. But the SJWs will move to other targets by then, or find other excuses.

Meanwhile, the Jay-Z- and Jeff Yass-supported proposal, Senate Bill 795 (PASS), aimed to award 10,000-20,000 Pennsylvania K-12 students in the low 15% income bracket with a $2,500 to $15,000 voucher towards a private school tuition, already made its way to the Pennsylvania Senate. Interestingly, neither Jay’s nor Jeff’s Wikipedia pages mentions the initiative. Maybe it’s because if the bill is successful, the success of black talent will expose Kendi (whose own SAT scores were, incidentally, low) and his “SAT are racist” fallacy for what it is: a fallacy.

Does it ring a bell? Yes! In 2017, thanks to a multi-year preparatory program, the freshman class of the John D. O'Bryant School of Mathematics and Science in Boston (one of the three Boston exam schools already mentioned above), recruited using a color-blind merit-based city-wide entrance test. The class featured 35% of African-Americans, which is more than their 32% share in Boston K-12 population at-large. In 2021, the SJWs supported destroyed³ the school by adopting an Asianfrei redlining. So much for REAL black excellence! We know that’s the last thing they want. Because it would call for a REAL financial investment.

1. To be fair, typically, Kendi’s texts are less self-contradictory than the quoted passage. Unlike in that passage, he usually makes proper inferences but from “alternative facts.” Here is Kendi speaking about quotas and affirmative action used in the university admissions to accept students with lower GPAs and test scores; more specifically, he (allegedly) references the University of California lawyers in the iconic reverse discrimination case, Regents v. Bakke (1974):

Ninety percent of [the] “quota” students graduated and passed their licensing exams, only slightly lower than the white percentage.

Hence, says Kendi, the tests are designed to weed out the non-Whitasians (we are patenting that!). Alas to our knowledge, there is no mentioning of the 90% graduation rate for any group, in the whole 152-page-long volume.

2. To the contrary, Texas rodeos exude postmodern:

Unlike the inane liberal sacrament, [The American Rodeo land acknowledgment, by a Native American actor Mo Brings Plenty] appears to be capable of expressing two truths at once: that oceans of indigenous blood were spilled in the creation of this country, and that we live in one of the greatest nations on earth.

— “‘This Is My First Rodeo’ | Ben Meets America,” by Ben Kawaller, The Free Press, April 15, 2024

3. Before the reform, O’Bryant was as strong as the famous Bronx High School of Science: these days 20% of its students don’t know elementary math.