U.S. college and university sports information directors gathered this week in Maryland for their annual convention, and radical sociologist Harry Edwards put the metal to the race-baiting pedal during a panel discussion on diversity and inclusion.
The architect of the shocking protests by American sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos at the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City went off on a nine-minute tirade about "unconscious bias." As reported by North Carolina A&T University student Donovan Dooley for The Undefeated, Edwards called it a pass for racists.
Edwards high-jacked a discussion by the College Sports Information Directors of America on conceptualizing bigotry and moved it to a bitter denunciation of "unconscious bias." For those not familiar with this term, here's a definition from the campus lefties at the University of California, San Francisco's Office of Outreach & Diversity:
"Unconscious biases are social stereotypes about certain groups of people that individuals form outside their own conscious awareness."
This sounds like a form of race-baiters' jiu-jitsu. But the list of racial grievances among Edwards and others keeps growing:
“We can be honest, but we can’t be right. Unconscious bias is a joke. It’s a pass for racists and gender discriminators.
“I find the whole concept of unconscious bias to be oxymoronic, it makes no sense. Reality is that what’s unconscious is really in fact a conscious denial; you are looking at a situation where bias has become normalized as a consequence of values and social and cultural structures.
“There is no such thing as unconscious bias. When you are being biased, you are making a choice. If it is unconscious, then it cannot be bias and it’s just something that happens, and we all know that is not the case.”
Edwards, a sociology professor emeritus at Cal-"Berserkley," also complained about a few other of society's warts: police brutality, sexual assault, victim shaming and institutional injustices directed at minorities. Just the normal stuff usually covered at conventions for college sports publicists who don't stick to sports publicity.
Dooley wrote that Professor Edwards' harsh words created a feeling of discomfort in the room. Nevertheless they heard more from the firebrand:
“What’s unconscious about profiling black people? What’s unconscious about refusing to give women opportunities that they deserve? That’s not unconscious. That’s just misogyny. That’s just bias.“
There was at least one calmer, cooler head present. Following Edwards, the white athletic director at George Washington University, Tanya Vogel, disagreed with Edwards’ call to attack institutional bigotry head-on. “No HR representative is going to come in and say let’s talk about what a racist and misogynist you are,” she said. “I think we have to find a way to bring people in that doesn’t set off the warning bells and lets people communicate on the topic.“
William C. Rhoden, a former New York Times sports columnist and veteran race-baiter at The Undefeated, then asked how many people in the audience think athletes in a stadium who can’t in good faith stand up for the national anthem are wrong? Dooley didn't explain what kind of a reaction that question got, but one can pretty well assume no one in this captive audience was going to stand and be the pariah who disagreed on the anthem protests. Not in this forum.
Dooley wrote of the audience of liberal university communicators, "they all said the paradigms of systematic bigotry must be corrected." He gave Edwards the last word:
“You have to define the problem, face the problem and approach it in a resolvable fashion in order to get to it. Otherwise, we will be stuck spinning our wheels where people will be having to come to conferences over racism.”
It's a pretty safe bet that race-baiters in media and academia will continue to gather for race-based conferences in the foreseeable future.
