LAUGHTER IS THE BEST MEDICINE.

The new semester is under way, which means the diversity deanlets have to justify their continued employment.

John Hopkins just sent out this hit list of people automatically guilty of "privilege" whether they know it or not:

-Males
-Whites
-Christians
-Mid-aged people
-Able-bodied people
-Middle & owning class
-English-speaking people

This message was emailed directly to employees… pic.twitter.com/xor1wjo17B

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) January 10, 2024

A pile-on of epic proportions followed.

Proving again that inane leftist ideology still doesn't go over well in the real world, Johns Hopkins Medicine is scrambling to explain the thinking behind the decision for its "Chief Diversity Officer" Sherita Hill Golden to include a "privilege list" in January's issue of the "Diversity Digest" from the "Office of Diversity, Inclusion and Health Equity."

She couldn't take the mockery, and she withdrew her memorandum for revisions.

UPDATE: The Johns Hopkins DEI Office has retracted their "privilege list" after our post went viral and drew massive outrage https://t.co/DWirlJBpKg pic.twitter.com/j26FUKSp2w

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) January 11, 2024

It's time for a logic lesson.  That Town Hall tipsheet offers extracts from that memorandum.

Explaining that privilege "is characteristically invisible to people who have it," the "Diversity Digest" says that those in the "dominant groups" listed "often believe they have earned the privileges they enjoy or that everyone could have access to these privileges if only they worked to earn them."

"In fact, privileges are unearned and are granted to people in the dominant groups whether they want those privileges or not, regardless of their stated intent," the message claims.

So, being middle-aged and simply alive makes a person an oppressor now in the eyes of Johns Hopkins.

Privilege is civilization, which means that there are things we can do, such as refute silly arguments, amass evidence, and be respectful, without having to think about them. But we earn those privileges every day, by, for example, calling on diversity deanlets to respect bourgeois norms rather than actively undermining them.  Maybe she'll learn.

How exactly did smearing people who speak English or are middle-aged, white, male, Christian, cisgender, heterosexual, or able-bodied create an "inclusive community" in her mind?

Rather than taking full responsibility, however, Golden's scrambling to do damage control saw her blame the "overly simplistic and poorly worded" definition she included in her message to the community. She noted that her alleged effort to create an inclusive environment "had the opposite effect of being exclusionary and hurtful to members of our community." You think?

Civilizing diversity deanlets is part of the ongoing work of maintaining bourgeois norms.

The work of earning civilization never ends.  College Insurrection contributor Mike LaChance,  who has a longer collection of mocking reactions to the post, notes, "This ideology is toxic. It doesn’t improve anything for anyone and should have no place in education, medicine, or any other industry."

Let's claim a small victory, though, "the Harvard treatment" might become a new sound bite.

It’s also not surprising that there is increasingly strong pushback to the narratives of oppression and colonization when people don’t see them as relevant or valid.

A diversity, inclusion and health equity office at Johns Hopkins University had to respond to that sort of pushback earlier today, in a statement retracting a definition of unearned privilege that included English-speakers, Christians and middle-aged people. It was the kind of pronouncement that might have stood prior to the ousting of the Harvard and University of Pennsylvania presidents, but progressive ideology, which for a time seemed like a cultural tsunami that would inevitably engulf the country, is suddenly looking a bit more vulnerable and fragile. As one person remarked on social media, “Johns Hopkins didn’t want to get the Harvard treatment.”

Society would be poorer without the zeal of the young, whose activism often runs counter to the beliefs and values of older generations. Most of the time, we manage to love each other anyway although sometimes this requires a workaround. Which is to say, I’m open to reconsidering my dairy intake, but for reasons other than decolonizing myself.

This might not be the right time to get into "which zealous young," as I have a little list of zealous youth who would not be missed.  Moreover, I hope we can win the culture war in a way that conserves the privileges we've earned.  "This is a culture war. If we’re going to win it, there are going to be times to set our polite impulses aside. And, as we have learned from this incident, sunlight is indeed the best disinfectant."  The higher education establishment, however might have to be subjected to a few more grim strategy punishment cycles before they rediscover the value of respecting those things we had to earn the hard way before our descendants could inherit them.