Penn Grad Student Calls On Students In Class In An Order Determined By The Students' Race And Sex

You really can't make up this kind of crackpottery.

   Or...well...somebody made it up, obviously...but...you know what I mean.

   Stephanie McKellop openly admits that, when multiple students raise their hands, she calls on them in an order determined by their relative status on the PC left--blacks before whites, women before men (gays before straights? Gays then bisexuals then straights? How does she know? Made-up gender-whatsises and toaster-kin before ordinary folks? God knows.)
   She apparently thinks that black men come before white women in the hierarchy. I've never been clear who won that particular heat in the oppression Olympics...so it's good to at least have that cleared up, I suppose.

   In case you haven't noticed, these people can never, ever, ever be allowed to get anywhere near real power. Last time they did, it was the Gulag for people like you and me, fellow thoughtcriminal.

   The real low point of the article isn't even really what's-her-name the grad student, though. It gets worse. [sigh]  Of course it does:

   Nolan L. Cabrera, an associate professor of educational-policy studies and practice at the University of Arizona, offered The Chronicle of Higher Education an explanation of 'progressive slacking.' [lol sic]
   He said: 'In college classrooms, it's very common for people of privileged social identities to dominate conversations.' [citation needed]
   Utilized during the Occupy movement, the move isn't used often in an academic setting, according to the professor.
   In a classroom, ideally, a professor would ask a question and students would raise their hand, contributing to the 'stack'.
   Mr. Cabrera added that normally, professors would call on students that they see raised their hands first.
   But what the tactic may actually do, is allow the teacher to choose students from marginalized groups first.
   There is a lot of confusion surrounding the usage of progressive slacking. [again, sic]
   Many, incorrectly, assume that students from privileged groups will therefore be discriminated against when wanting to participate.
   Others, also think that it will cause the teacher to choose marginalized students who did not raise their hands, which is also not the case.
   '[It's] an acknowledgment that traditional pedagogical techniques have silenced marginal voices.'
   It is rather similar to the already practiced method of teachers calling on students who do not get the chance to contribute as much.

   What a mess. It's hard to sort out how much of that is bad journalism and how much is obfuscation by Cabrera. But the argument is roughly: here's a racist, sexist procedure for determining whom to call on first in class. But there's a lot of confusion about it! Many incorrectly assume that it is slightly more racist and sexist than it actually is--but it isn't! It's only as racist/sexist as it actually is.
   This is not really so much like calling on students who don't talk much in class. See, as the teacher, you know who talks in class and who doesn't. So it's easy to actually break ties in favor of those who actually speak less. Suppose student A is one of those students who talks way too much in class, despite having no idea what's going on. Suppose that student B is one of those who's on top of everything, but never talks. Suppose they raise their hands at the same time. Suppose B is a white male and A is a non-white female. McKellop's method says: call on A over B--every time. The non-idiotic method says: give preference to calling on B in such cases.
   Things would be different if McKellop had said that, in case of a tie between two students who talk about the same amount in class, she breaks the tie on the basis of race and/or sex. That would still be questionable to say the least--but I don't think it would be inexcusably loathsome. But what she says is that she always uses race and sex to make the call, and that she only calls on white males if necessary. What this actually shows shouldn't surprise anyone: it's that the real motives here are anti-white and anti-male racism and sexism. That's what's at the heart of a great deal of political correctness, and it's what's at the heart of this matter. If we were talking about someone who reluctantly used such criteria on the basis of a genuine belief that it was fair, if distasteful...that might be one thing. But that's obviously not what we're talking about here. We're talking about a person who smugly bragged about employing this method. She's proud of it. She put it up on the interwebs in the expectation of raising her status as a right-thinking lefty. (In fact, that'd be her best defense, IMO: to claim she was lying for leftypoints.)
   One more general point: I hear stuff from the right all the time that makes me think: that might be racist / sexist. But it's basically only the hard left that openly, proudly embraces racist / sexist theories and policies as a matter of principle. And I'm talking about those who aren't entirely and immediately shunned in polite society--obviously the Klan is completely open about being crazy. But they're not part of the mainstream discussion. The hard left openly says things like all whites are racist, kill all white people, all men should STFU...but they aren't treated as morally analogous to the Klan. And...in some ways they aren't...but in certain obvious respects, they are. One would think that people with such views would be booted out of the mainstream conversation...uh...wouldn't one?