Woke in the WELS: Martin Luther College #2: Prof supports BLM, White Privilege and White Fragility...

 

The above excerpt came from Page 34 of Martin Luther College's InFocus magazine, Fall 2020 edition. You can find it online here. This magazine is distributed widely within the WELS including to local congregations. Professor Schwartz is part of MLC's Cultural Engagement Center.

The excerpt proudly enumerates a number of presentations by Prof. Schwartz, two of which are troublesome:

- "Brain Facts and Parenting Tips - Social-Emotional Learning and Executive Functions"

- "Getting Educated on Anti-Racism and Breaking the Silence," published in Chinese on WeChat.

We will save Social-Emotional Learning for a future post. 

I wonder if anyone at MLC actually took the time to read what Prof. Schwartz wrote about anti-racism. If they did; did they agree with it, or did they think being in a foreign language it would slide under the radar? If they didn't read it, why did they mention it in a publication shared widely across the synod?

Let's dig in. The original Chinese can be found at https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/QcrYzmsYrzFhVQZf5niuug. I am working off of a Bing translation. But no translation is necessary, the pictures speak volumes:

The same stuff is being peddled by WISCO. It's not enough to not be racist, you have to do the work of antiracism.

I guess these are the metrics we use to 'examine the presence and role of whiteness', as we were taught at the WELS Lutheran Leadership Conference. "White Denying White Privilege" is white supremacy (sorry, white person - you can't win - you agree with me or you are wrong). MAGA of course is white supremacy. Colorblindness? Yup, white supremacy. 

But wait a second - at least one of those is something Christians must affirm: "But we're just one human family!" - We share a common lineage through Noah to Adam and Eve. And what about being anti-immigration? If that is the law of the land, aren't we to obey the government? (Romans 13! At least thats what I was told during COVID...) 

And here is blatant racism - "Chinese racial and class privilege" - must be used to do the work of promoting BLM and Trans Lives Matter? They don't shy away from the Marxist language. "do the work"?

Yes, your 3-month-old is clearly a racist...

If you did bother to translate and read the article, it gets no better. Prof. Schwartz recommends reading a healthy dose of Kendi and DiAngelo. The epilogue summarizes the level of woke we're operating on:

"My husband does international student guidance and intercultural competence training in the university, and I am a Chinese teacher, and we both believe that anti-racism education cognition is the same as intercultural competence and foreign language level, and each person's background knowledge and existing concepts are different, and the anti-racism awareness stage is different, and the auxiliary resources (scaffolded resource) needed will be different. This is precisely the embodiment of educational equity."

A leader at MLC's "cultural engagement center" (a front for a DEI implementation?) claiming anti-racism education is on the same level as foreign language competence.

In her own words:

"one of the classes I teach in college is to teach future teachers (95% of the white middle class) how to appreciate cultural diversity, understand the cultural backgrounds of non-white students, and fight racism and discrimination in order to help students of different racial and cultural backgrounds receive a more successful education in school."

Are we teaching antiracism at MLC?