Blogs > Liberty and Power > Glenn Singleton on Mark Twain: "He's a Racist."

Jul 2, 2006

Glenn Singleton on Mark Twain: "He's a Racist."


by Liberty and Power


Readers of Liberty and Power will recall the disturbing antics of Glenn Singleton, a self-described diversity expert. Singleton typically gets six figures for his services from school districts, such as Cherry Creek, Colorado and Chapel Hill, North Carolina and (courtesy of a blowback from a conservative campaign led by Michelle Malkin) from Bellevue Community College.

Singleton describes his thought reform sessions as “Courageous Conversations About Race.” The reality of what goes on has little, if anything, to do with either courage or genuine conversation. The main talent of Singleton and his associates is to find creative ways to humiliate and degrade others. As during the Cultural Revolution in China, standard operating procedure is to have hapless educators and staff line up with individual signs, each showing numerical scores of their alleged unconscious racism.

I shudder to think that they might also have to listen to Singleton's theories on American literature. Haven't they suffered enough?

He has the following to say, for example, about Mark Twain, Huck Finn, and Jim: "I remember sitting back in middle school and saying to myself, 'I don't think Twain is a satirist, I think he's a racist. I don't think Huck and Jim are having this great relationship. I can't really understand why Jim keeps talking to Huck. I would think if I just got out of this period of slavery-with no freedom-I wouldn't want to spend all my time on a raft with a white boy answering questions.'"

I’ll lay odds that most of us, given a choice, would prefer Huck to Singleton as our raft mate. Luckily for Jim, he could choose his company. Unfortunately, this is not always the case for participants in Singleton’s “Courageous Conversations.”


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Hans Bader - 12/11/2007

Don't be so hard on Michelle Malkin.

She herself pointed out on December 7, 2007 that Glenn Singleton is a racist "p.c. snake oil peddler" and "diversity huckster":

She's not the only minority commentator to point out that what Singleton says about minorities (such as his claims that minority speech is not "intellectual" or "task-oriented" the way white speech is) is itself racist against minorities, just as his claim that all whites are racist is racist against whites.

If a white teacher said about minority children the things Singleton said about them -- that they're "emotional" and not "intellectual" -- that teacher would be disciplined. Yet Singleton gets paid six figures to promote just such racist stereotypes about minorities, and he gets away with it because he wraps these stereotypes up in an overall package that contains anti-white rantings as well.

Michelle Malkin wrote the following at her blog on December 7, 2007:

Tracking a “diversity” huckster

By Michelle Malkin • December 7, 2007 01:13 PM

The blogosphere is monitoring the travels and travails of diversity training huckster Glenn Singleton.
Hans Bader reports:

He claims that “white talk” is “verbal, impersonal, intellectual” and “task-oriented,” while minority talk is “emotional.” He also blames white teachers for the minority achievement gap, saying that racism is “ubiquitous” among whites, even though the gap is equally present in classes taught by minority teachers, and even though Asians, who are non-white, have higher average grades than whites in many school systems. And he claims that Mark Twain was a racist, even though Twain fought racism in an era when racism was sadly popular.

But so deep is the politically correct rot in the schools that Singleton has been hired not only by U.S. school systems and colleges, but also by a misguided school board in Nova Scotia, Canada (the Annapolis Valley Regional School Board).

This is deeply ironic. Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms doesn’t have strong protection for free speech akin to the First Amendment, so racist speech in public is banned in Canada under its so-called “human-rights” codes. Any white school teacher who said the offensive things that Singleton says about minorities — that their speech is not “intellectual,” “verbal,” or “task-oriented” — would be subject to prosecution by a human-rights tribunal. The same might even be true for a minority teacher. Yet Singleton gets paid big money — “a six figure fee” — to promote these offensive, racist stereotypes.

More here and here.
(Hat tip - Orbusmax).

If you’re a parent get up to speed on this p.c. snake oil peddler.

He may be coming to a neighborhood school near you.

Hans Bader - 12/11/2007

As I noted in a Dec. 3, 2007 post at OpenMarket blog:

"Singleton recently embarrassed California Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell.

"This year, he was hired by the gullible O’Connell to give diversity training. O’Connell then was publicly ridiculed after he repeated an offensive stereotype voiced by Glenn Singleton: that blacks, as a people, are loud, and need to have their loudness accommodated in the schools. (In fact, many minority students express dismay about how loud and disorderly their classes are, finding that to be a major impediment to learning. They want “simple, elusive quiet” so they can study).

"The head of San Francisco’s NAACP has demanded an apology from O’Connell for spreading this unfounded racial stereotype."

The above post can be found in its entirety at:

http://www.openmarket.org/2007/
12/03/exporting-racism-to-canada/

Hans Bader - 12/11/2007

It is amazing that school systems still hire Glenn Singleton given that his bizarre racial theories, such as equating whiteness and racism with individualism, were singled out for criticism in a landmark Supreme Court case.

Hiring him is a great way to embarrass any school system and cause it legal problems.

As I noted in a Nov. 20, 2007 post at OpenMarket blog, Singleton's

"racist theories drew criticism from four Supreme Court justices this year in the landmark court case of Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1. . .In 2002, the Seattle Schools hired him to “educate” their students and staff about racism. Singleton promotes the crudest imaginable racial stereotypes, such as claiming that “’white talk’ is ‘verbal, impersonal, intellectual’ and ‘task-oriented,’ while ‘color commentary’ is ‘nonverbal, personal, emotional’ and ‘process-oriented.’” He incessantly complains about “the ubiquity of white privilege and racism.” To illustrate how white people should behave, he points to an ashamed, self-hating white teacher who said that “although I often try to seek counsel of colleagues of color, it is inevitable that times arise where it’s only after the fact that one of them points out some flaw in my reasoning. The flaws are often the result of my ingrained Whiteness and my own blindness to its perpetual presence.”

"Under Singleton’s influence, the Seattle Schools defined “individualism” as a form of “cultural racism,” said that only whites can be racist, and claimed that planning ahead (”future time orientation”) is a white characteristic that it is racist to expect minorities to exhibit.

"In June 2007, the Supreme Court struck down the Seattle Schools’ use of race in student assignment, and 4 of the 9 justices cited Seattle’s wacky, Singleton-influenced, definitions of racism in the course of their opinions. Justice Thomas, for example, cited those definitions in footnote 30 of his opinion to explain why the courts should not defer to school districts when they use race. Likewise, Chief Justice Roberts cited those definitions in footnote 14 of his opinion for the Court."

The above post can be found in its entirety at

http://www.openmarket.org/2007/
11/20/arlington-schools-hire-race-baiting-diversity-consultant/

The Seattle Schools' obsession with "white privilege," which was promoted (and is shared) by Glenn Singleton, was also singled out for criticism in Justice Thomas's concurring opinion.

Hans Bader - 12/11/2007

Humiliating diversity training that insults whites or males can constitute illegal racial or sexual harassment. That's what a federal district judge ruled in Hartman v. Pena (1995), allowing a man to sue for harassment over diversity training seminar.

In another case, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit recognized the concept of a "hostile training environment" as a basis for a harassment claim.

And in Robinson v. Reed (1978), the court allowed a woman to sue under a privacy rights theory over invasive and instrusive questions she was asked during a race-relations seminar.

So Singleton could be sued if he pushes the envelope in a "diversity" training seminar, like the oddly named "courageous conversations about race" (which are more indoctrination than conversation).

Robert James Milner - 8/6/2006

To say that the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a racist book is outrageous. The story takes place in a time of slavery. This was a time where blacks were thought of as less human than whites. Through Huck’s adventures with Jim, Huck formulates his own opinion about blacks instead of conforming to society’s understanding. Society sees blacks no more than slaves or property. In the story, Huck struggles with whether or not to return Jim to Ms. Watson. He writes a letter, but he doesn’t send it. Huck is reminded of all the good things his friend Jim has done for him. Eventually Huck comes to a conclusion.
Huck states, “I was trembling, because I’d got to decide betwixt two things and I knowed it. I studied a minute holded my breath and says to myself: “alright then Ill go to hell” -and tore it up.”(Sic) (Twain, 1884 pp 179-180) Here Huck does not conform to society, but he formulates his own opinion.
Later on in the story Jim is taken back into slavery. Huck decides that he will help his friend Jim to escape. In their society, whites are not expected to even care about blacks. Yet an uneducated farm-boy has the right ideas about how white culture should act and does his best to change it. While the rich white slave owners of the day, don’t seem to understand that blacks are human beings. The irony here truly makes this novel a satire in the strictest sense of the word. A novel that makes fun of the ills of society

Keith Halderman - 6/26/2006

Right, I am sure that is what he was thinking about in Middle School.