Natalie WintersResearchers at taxpayer-funded Michigan State University and University of Colorado are attempting to root out “unconscious bias in virtual meetings,” advocating ridiculous remedies such as abstaining from using a heterosexual wedding picture as a background since they “unintentionally reinforce the idea that marriage is most fitting between opposite sexes.”
It’s clear the coronavirus, the catalyst for the shift to online meetings, hasn’t dampened universities’ resolve to push political correctness and identity politics.
Professors Amy Bonomi and Nelia Viveiros, the co-authors of the article, view virtual meetings on platforms such as Zoom as another domain for “language, symbolism and nonverbal cues that reinforce normative social identities with respect to gender, race, sexual preference and socioeconomic status” to metastasize, a priority woefully out of touch with the struggles faced by many American workers and businesses in light of coronavirus.
“Without paying attention to how unconscious bias and how dominant paradigms get reinforced, we risk unintentionally alienating and potentially harming minoritized people,” Bonomi frets.
Even something as banal as an icebreaker could “be a pathway for reinforcing dominant social norms and identities.”
And the question “what’s the most fun thing you’ve done with your family during quarantine?” is similarly offensive since it could “prevent several Latinx attendees from sharing their experiences of losing family members to novel coronavirus.” Even the responses such as “gardening with my husband’ to ‘dance parties with my family” can “crowd out the experiences of people with minoritized social identities.”
The solution?
Bonomi and Viveiros implore the use “inclusive language” and “approaching conversations with sensitivity to differences.”
And call participants should be cautious of the backdrops they use, singling out a “wall of family photos” as “exclusive.”
And in typical leftist lingo, the article also calls on “allies” to “challenge microaggressions,” defined as “brief, commonplace verbal, behavioral or environmental indignities that communicate hostile, derogatory or negative racial slights.”
The focus on such a trivial, unfounded issue is a testament to the left-wing academia bubble: Americans are reeling from coronavirus’ impact on the economy and championing political correctness is by no means a top priority.
But leave it to universities to prioritize political correctness and ignore the real issue plaguing online meeting platforms such as Zoom, now banned by the Department of Defense over “security concerns” of Chinese Communist Party access to the platform.
