Pennsylvania college students replace Shakespeare portrait with black author
The coming dark age: Students at the University of Pennsylvania have removed a portrait of Shakespeare, replacing him with a black author, because “he did not represent a diverse range of writers.”
It is very clear that these students have never read one word of Shakespeare, and thus are quite ignorant. It is also very clear that they are outright bigots, rejecting someone merely because of his skin color (white) to favor someone else merely because of their skin color (black).
The real tragedy here is that the university is apparently in agreement with the students. If I was sending my kids to college, this event would definitely place the University of Pennsylvania in the reject pile.
Correction: In my initial post I mistakenly described the private University of Pennsylvania as state funded. It is not, at least not directly. I have corrected the post accordingly.
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The coming dark age: Students at the University of Pennsylvania have removed a portrait of Shakespeare, replacing him with a black author, because “he did not represent a diverse range of writers.”
It is very clear that these students have never read one word of Shakespeare, and thus are quite ignorant. It is also very clear that they are outright bigots, rejecting someone merely because of his skin color (white) to favor someone else merely because of their skin color (black).
The real tragedy here is that the university is apparently in agreement with the students. If I was sending my kids to college, this event would definitely place the University of Pennsylvania in the reject pile.
Correction: In my initial post I mistakenly described the private University of Pennsylvania as state funded. It is not, at least not directly. I have corrected the post accordingly.
Readers!
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your support allows me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
Bob, I think you are confusing University of Pennsylvania with Penn State. The latter is the state school; UPenn is private. I wouldn’t send my kids to either school.
Jonathan: You are correct. I will revise my post.
Wait till stuff like this starts to happen:
http://www.cnn.com/2016/12/10/americas/venezuelan-government-toy-seizure-grinch/index.html
Well, maybe it won’t if Trump can stay focused.
I had lunch today with my friend who worked closely for Trump for several years and asked him this one question:
Q: In your opinion is Trump focused on restoring America for the American people or do you think he is just feeding his ego with this win?
A: He said that ego aside he believes that he is totally focused on accomplishing exactly what he says. His ego will drive him to be successful because of it. He would not be able to stand not being successful.
And he is currently right out of the box butting heads with the CIA?
One Shakespeare quote from Hamlet describes this:
“- How horrible! How horrible! Hooow horrible!”
He was very eloquent.
LocalFluff- good stuff
Patrick Stewart as Macbeth
(“Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow….”)
https://youtu.be/HZnaXDRwu84
(2:05)
Also related:
http://www.breitbart.com/london/2016/12/12/nativity-scene-offend-muslims-priest-says/
How about the Muslims and others just suck it up? Who the hell cares if they or anyone else is offended?
True, Shakespeare doesn’t represent a diverse group of writers. Most writers (just ask anyone who has had to deal with slush piles) are quite bad. I’m guessing that’s not what they meant though.
A shame we live in a world where youth is obsessed with race/sex/religion instead of more interesting things.
– The only College that doesn’t accept any type of Federal funding, is Hillsdale College.
No student-loans, Pell Grants, or the Federal rules/regs that flow from accepting such money.
>These UPenn people, are just plain old classically ignorant. I hope each & every student is in massive debt with their phony-baloney degree’s.
“Shakespeare’s Astronomy”
Professor Michael Rowan-Robinson
November 30, 2016
http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/shakespeares-astronomy
(45:45)
“Amongst all his astronomical allusions, Shakespeare demonstrates a deep knowledge of the night sky and its movements. Although he gives the conventional view of his age that astronomical events offer portents for human affairs, his characters sometimes take a sceptical view, and there are hints that he was aware of the new Copernican world-view that was taking hold during his lifetime. The lecture will be illustrated with quotations from Shakespeare’s plays. This lecture also marks the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death in 1616.”
yow-za…. she’s a piece of work…
>the token black-author they chose to replace Shakespeare:
Audre Lorde
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audre_Lorde
Interestingly, Shakespeare is the source of quite a few cliches and societal and artistic references, because his works are considered to be good. Audre Lorde does not seem to be the source of any.
It is the good works of art that become popular and referenced by the rest of society, even by other artists. In movies, for instance, “Casablanca” is the source of several cliches and other references, but even the notable “Plan 9 From Outer Space,” not so much.
Rather than add another portrait to the wall, they chose to remove perhaps the most prestigious one in favor of the undeserving unknown. Shakespeare has been pricked in favor of a tickle to the unknown author. This political correctness is yet another poison to society.
This is Social Justice for you. Punish one person, in this case the successful person, for the evils committed by somebody else who can be somehow associated with him. I’m shocked, shocked, that Social Justice Worriers would reject Shakespeare for some unknown Social Justice writer.
“Casablanca gambling? I’m shocked!”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjbPi00k_ME (1 minute)
“If you prick us do we not bleed? If you tickle us do we not laugh? If you poison us do we not die?” — Author well known
As the Weekly Standard recently said, we’ve been forced to live in an alt-left world for years now.
The one Shakespeare quote that sticks with me and I use it all the time?
“What meat doth Caesar eat that he should grow so great? ! ”
This one quote says it all to me.
I love Shakespeare, now I must watch some of his work. I liked The Tempest many years ago, “There’s a tide in the affairs of men”. And there are several I’ve never seen. (I don’t like reading theater manuscripts, it’s not very entertaining if one isn’t used to that format). A favorite quote is from Hamlet: “Though this be madness, yet there is method in’t”.
And the context of the most famous of all his quotes:
The undiscovered country from whose bourn
No traveler returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.
He is unique, no other language has a giant like that. I think he is an important reason for why English is the world language today, the new Latin. You know, many Latin words were borrowed from Germanic languages! So now when we say that we use Latin words, we often just bring back ancient Germanic words.
And language is so very important for civilization. We haven’t changed that much biologically in terms of inherited intelligence the last tens of thousands of years. Civilization started when we started to talk to each other. That allowed for specialization and memory longer than a lifetime. If dogs started to talk to each other (and we maybe could help them along with our digital interfaces!) they might also create a civilization like ours with time. I think they too would arrange for lots of fast food, cooking TV shows, bullying reality shows and porn. Maybe elephants would be a better target for animal language development investments since they live so long and can accumulate so much knowledge and experience. And they are better behaved although they are wild. We could maybe use animals as a natural intellectual resource. We don’t need to wait for space aliens, we have enough of aliens right here among us.
LocalFluff–
Good stuff!
(I want my Cat, to speak English & with a British accent.)
Speaking of dogs….
Rick and Morty –
“You Will Be My Best Friend”
https://youtu.be/W68J54xx7yA
LocalFluff–
You might enjoy the 2010 version of Macbeth, with Patrick Stewart.
>>Contemporary setting’s but with the original dialogue. (Has a very “east-block” feel to it.)
Macbeth
act 1 scene 1 (2010)
https://youtu.be/HX49cqSXThA
(2:06)
Wayne, It is really really hard to come up with any new idea. There are billions of clones of me out there who have as crazy brains as I do. It’s hard to make up something original. Even a dog civilization was an old idea before I was born.
I didn’t like that MacBeth movie very much, too gory. Since 10+ years I don’t watch television, other than select news clips online, so I’ve become sensitive to violence and crimes. And TV is so totally dominated by violence and crimes that I’m just disgusted. I once saw a live play of MacBeth that was really great, a true ghost story. I can recommend the movie made of Richard III in 1995, set in world war II environment.
LocalFluff- good stuff.
That Richard III from 1995 you mentioned, looks very interesting.
Richard III Trailer 1995
https://youtu.be/VV2c-8DxKxo
(Ian McKellen, Annette Bening, Jim Broadbent, Robert Downey, Jr., Nigel Hawthorne, among others.)
I think I confused your version of MacBeth with the 2015 one, which was a disappointment for me. I thought that a good story and modern movie making and acting would be a great combination, but it wasn’t to my liking. I’ll have a look at the 2010 movie, i kind of recognize the first scene, but haven’t seen much more.
We should not underestimate dogs. After four billion years of life transforming Earth’s surface, a dog went to space just before humans did. I suspect that dogs somehow manipulate us psychologically in a huge bio-social experiment they conduct. They have evolved so quickly during the last couple of hundred years and take on so many shapes and sizes. They have fangs and yowl home to their Moon base when it lines up with Earth and the Sun at night. It’s scary.
LocalFluff–
It’s not the Dogs we have to worry about– it’s the Cats. (That episode of Rick & Morty, to the contrary.)
Dogs tend to be slavishly submissive, Cat’s on the other hand, perform little useful work anymore, but have managed to endear themselves to us.
My Cat is currently on suspension without pay, pending a complete-investigation of the Field Mouse Incident last week. Spotted a little rodent, busily eating out of the cat’s food dish, while he slept 3 feet away. (I dispatched said mouse, with a broom. And contrary to EPA regulations, I then put poison bate cubes around the perimeter of my house. Problem solved.)
Yeah– you have to picky on the Shakespeare videos. Bunch of them are misattributed at YouTube.
Zootopia–
“Careful, you’ll start a Howl.”
https://youtu.be/q_ibzjOo1Ek
Wayne,
You have convinced me to watch more animated movies. Like that find a fish thing whatever on the cinemas now. I’m suggesting Disneyfication reversed. We should Disniefy the animals’ minds, not just our perception of them. Dogs with smart phones with user interfaces adapted to them, and a chat app, might lead to marvelous things. They would become a strong lobby for going to the Moon, believe me. LLPPP, the Lunar Laika paw print and pee mission.
Cats mentally socially live in a parallel universe and just stroke past us in some temporarily correlating dimension. Now I do think that EPA kind of regulations are well over the top. But I think you should wake up your cat, by pouring cold water on it, rather than using poisonous cubes of something. Humans created cats thousands of years ago in order for them to hunt rodents along the wheat fields of the Nile. They are lions tamed but still proud.
LocalFluff–
Mr. Cat is getting old (16) but he was a fairly good mouser in his youth. >The Christmas Tree Climbing incident of ’04 was particularly hard on my wife’s antique-ornament collection, lost 6 that year in 3 separate flip-the-tree-over Events.
tangentially–
This is what people do in the Pacific Northwest, when their cats climb up trees. They call Canopy Cat Rescue.
“Boots”
-Treetop Cat Rescue
https://youtu.be/Iy5zgZnPWb8