Behavior Modification and "Interrupting Whiteness"

Behavior modification is a type of therapy also known as applied behavior analysis. First mentioned in 1910, it focuses on “decreasing maladaptive behavior through extinction or punishment.”

Behavior modification, similar to operant conditioning, can be achieved by various means: reinforcement (positive or negative via rewards or lack of them), punishment, extinction, shaping, fading, and chaining.

Behavior modification can be used to treat obsessive compulsive disorders (OCD), attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), phobias, enuresis (bed-wetting), generalized anxiety disorder, and separation anxiety disorder.

Behavior modification draws from the operant conditioning principles developed by the American behaviorist B.F. Skinner (1904-1990) who discussed using operant conditioning to shape behavior of humans and animals by reinforcement or lack of reinforcement in his 1938 book, The Behavior of Organisms. Skinner is highly regarded and studied in universities across the country, particularly in Education and Psychology.

Extinction, such as putting a child in time-out when he/she misbehaves is an example of “nudging” unwanted behavior by separating a child from his parents or an individual from a group.

Negative reinforcement is a “behavior whose reinforcing properties are associated with its removal.” Terminating an existing electric shock after a rat pressed a bar is negative reinforcement.

By rewarding desirable behavior, undesirable behaviors are replaced with more desirable ones. Using punishment through aversive or unpleasant stimuli is a way to discourage unwanted behavior. One example would be taking away smart device privileges. If the reinforcement is removed permanently, behaviorists call it extinction.

Two very important questions remain, who decides the desirable behavior parameters and to what ends? Do the ends justify the means?

Suppose your desire is to have a “national conversation on race” because you believe the majority white population is racist and therefore their behavior must be extinguished. Aside from non-stop race-baiting discussions on the liberal main stream media outlets with low viewership, you engage the liberal academia at various colleges through their progressive departments of studies of women, race, and social justice.

If their outrageous accusations and ideas don’t stick, then they move the notch to “interrupting whiteness” in American schools, “leading while white,” “challenging white supremacy in society,” and eliminating “white privilege” of Caucasian students, “white domination of thought,” achieving “racial equity,” and how to “decenter whiteness.”

If these topics seem twilight-zonish, then perhaps we should attend the national conference for teachers and school administrators taking place in Baltimore, MD on October 10, 2015 which focuses on race, “leading while white,” and “systemic racism” in our schools and society. http://www.summitforcourageousconversation.com/overview/

The conference titled The National Summit for Courageous Conversation 2015 is organized by the Pacific Educational Group (PEG), “a large and influential consulting firm hired by hundreds of school districts nationwide – often under pressure from the federal government – to address ‘racial gaps’ in scholastic performance and behavior problems in the classroom.” According to PEG, “public education should be infused with Afrocentrism.” http://www.pacificeducationalgroup.com/public/pages/home

Why not discuss relevant topics such as improving reading scores, math scores, science scores, overall achievement in school, graduation percentages, and reducing violence, truancy, drugs, and dropout rates in school? Why not attempt to fix what is wrong with families and society in general that produce such moral and mental decline in our children, regardless of skin color?

In the fundamentally transformed new and improved America, “is this the kind of race-obsessed confrontational philosophy that should be guiding instruction and curricula in the nation’s public schools?” http://pjmedia.com/zombie/2015/10/07/interrupting-whiteness-education-conference-blame-white-teachers-and-students/

No mention is made of personal responsibility, the destruction of the black family unit by dependency on welfare programs, the absence of dads in the home, drugs, violent behavior of blacks on blacks, recidivism after jail, abortions, the lack of self-control, lack of motivation to study, school dropout rates among black students, huge unemployment rates among black teens, and other issues that plague the black community.

It is convenient instead to blame non-existent “white privilege.” Critical Race Theory dissects the concept of “whiteness” as the focus point of guilt for all societal problems. Because we are Caucasian, we somehow benefit unjustly from this “racist” system; we are part of the system, and thus automatically racist. The struggle of millions of whites to succeed by working hard against many odds is somehow irrelevant in this half-baked theory.

According to Critical Race Theory, “racism represents both prejudice and power. Since the theory espouses that blacks have no power in society, they cannot possibly be racist.”

The PJ Media post of October 7, 2015 lists some of the workshops. The titles are sheer propaganda meant to re-educate, to shape the white population’s behavior into the desired direction of utopian “racial equity.” Communist societies used “re-education” to force people into confessions of their non-existent guilt and acceptance of the new ideology. If they refused, they were sent to re-education camps, labor camps, prison, or shot. http://pjmedia.com/zombie/2015/10/07/interrupting-whiteness-education-conference-blame-white-teachers-and-students/

To nudge students into desired behavior, PEG focuses on “restorative justice,” an euphemism for eliminating detention and suspension for students who exhibit violent behavior at school and offering them therapy and counseling sessions instead. Since July 2015 “restorative justice” is now official government policy.

The September 15, 2015 Executive Order titled “Using Behavioral Science Insights to Better Serve the American People,” will use behavior “to support a range of national priorities, including helping workers to find better jobs; enabling Americans to lead longer, healthier lives, improving access to educational opportunities and support for success in school; and accelerating the transition to a low-carbon economy.”

The Social and Behavioral Sciences Team (SBST) proposed in this EO will use empirical findings from government-recruited behavioral science experts to help people “access public programs and benefits” with ease,  to present information in such a way that ”affects comprehension and action by individuals,” to “most effectively promote public welfare, as appropriate, giving particular consideration to the selection and setting of default options,” and “review policies and programs that are designed to encourage or make it easier for Americans to take specific actions, such as saving for retirement or completing education programs.” https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/09/15/executive-order-using-behavioral-science-insights-better-serve-american

 

 

Political Correctness Gone Crazy

I’ve wondered for the longest time why Americans remain silent to the massive “fundamental transformation” of our country by a minority of well-organized progressives who use any means necessary to attain their communistic ends, including the phony notion of “white privilege” in the most tolerant nation on the planet.

While history is being altered, rewritten in the revisionist view of Saul Alinksy’s activists on the payroll of the current regime, various communist non-profits, and by low information voters who think that a Hershey’s candy bar is more valuable than a $150 pure silver bar and by the non-stop race-baiters, the U.S. A. has become the laughing stock of the rest of the world. Instead of respect, we get derision and mockery on Al Jazeera by our own millennials who work for various anti-American think-tanks and lobbying firms. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYhTFz_SGw0

The military is being cut down more and more, “we can’t afford to pay them,” we are following into the footsteps of European countries that are powerless to defend themselves in the case of an attack. Who is going to take America’s place with its brave soldiers who came to the rescue and liberated Europe from the Nazi oppressors? Where is the American backbone I have heard so much about?

The fact that Memphis officials have voted to disinter the grave of a Confederate general and his wife, in an illogical attempt to purge every shred of our past and of our history, is mind-boggling. When are the hungry racists going to stop? Their ancestors are long gone. America is in a different place now.

What will it take to stop this disruptive PC juvenile insanity? Our country is teetering over the abyss of an out of control government spending and unpayable national debt and we are mesmerized by narcissistic media types and the Donut-Licking-Gate?

I got my answer recently. Donald Trump had the temerity to speak the truth by giving accurate statistics and facts about a certain segment of illegal aliens who represent a majority of criminals in our prison system, who invade our borders to commit crimes, to export their illegal drugs and criminal gangs, and to rape and murder innocents who happen to be in the way.

The media and big business have savaged Donald Trump as a presidential candidate and “the art of the deal” businessman. Luckily, he is a very rich man, he can stand financial losses. He is highly successful no matter what he does; he is the quintessential self-made billionaire. Nobody who is trashing him in the major main stream media venues can ever take that away from him or dare to measure up to this man’s wisdom, business acumen, and success.

Why are Americans silent? Because they are afraid! They don’t want to lose their jobs, their freedom, and the acceptance of their neighbors, family, and friends on the social circuit. They don’t want to be savaged by mobs surrounding their homes. They don’t want to be called racists and bigots, so they remain silent.

They don’t want to be evicted if their handicapped child hangs the Confederate flag in his bedroom window. They don’t want to be impeached from public office if they happen to disagree with the gay lifestyle based on their religious beliefs. They don’t want to be thrown out of their churches by parishioners who also cower in fear of disapproval or loss of their jobs. They don’t want to lose their bakeries, event planner businesses, or pizza shop.

Freedom of speech is free if you agree with me. If you disagree with liberals, freedom of speech no longer exists. Progressives have muzzled all of us with Political Correctness gone amuck.  If we disagree with their ideology, atheism, lifestyle, or opinion, how long will it be before we actually start going to jail if we dare to embrace any dissenting opinions that the left has labeled “hate speech” and codified it into law?

Our children cannot smoke in school, eat unhealthy foods for school lunches, cannot take aspirin for headaches, are drugged for real or imagined attention-deficit disorders, but can have state-subsidized sex-change operations at 15 in Oregon without parental consent. http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/07/09/oregon-allowing-15-year-olds-to-get-state-subsidized-sex-change-operations/

Children are brainwashed and indoctrinated into the religion of Gaia, scared every day in school about man-made global warming that is scientifically a hoax. HBO devoted an entire six-episode series, Saving My Tomorrow, to this topic, using small children with memorized canned lines from the climate change industry agenda, resplendent with sophisticated adult vocabulary uncharacteristic for such small children, to shamelessly propagandize global warming.

Jose Antonio Vargas, “the self-described ‘undocumented gay Filipino American’ journalist who won a Pulitzer Prize for covering the Virginia Tech shootings in 2007,” has made a conversation film about “whiteness,” propagandizing non-existent “white guilt” and “white privilege.” http://www.ijreview.com/2015/07/364664-new-documentary-raising-serious-eyebrows-ethnicity-subject-legal-status-creator/?utm_source=email&utm_campaign=afternoon-newsletter&utm_medium=owned

“We cannot have an honest conversation about race in America until we explore and unpack what "whiteness" and "white privilege" mean in America. This is not an easy, simply or comfortable conversation. So let's get uncomfortable. Let's talk. That's the goal of "White People," a documentary project produced by MTV's Look Different campaign in collaboration with Define American and Punched In The Head Productions.”

It seems to be the norm now that “undocumented” immigrants criticize Americans for their generosity. We allow illegal aliens who invade our borders to take advantage of our welfare system, free education, free medical care, and freedoms unlike any offered in their former countries, freedoms which they are now trying to curtail with aggressive liberal activism.

There is nothing shameful about American generosity and tolerance. We should not be demonized because we are white. Nobody should be demonized about the color of their skin any more than being bullied for being tall, short, skinny, or fat.

History has shown that demonizing an entire group of people under the guise of “conversation” has gotten millions of innocents killed. Take for example the good people who stood by while their Jewish neighbors were persecuted during Nazism. How about millions of people under the communist revolution who did nothing when intellectuals and the middle class were purged and disappeared during the 20^th century?

One of the IJ Review readers, George Kirkman, who took up the challenge to have an honest race conversation in America, had this commentary for the phony indictment of “whiteness” based on a racist view of the world, preconceived notions, and biases.  

“It was whiteness that fought to end slavery, not only here in America, but around the world as well. It was whiteness that fought Ebola in Africa. It was whiteness that sends out doctors, teachers, engineers, and missionaries to the Third World. It is whiteness that brings in Third World students to be educated. It is whiteness that takes in a hundred thousand or more refugees every year. It was whiteness that went forth to rebuild Haiti after the quake. It is whiteness that sends out billions in aid to the Third World.”

It is bold and unwise to accuse the very people who are tolerantly accepting you into their midst even though you broke their laws by entering illegally. Feed me but I am going to bite your hand because I resent your ability and industriousness that allows you to share the fruits of your labor with me.

Promoting the liberal inclusiveness agenda by making any child or adult feel ashamed of their skin color and of their heritage is repulsive.