Conundrums In Higher Education

I'm going through life in a constant state of confusion and bewilderment these days. Nothing seems to make sense any more. Take, for example, this editorial in the WaPo, entitled, How to stop racism from winning on college campuses. I wasn't aware there was much of a contest going on between racism and whatever its opposite is. I seem to be wrong. Dig this.

In a rising national tide of racial intolerance, colleges have not been spared puerile, pathetic and threatening incidents, which play on the volatile campus sensitivities of an era defined by trigger warnings and safe spaces. At AU (American University), African American and other students demanded a “sanctuary space” be established for minority students at a campus cafeteria; a policy granting extensions for final exams to minority students; and an open-door policy for outside groups such as the NAACP to investigate hate crimes and racial incidents at the university.

Apparently, someone hung some bananas from some string and did something else with them as well. It all seemed juvenile to the point of being cartoonish. I'm not sure I can see a real racist doing something like that. Given all of the hoaxes recently, racist acts perpetrated by social justice warriors trying to enfrenzy the populace to fight invisible, but somehow real racism, this smacks of another fake hate crime.

The demand for extensions on final exams is a bit of a tell. When I was in college, we would sometimes have bomb threats during finals, presumably made by students who needed more time to study. It's an old gag and this looks like one of those tricks.

What confuses me most of all is the need for racial bunkers into which people of a particular hue can run like they were bomb shelters during an atomic attack. How can things be that awful at the universities where post-modern progressives aren't simply the majority culture, but an utterly dominant and all-pervasive one? If colleges need these bunkers and they're run by Bernie Bros, why don't we have them on every street corner where the odds of encountering crazed, neo-Confederates are orders of magnitude higher?

The whole thing boggles my mind. From reading the mainstream media, consuming popular culture and simple observations, the data points connect something like this:

• Trump's election has revealed massive racism in the US
• Universities are almost monolithically progressive
• Conservatives are racist, progressives are not
• Universities need safe spaces to escape wild outbreaks of racism
• Outside of universities, where Trumpkins make up half of the population, safe spaces are not required

I'm not sure what I'm supposed to make of that. I think my brain just broke writing it. It's almost like the people at the WaPo haven't pondered any of this and are almost completely ignorant.

Maybe we should start producing educational films like this one to prepare students for racist acts.