The war on standards, hard work is for Whitey edition

Joe Biden made it a point to demonstrate that he kept working while he was ill with covid (he now has a “rebound” case, but supposedly no symptoms). Kimberly Sue, an assistant professor at Yale Medical School, was unimpressed by Biden gutting it out. In fact, her woke sensibilities were offended.

Dr. Sue tweeted:

POTUS working while having COVID infection epitomizes white supremacy urgency in the workplace. Sets a bad example for everyone that he cannot rest. COVID infection is serious, symptoms debilitating for many, and ppl should take time off without working through it.

(Emphasis added)

The decision whether or how much to work while sick is for the individual to make based on how he or she feels and, yes, the urgency of his or her work. Criticizing such a decision without knowing all the relevant facts is silly.

Casting the criticism in terms of “white supremacy” is worse. It’s sickening. It assumes, ridiculously, that dedication to one’s job is a white characteristic — i.e., that lack of such dedication characterizes the approach to work of non-whites.

This view slanders the traditional, hard-toiling black working class (as well as Asians). It harks back to the racist stereotype that blacks are lazy.

I’m old enough to remember when civil rights leaders pushed backed against this fiction. Jesse Jackson did so at the Democratic National Convention in 1988, in one of his best riffs ever. Speaking of poor people in general, but certainly with blacks in mind, he said:

They work hard everyday. I know, I live amongst them. They catch the early bus. They work every day. They raise other people's children. They work everyday.

They clean the streets. They work everyday. They drive dangerous cabs. They change the beds you slept in in these hotels last night and can't get a union contract. They work everyday.

No, no, they're not lazy. . .They work in hospitals. I know they do. They wipe the bodies of those who are sick with fever and pain. They empty their bedpans. They clean out their commodes. No job is beneath them. . . .

Is Dr. Sue’s statement to the contrary an outlier? Unfortunately not. As Christine Emba, a liberal columnist for the Washington Post, laments, it’s part of an emerging trend among self-styled anti-racism activists to deploy the term “white supremacy” as a criticism of various traits and actions that have nothing to do with race and are far from objectionable.

I would go one step further than Emba. Many of the traits being attacked as white supremacist lie at the heart of what makes for success, and always will.

How did we get from “they work every day” to “urgency in the workplace epitomizes white supremacy”? It’s long been said that black students face peer pressure not to work hard at their studies. But that pressure comes from kids, not adults, including Yale professors.

The answer to this question requires a more thorough analysis than I have space for and, indeed, than I am probably capable of. I will say, however, that the sentiment expressed by Dr. Sue is part of the war on standards, about which I have frequently written. The standard under attack here is the one that expects workers to be dedicated their jobs.

This is one standard I don’t think the woke left can topple. There’s a reason why Biden made a display of working while ill. Nearly everyone (of all races) respects dedication to work, and not just from a president. Employers expect it from their employees. Most employees expect it from their co-workers.

Moreover, and more ominously for anyone whos adopt the view that dedication to a job is just for Whitey, there is a huge class of workers that hasn’t gotten that message and would sneer at it, in any case. I’m referring to immigrants (legal and illegal) from Central America.

In my neighborhood, I see them catching the early bus, helping raise other peoples’ children, cleaning other peoples’ houses, and cutting their grass. Every day. As far as I can tell, no job is beneath them.

They are ready, willing, and able to replace less dedicated, less ambitious workers. Anyone who discourages or stigmatizes workplace urgency is doing his or her audience a disservice. Anyone who does so by hurling around words like “white supremacist” is insulting the audience’s intelligence.

Unless the audience consists, as it typically does, of other woke progressives.