Welcome to Douglas Wilson's Blog and May Blog, presented by Canon Press.

The hard bigotry of low expectations, December 13th, 2021.

Introduction.

George W. Bush once gave a speech that contained a phrase that was laden with worldview wisdom.

That phrase was the quote, soft bigotry of low expectations.

When someone is growing up in a world in which he is confronted with all sorts of unfair

challenges, there's a natural and sentimental reaction that wants to soften the challenges,

instead of hardening the challenger.

The end result is that we wind up placing yet another challenge in front of the poor kid.

We lower the standard in order to make it easier for him, but what we actually wind up doing

is putting an asterisk next to all his future accomplishments.

If there are any, quote, this accomplishment may or may not be the result of this individual's

talent or industry.

Two stories.

Allow me to begin with the juxtaposition of two incidents.

Quite a few years ago, in the early days of Logos School, I was teaching a class.

I remember that it was upper elementary or junior high, somewhere in that neighborhood.

I also remember that there was a young black student in the class, and he was not really

a great student, and he was something of a pill, and I recall a parent teacher conference

I had one time with his mom, in which she appeared insufficiently aware of how much of

a pill he was being.

He was not popular with the other kids, and she naturally enough attributed this to their

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