Whiteness Studies

[Adam Zapple]

For several decades now, American colleges and universities have been expanding their academic offerings to include courses in different species of identity politics: Women’s Studies, Black (now African-American) Studies, Latino Studies, Queer Studies and more. Whereas traditional academic fields were rooted in some distinct body of knowledge such as chemistry, mathematics, or economics, these new fields are not about transmitting knowledge so much as they’re about transmitting the edgy and often intellectually shaky attitudes of the professors. Women’s Studies, for example, is mostly about trying to inculcate a sense of grievance in young, impressionable women and that is accomplished with the use of some disreputable arguments about the supposedly discriminatory nature of our economic system.

Among the more recent of these new fields is “whiteness studies, which is built around the notion that being of “the white race confers power and privilege in society. There is, however, a big difference between “whiteness studies and the other identity fields. Instead of extolling a specific group as being worthy victims of an unjust society, the apparent aim of “whiteness studies is to make white students feel that they are responsible for historical injustices; that “their race is to blame for slavery, oppression and genocide. “Minority students are supposed to bond in a sense of group victimization, but white students are supposed to bond in a sense of group guilt.

Anyone who follows developments in higher education is aware that many professors in the social sciences have made their careers by trying to explain just about everything in terms of race, class, and gender. Following in that tradition, “whiteness scholars claim that the white race is actually a “social construct that has been used for centuries as a rationalization for the privileges enjoyed by some and denied to others. The infamous Harvard professor Noel Ignatiev (infamous for his statement that the white race should be “abolished) says that “The white race is like a private club based on one huge assumption that all those who look white are, whatever their complaints or reservations, fundamentally loyal to the race.

Exactly how Ignatiev knows the beliefs of millions of other people is a mystery. My own great-grandfather, for example, was an immigrant from Sweden who worked as a day laborer in Minnesota. Did he feel “loyalty to his race? No one in my family has any evidence about his views regarding race, politics, or anything else, but Ignatiev seems perfectly comfortable in asserting that he and millions of other European immigrants must have bought into the idea that, as “whites, they were entitled to a privileged existence in the U.S. That academic careers can be based on such breezy theorizing as that is a testament the sorry state of higher education.

Entire courses on “whiteness are now taught at some schools. Within the UNC system, “whiteness is merely a topic included in other courses. For example, at UNC-CH, among the topics covered in the course Religion 156: Ethnicity, Race, and Religion in America is “How do Americans achieve whiteness?

One of the academicians most associated with “whiteness studies is University of Illinois professor David Roediger. In a recent article published in The Chronicle of Higher Education, “Whiteness and Its Complications (July 14, 2006; subscriber site), he writes, “The critical study of whiteness emerged, from slave and American Indian traditions forward, from the idea that whiteness is a problem to be investigated and confronted.



http://www.popecenter.org/clarion_call/ ... ml?id=1716

--Oh, brother. To think that parents spend nearly six figures on 4-yrs of this drivel.

[Adam Zapple]

A few more gems from universities courtesy of Walter Williams:

At Occidental College in Los Angeles, a mandatory course for some freshmen is "The Unbearable Whiteness of Barbie." It's a course where Professor Elizabeth J. Chin explores ways in "which scientific racism has been put to use in the making of Barbie [and] to an interpretation of the film 'The Matrix' as a Marxist critique of capitalism." Johns Hopkins University students can enroll in a course called "Sex, Drugs, and Rock 'n' Roll in Ancient Egypt." Part of the course includes slide shows of women in ancient Egypt "vomiting on each other," "having intercourse" and "fixing their hair."

Harvard University students can take "Marxist Concepts of Racism," which examines "the role of capitalist development and expansion in creating racial inequality." You can bet there's no mention of the genocide in Africa and former communist regimes like Yugoslavia. Young America's Foundation and Accuracy in Academia publish lists of courses like these, at many other colleges, that are nothing less than student indoctrination through academic dishonesty.


http://www.townhall.com/columnists/Walt ... _stupidity

[Shweet tatersalad]

The white guy,who is now working at Walmart because he has too pay back school loans for the college or trade school he went too.Works at walmart because affirmative action keeps him from getting the job he wants,because regardless of education or job history American company's have hire a certain number of minorities too make the quota the per government.So the white man is the one who suffers.How does he feel about being white???

[Accountable]

This is precisely why I rale (rail?) against color-coding people for social reasons. The passive bigotry of lower expectations is far more damaging in the long run than the overt bigotry that came to a head in the 1960's US.



It only - ONLY - serves to divide.

[Accountable]

Very telling difference of perspective, eh Scrat? I condemn the people that promote such pap. You condemn the entire nation.

[Adam Zapple]

Well, scrat, on this we agree. Social indoctrination has taken the place of real education.

[Accountable]

Are you enjoying your scenic route? Let me know when you make it back to the subject.