The syllabus [for the Arizona State University course called "The Problem of Whiteness"] described “Critical Whiteness Studies” as a field “concerned with dismantling white supremacy in part by understanding how whiteness is socially constructed and experienced.”....The word problem (in the course title) seems intended to provoke, but the actual course may very well have intellectual heft worthy of college-level study. But if universities are dedicated to creating a welcoming climate and overcoming racial strife, they might want to use less antagonistic sounding titles. If, on the other hand, universities want vibrant speech on campus and expect students to handle racial provocation, "The Problem of Whiteness" is no problem at all.
“White supremacy makes it so that white people can’t see the world they have created,” [the professor Lee] Bebout told The Washington Post. It’s a culture so pervasive that living in it, subscribing to it and upholding it feel as natural to most Americans as breathing air....
Bebout, who is white, said he was promptly attacked for promoting discrimination against white people. Fliers appeared around his neighborhood which featured a photo of him and the declaration that he was “anti-white.”...
[Bebout] said the class is not a critique of white individuals, per se, but rather whiteness as a form of institutional racism, where the experiences of people of color are rarely validated. In Bebout’s words, this centers around the conviction that “my experience as a white male should be the experience of everybody else, and there is something dysfunctional about them if they don’t see the world in the way that I do.”Don't let the "my" confuse you. He doesn't mean himself. He's talking about the subjectivity of others.
It can be challenging to teach the shift in perspective that this theory requires.That's a red flag: There's a required perspective. [OR: Is there?]
While anti-racist in its intent, whiteness studies can often yield counterproductive outcomes.That's making it sound as though it's built into the course that you must think a particular way, and you're doing it wrong if you disagree. The professor is strongly dedicated to controlling what the students make of the material they are presented with. It's inherent in the nature of the course that the professor would have to feel that way. It's the problem of The Problem of Whiteness.
“We all think of ourselves as decent people,” [said Terrance MacMullan, a philosophy of race professor at Eastern Washington University], “so it’s very disconcerting to see yourself as someone who benefits from systemic racism.... One problem inherent in whiteness studies is that it might become a white pity party.... Instead of talking about how whiteness is problematic, it becomes about the problems of white people.”
ADDED: A "Problem of Whiteness"-type course will have some special problems, I would think, if the university has a race and ethnic studies requirement for college students. I don't think the Arizona State University has such a requirement, but there is a requirement for undergraduates at my university.
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112 comments:
Fliers appeared around his neighborhood which featured a photo of him and the declaration that he was “anti-white.”...
I bet he put them up himself.
Fuck that guy.
In what way is this not INCREDIBLY racist?
Why can't whites hauk up the university to courts to abide by the rules the university sets?
Why should white folks EVER help minorities? You want to call me the enemy? Fine. I will be an enemy. Stay in your ghetto and slaughter one another.
If, on the other hand, universities want vibrant speech on campus and expect students to handle racial provocation, "The Problem of Whiteness" is no problem at all.
But they CLEARLY don't want that.
Could a course on the "Problems of Blackness" ever be approved? Hell no. It would never be. Well I'm sick of being a piñata because my culture isn't a shit heap unlike African culture, which STILL uses slavery to this day.
“We all think of ourselves as decent people,” [said Terrance MacMullan, a philosophy of race professor at Eastern Washington University], “so it’s very disconcerting to see yourself as someone who benefits from systemic racism.... One problem inherent in whiteness studies is that it might become a white pity party
so it might become every Ethnic Studies course in existence. Got it.
In Bebout’s words, this centers around the conviction that “my experience as a white male should be the experience of everybody else, and there is something dysfunctional about them if they don’t see the world in the way that I do.” Don't let the "my" confuse you. He doesn't mean himself. He's talking about the subjectivity of others.
It's funny because his entire course is premised on that.
They make it REALLY hard to not be racist.
Mighty white of you.
Is he going to touch on the periods in history when Irish and Italians were not considered fully-White?
That's making it sound as though it's built into the course that you must think a particular way, and you're doing it wrong if you disagree. The professor is strongly dedicated to controlling what the students make of the material they are presented with.
It's exactly the same with a mathematics course, isn't it? 2+2=4. There is no room for debate and students that answer 3 or 5 will be sanctioned by receiving poor grades. The issue here is that the "whiteness studies" architects and instructors believe their point of view with the same conviction they believe 2+2=4 and see it as their job to make everyone else fall in line.
Derybshire notes that non-whites seem to want to migrate to areas governed by whites.
Discuss.
Is there a benefit of western civilization that has been overlooked?
There's not enough scorn in the world for people that choose to waste some of their finite lifespans on this course.
So, a course titled, "The Problem With Blackness" would be just fine! NOT.
Perhaps an experiment could be for these people to not be allowed the use of or benefits of any device, medicine or invention by white people. No electricity, no anti-biotics, no air travel, no cars, no refrigeration, no voting, no powered ships, etc.
Report back in one year.
It's simply the last ditch application of the White Guilt started with MLK's death. That psychological force has been goose that laid the golden egg since 1969, and it is in need of revitalizing. This rigamarole is the magic juice they are using.
The white guilt Industry works well until you run out of Whites Feeling Guilty. Now get in there and confess.
The Hispanics are not a skin color issue, but just pretend that they are for speaking a silly language and then they get supplied with golden eggs too
"but the actual course may very well have intellectual heft worthy of college-level study."
Wow.
Future courses:
The problem with brown people.
The problem with yellow people.
The problem with red people (Redskins?).
The problem with the Jews.
The problem with Catholics.
The problem with Islamists (hey, this one is fun. I mean fu un).
The problem with Italians.
The problem with the Irish.
The problem with Mensa members.
The problem with Wisconsin professors.
Hey, it's neverending. Every group has "problems."
Washington Redskins? I'm still thinking Washington Whities would be a great name. White people don't care. We'd be proud. Why shouldn't we have a team? Even if it sucks.
"While anti-racist in its intent"
Ha! That's a good one. I truly LOL'ed.
Yes, I'm sure a college course titled "The Problem if Whiteness" will most likely attract the kind of students who want to talk about how hard it is being white.
the actual course may very well have intellectual heft worthy of college-level study.
Well...anything's possible, I suppose.
It's racist to notice that white middle class culture is admired and envied by everybody.
Sorry, but I don't see any reason to apologize for this.
A better place to study how we white people got there might be to go to Mass next Sunday morning at your local Catholic Church. You will learn there the philosophy and theology that buttresses our society.
Hint... it was our fathers, the patriarchs who created this successful class of people ("white people") now despised by all who are jealous and evil. Our patriarchal wisdom, theology, tradition and system of ethical and legal tolerance created the "safe space" for drama seeking kids.
My father was one of those wise patriarchs. Rather than curse and spit at our great patriarchs, learn from men like my father. Don't try to drag us down to your level. Come up to ours.
It can be challenging to teach the shift in perspective that this theory requires.
"That's a red flag: There's a required perspective."
Is it a particular required perspective or is it the ability to intellectually shift perspectives? The latter, I think.
white people can’t see the world they have created,
But non-white people from all over the world - who are better than white people - can see that world and go to great lengths to get there. Because it's so horrible, I suppose, and they just want to improve it.
Next up: graduate studies in hobgoblins and witchcraft.
Thank God I went to college over 40 years ago and didn't have to put up with this crap. And fortunately miy children are all in their mid-30's now and went to a good state U and didn't have to put up with it either. But I fear for my grandchildren. I can assure you if I have any say in it they will not go to any school that wastes time on this stupidity.
White people don't care. We'd be proud. Why shouldn't we have a team? Even if it sucks.
Well we have the Knickerbockers and the Celtics.
there is something dysfunctional about them if they don’t see the world in the way that I do.”
That's what they do, they construct some theoretical new culture, like say the Soviet Man, and they judge you by its standards. They are trying to create a revolution. Maybe that is good,maybe it's bad, but there is little doubt that is the purpose of a course like this.
Yes, Meade it is challenging to teach "lies."
The challenge will disappear once you cease doing it.
"If, on the other hand, universities want vibrant speech on campus and expect students to handle racial provocation, "The Problem of Whiteness" is no problem at all."
I see--so only white people are mature and intelligent enough to be provoked, it is all the weak minority groups that need to be coddled with safe spaces and trigger warnings? I'm sure glad the SJWs who support this aren't racist!
and for this we pay taxes?
Kazimir Malevich paints Moby Dick. That would be an interesting course.
Shouting Thomas said...
Yes, Meade it is challenging to teach "lies."
"I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."
I want to see courses on Mao's Great Leap Forward into Cultural Revolution...the peasants become the rulers like Marx predicted, and the rest are shipped off to camps to die.
Oh wait, we already are living those out under The Great Community Dis-organiser and his Dem Party.
A bit of free advice for self-flaggelating white wimps like that professor--black people aren't going to think any better of you just because you beat up on your race by referring to whites as a "problem". If anything, it sounds like blacks and other minorities (the ones who aren't part of your SJW drum circle, at least) just want to get ahead and would be happy being treated as human beings and not some delicate flowers. There's something dehumanizing in fetishizing other races as perpetual victims and removing any human agency from their actions.
You want to identify modern evidence of anti-black racism? Then do it--and no, "things that impact blacks more than whites because blacks tend to be poorer/unhealthier/less educated" don't count. Find actual evidence of racism and we'll pay attention. In the meantime, you're just trying to discourage blacks from competing and that's a pretty evil result.
"and for this we pay taxes?"
I get a kick out of Sanders and Clinton wanting more tax dollars to subsidize these institutions. Consider what value people are getting from these uneducational schools. Students cowed from engaging their minds, speech codes stricter than in the outside world, dumbed-down cirricula that for many students teaches absolutely nothing useful, and entry into a job market most of them are woefully unprepared for. Yes, let's dump more money on this!
“White supremacy makes it so that white people can’t see the world they have created,” Bebout told The Washington Post. It’s a culture so pervasive that living in it, subscribing to it and upholding it feel as natural to most Americans as breathing air. [emph. added]
That's what human beings do, dipshit. They build a culture and live in it. The United States was founded by Europeans and was overwhelmingly white for most of its history. As you say, whites created it. Is it ever going to feel "as natural as breathing" to persons outside of the mainstream of that culture? No, but that is the experience of minority members always and everywhere. You only look at it as some unique noxious form of racial voodoo, as "supremacy", when whites are in the majority.
At the bottom of all this is the absurd demand that whites radically "de-culture" themselves, and live in the formless voids of "diversity" and "multiculturalism". (Ever notice how people who push this crap on whites so often fall all over themselves praising non-whites for hewing to the ancestral traditions that give life meaning and stability?)
"If, on the other hand, universities want vibrant speech on campus and expect students to handle racial provocation...
Please name the universities where this happens. I'll bet I could count them on the toes of Captain Ahab's missing foot.
We keep hearing whites are too scared to have a "dialogue" on race. It is clear that the fear of said dialogue isn't amongst whites.
I thought we were moving to a time of more free speech and more seeing people as individuals. I think that's how it is in the real world. But the progressives with power seem to have kind of zoomed past that goal and are now trying to turn the tables so we judge white people as a group and view speech as frightening.
In Bebout’s words, this centers around the conviction that “my experience as a white male should be the experience of everybody else, and there is something dysfunctional about them if they don’t see the world in the way that I do.”
A center is a point. Nothing can center around something. It has to center on something.
Why waste time with a Professor who can't use grammar? It could, of course, be the "journalist" mangling words. Where is the Editor?
I agree there is a need to learn how to see outside the walls of the world you live in -- but self-hate classes aren't the way to go, IMO.
And to think, some of these professors wonder why state university funding isn't growing as fast as they'd like. They insult a majority of the people (and Republicans in particular) and then are surprised when the state legislature doesn't want to lavish more money on then. For a group of people who have such a high opinion of their own intelligence, that's pretty dumb.
The problem with all of this is it doesn't give enough credit to the individual experience. Yeah, there may be some amount of ease in being part of a majority group, but individuals still know the hardships they themselves have encountered, the hurtful words they have heard about themselves, the times they didn't get what they wanted. It's very hard to have your own experience and then look around and say, "Oh, but as *a whole* white people have it easier so none of my own experience matters". Humans don't really work like that.
The other problem is it gives the minority groups (and feminists) the mistaken idea that white people (white males?) go through life without hurt, bad words, disappointment, being ignored, etc. That's at the root of all this desire for "safe spaces". They've been taught to think that life is one big safe space for another group, white people (white males?).
It's another political course that starts with the required answers and only then works back toward the questions. As such, it's an intellectual fraud.
Which would be less of a problem if there were some diversity in these political "required answer" courses, and assuming none of them were mandatory. BUT there isn't, and all to often they are.
The agitators just seem to want everyone to be agitated all the time (Barack Obama will make you uncomfortable! -- Michelle Obama). They get pleasure in that, themselves. But I don't want that. I just want to live my life and have us all comfortably getting along.
It's funny (at least to me) to see how dishonest the Left has become at the hallowed ground of the University.
Perhaps, there are too few professors like Dr. Thomas Sowell, who has written extensively about race and culture. He notes that there is a well established field of , "Demographics" - the study of human populations. There is a sub-field, racial and ethnic Demographics.
The numbers are easy to look up.
For example, in France (population 60 Million), the vast majority of people are, well, French. They are mostly white, too - surprise, surprise. They are mosty Catholic. And, they mostly speak, their national language, French. Over the past 10-20 years, immigration has changed this somewhat. QED
If you look at the USA, you see something similar. In 1800, there were 5 Million people in the US, about 80% white. In 1900, 75 Million, about 88% white; in 2000, about 280 Million people, about 75% white.
The black population has been largely stable at 12% for a Century.
The simple point these collegiate idiots can't grasp is that even with the recent influx of Hispanics, the vast majority of the USA remains, largely white - and has always been, and will likely be.
So, Yes, in general, it is difficult to be a minority population in a large country. But that's not a "White" problem. That's a simple numbers problem. The French live in France, the Italians live in Italy, and white Americans live in America.
Althouse wrote: I don't think the Arizona State University has such a requirement, but there is a requirement for undergraduates at my university.
I graduated from UW-Madison in '83. I asked my son recently (who is applying to colleges) whether he applied to Madison.
"Nope."
I'm good with that.
Catalog excerpt, ASU School of Social Justice Studies, 2025 - 2026 academic year:
As the 'white' population of the US ages and shrinks, it will become advantageous to know how best to knock down whitey and take his stuff.
(SJW 102) Confronting Whiteness — Whitey is a tenacious bastard - he doesn't give up the goods easily! Learn better tactics for knocking whitey down and taking his stuff.
(SJW 327) Quietly Keeping Privilege — Of course, we don't mean for good whites – i.e., us – to be inconvenienced. For future leaders, here's a course in instructing other people to knock down whitey - that bad whitey over there - and take his stuff.
(SJW 422) Confronting the Whiteness Within — All of the above too much effort? This course aims to help, by guilting whitey into knocking himself down and giving you his stuff.
I don't really think the prof is pulling any punches here. I don't get why so many seem so mad at her.
The reason for the existence of these kinds of courses, obviously, is the blank check that the guaranteed student loan programs hand over to administrators and professors. The money is there to be harvested, so why not grab it?
Why do these types of courses fill this need?
Teenage kids get to play out psycho-dramas in class. TAs and profs get to feel all 60s nostalgic and sanctimonious. Some of the kids get to play "I'm a nigger, too!" And the entire exercise is a patronage program for the Democratic Party. Jobs for the childless Julias! And they get to Save the World!
A good time is had by all. Songs by Bob Dylan. Sorry kid, but you'll fully understand later on that we tagged you with $100,000 in lifetime debt for the party!
Clown World "professor": It can be challenging to teach the shift in perspective that this theory requires.
AA: That's a red flag: There's a required perspective.
Meade: Is it a particular required perspective or is it the ability to intellectually shift perspectives? The latter, I think.
No, AA is right. The give-away is the word "challenging". It's a favorite of academic quacks. It isn't intellectually "challenging" for a person of normal intelligence to comprehend the "perspectives" of stupid people and shabby hustlers.
Norm Pattis has an interesting perspective on white privilege.
Talking about recent happenings at Missouri and Yale, he says: The events were steeped in the latest rhetorical weapon at hand in debates about distributive justice: privilege. It is a concept wholly at odds with pluralism and respect for persons. It is, indeed, the calling card of the identity politician. Get used to hearing about it; in the not too distant future it will be used to call for race-based taxation, quotas and marginalization of the emerging new minority — Caucasians.
"... writes Yanan Wang in The Washington Post."
Followed by the course on how White People titter at the name "Wang."
Which is unfair because White People often titter about names like 'Johnson.'
And 'Wood.'
And "Dick."
You can probably see the pattern.
I am Laslo.
I'm having post-traumatic flashbacks to my least favorite chapter of Moby Dick.
""At some universities, there are classes dedicated to understanding the notions of whiteness, white supremacy and what the field’s proponents see as the quiet racism of white people," writes Yanan Wang in The Washington Post. "
Under the rules of the left this course should not be allowed to exist. Because its triggering. White people need to no platform any one who attends any such class, and needs to protest on campus until all of these gender studies courses are driven off campus.
And make sure the dean is kicked out for good measure.
Even if white people have white privilege should non white people really tell them about it? Its a white thing, you wouldn't understand. If you don't have a uterus you have no opinion. If you don't have white skin you have no opinion about white people. Just shut up.
It's all a self-completing circle. Universities need to enroll more diversity, and so they enroll students who are especially attracted to the "studies" departments where they get to learn about themselves and how wronged they have been in the history of the US. Those students graduate, and need jobs, so universities require "studies" classes for all students, so they can hire more "studies" professors. The students who take those classes then demand the university hire diversity counselors, and deans of diversity, and more people in charge of monitoring resident life.
MayBee @11/12/15, 8:44 AM
Exactly. Twaddle like "Whiteness Studies" exists as a result of having to hire faculty who have no business being college professors, to service the overflow of students who have no business being in college.
“White supremacy makes it so that white people can’t see the world they have created,” [the professor Lee] Bebout told The Washington Post.
I didn't create the world we live in. How is it that only white skin confers the sins of others upon those who share it?
Paco 11/12/15, 8:23 AM:
Thanks for the belly laugh.
The most racist people in America are blacks, so the biggest bang for the buck in terms of an anti-racist effort is getting black people to change their ways.
White people should know their place.
The other problem is it gives the minority groups (and feminists) the mistaken idea that white people (white males?) go through life without hurt, bad words, disappointment, being ignored, etc. That's at the root of all this desire for "safe spaces". They've been taught to think that life is one big safe space for another group, white people (white males?).
Again, these clowns truly claim to believe that my two sons have MORE advantages in life than Obama's two daughters. They profess to DEEPLY believe this idiotic nonsense.
I didn't create the world we live in. How is it that only white skin confers the sins of others upon those who share it?
Another good question. Why is slavery a sin for whites only? They didn't go to Africa and KIDNAP them. Africans SOLD them. Quite willingly. But it's the buyers who are the only guilty parties, while the sellers should hold far more guilt in the transaction.
It'd be like buying an Apple product. You don't know if it was made by slave labor. But Apple sure as hell knows. And Apple sure as hell doesn't care. Who would blame the buyer for not knowing it was made by slaves while absolving the seller who is quite aware of it?
I'm proud to be a caucasian.
I will not apologize for the culture that my caucasian forebears created, as I think its good overall. The cultural problem in this country is popular culture. And who had a bigger hand in that ?
So White Studies is the kind of crap they teach instead of Western Civilization ?
We need to end universities ASAP.
Who on earth needs to have his "experience validated"? What the fuck does that even mean?
intellectual heft worthy of college-level study
Are we still sure colleges are the best places to study anything with "intellectual heft"? What we are currently witnessing on college campuses, fully promoted by paid staff, is arguably void of all "intellectual heft".
What is it that 'Whites' do that other races/cultures can't? Education? getting married after you have a job, then start a family? show up on time for work? Interestingly some from other races/cultures can do this, so what is missing for those that don't/can't? the desire to improve your life maybe?
Students should take a class on American university privilege. "You have been given the opportunity to attend an American university. In many parts of the world, this is equivalent to winning the lottery. This also represents a tremendous privilege over your American peers who do not have this opportunity. You are the lucky ones..." Etc.
Oh, YES, Freeman!
, and there is something dysfunctional about them if they don’t see the world in the way that I do.
Note that this is the exact opposite of what the Left says about views regarding race, gender, etc. If you don't fully agree with them then you're dysfunctional--in fact dysfunctional is about the nicest thing you will be called.
He's not provocative or controversial. He's antagonistic and hostile. It's kind of rich that such a person wishes to teach racial sensitivity.......I grew up in a housing project and served as an enlisted man in the service. I didn't get my white privilege ration card until very late in life. I believe he got his issued much earlier. Not that it matters. What is referred to as white privilege is 80% American privilege. Even if you're on the bottom of the totem pole here, the totem pole is located on a high hill with a nice view.
Tyrone Slothrop said...
Who on earth needs to have his "experience validated"? What the fuck does that even mean?
It's where you get your experience stamped by a cashier so you don't have to pay for it.
Meade said...Is it a particular required perspective or is it the ability to intellectually shift perspectives? The latter, I think
It depends, Meade, on whether you're making a positive or a normative statement. It SHOULD be that the ability to shift one's perspective is what's important (and what should be taught), sure, but do you think that's actually the case for most students/most courses like this? It's fine to pretend that a course like this is an exercise in intellectual empathy (for lack of a better term), to teach students how to shift perspectives, etc. If that was ALL that was going on, though, that goal could be taught using any number of other historical examples/subject groups. Somehow you always see these courses (and the scholarship apparently only exits) using blacks, women, or some other group the Left identifies as oppressed by whites and/or Westerners (colonized people, etc) as subject matter. That's not just a coincidence.
If the idea was to train students to understand and feel empathy with others in a systematic, rigorous way the courses could just as easily focus on the Jewish experience in the 20th century, or the Holodomor, or the plight of people under the Great Leap Forward, etc. The fact that in US schools you don't see those much--you see courses that just happen to align with the Left's views of race (namely a negative judgment of Western whites) and sex. These aren't perspective-neutral themselves and you don't see much variety in the types of perspectives they follow. It's fine to say that the courses should do X in a way that doesn't enforce a given perspective as "right," but I don't think you can argue that in practice that's what happens.
I would think the privileged "whiteness" that is seen, observed, envied, and disdained by folks on college campuses are magnified by the advantages white administrators and faculty enjoy. Come on. It's cush.
Who from campus is observing the white people on construction crews and in manufacturing shops? Or the lucky white people who get to be cops? Or butchers, bakers, and candlestick makers.
I'm thinking Dr. Melissa Click and her husband Richard Callahan who head the Religious studies department at Mizzou, are both pretty privileged white people. They really don't have to produce shit to make over $100K combined.
How many 'enlightened' married white couples are enjoying the benefits of the tenured University lifestyle? Not everyone can have vegetarian friends.
The Problem of Whiteness: An in depth study in picking up the tab for everyone around you.
According to the "best and brightest", overpopulation is the cause of all evils in this world, including Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming and long lines at coffee shops. Whereas blackness, brownness, yellowness, etc. dictate the choice through mandates, deprivation, etc., "whiteness" rationalizes and promotes women's choice to abort their unwanted or inconvenient babies (i.e. "Posterity") and Planned cannibalism to recycle their parts. The anti-whites are spreading "whiteness" throughout the world, while simultaneously condemning whiteness. How very pro-choice of them.
The Problem of Whiteness: Cultural frustrations augmented by not being able to clap in 4/4 time.
Perhaps it's a cooking class. White meat has low fat content that ensures a dry, bland cut of meat.
A more productive course, and for that reason a better course, would be named "The Problems of Whites."
With the foremost topic being "Black People and the Troubles They Cause."
Wow...just wow.
These white privilege studies are just a false front that reinforce white supremacy. Under the guise of taking Whitey the Man down, Whitey the Man is just growing stronger. A white dude teaching this course at a university is a Fifth Column. Whitey the Man is an evil genius
I don't know about you folks, but all the current racial hysteria on college campuses makes me nostalgic for the rape culture hysteria of last month.
"The cultural problem in this country is popular culture. And who had a bigger hand in that ?"
Hank Williams.
Okay, folks, even by my standards, I'm heading out into the weeds here. Please bear with me.
The problem with the black civil rights movement in the US is that it has stalled, and been stalled, for, oh, about 30 years now. MLK's dream is dead. So, if you're black, the question is: what happened, & how do we get started again? How & why can this process of equal rights be so difficult when the courts & the largest part of society are ostensibly on your side?
In his post-Hegelian Germany, Marx sought to overturn the metaphysical system of the Hegelians with a turn to what he considered to be the positivistic, evidence-based science of economics. In order for "philosophy to walk on its feet & not its head", Marx replaces Spirit as the motive force of history with the forces of Capital. But that means that all the ins & outs of history & culture, Hegel's "Cunning of Reason" has now to be explained as "epiphenomena of the forces of production", a task which repeatedly brought Marxist thinkers to grief in the years to come.
So, now, in the post-Marxist world, there is another social phenomenon that eludes the Left's ability to comprehend, i.e. the continued problems of the 1st world black community. They frame this problem by looking back into their history:
Spirit = Capital
Capital = Racism
Therefore, Spirit = Racism.
For the Identity Left, Racism is a societal force of such elemental power that it, like Spirit or Capital, is the defining force of history. Just as for a Marxist, culture is an epiphenomenon of Capital, for the Identity Left, culture is an epiphenomenon of Racism.
I think this is one of the unspoken foundations of Critical Theory. It's hard to know sometimes because these guys are now much more circumspect about their philosophical foundations. The Left learned the hard way from the French Revolution & Marxism that philosophical honesty just gives your opponents weapons to point out just how strange & bizarre your foundational assumptions are. Post-Modernism now frees them from that burden, so they can now lie through their teeth without feeling guilty about it.
"...the actual course may very well have intellectual heft worthy of college-level study." I could not disagree more; I would consider that indoctrination, not education. (It would be suitable for a book, but given the demand, it would probably need to be self-published.)
More than race relations, which colleges appear to be making worse, the American public needs to be having a discussion on the purpose and structuring of post-secondary education.
The problem with whiteness: some give too much of a shit what others think.
Note please the contrast between the methods and stated aims of courses like "The Problem of Whiteness" and the demands from protesters at Yale and elsewhere. The "Problem" class intends to confront all students, but particularly white ones, with what the instructor sees as uncomfortable truths about "quiet racism" and white supremacy--one of the course's goals is to make white students more aware of their own racism. The course calls white people generally, and white students in particular, racists. Now, that's pretty challenging. That's pretty emotionally difficult. That might even be, you know, traumatic. But none of that is incidental to the course's goal--it's vital that white students have that reaction! In other words one purpose of the course is exactly that, to cause white students to think and feel those things.
The "safe space" proponents, on the other hand, demand that the university shield them from any potentially emotionally traumatic events, even down to hearing someone else call them a name or seeing someone else use a symbol they find racist. These students insist that they must be protected from any potential to feel bad or suffer emotional trauma regarding things like their race.
So is the inside of the classroom a safe space or what? Are safe spaces only for certain students? Why does the very existence of a course that could cause emotional trauma to some students not violate the university's duties to provide a safe space?
@youngHegelian: Thanks for an interesting and well thought out post.
@William,
The problem, William, is that it's often difficult to tell whether one has an interesting & original take on an issue, or if one's medication just isn't working as well as it used to.
The best way I know of to tell the difference is to run it up the flag pole & see who salutes. So, thanks for the vote of confidence!
No doubt racist Ritmo loves courses like this that bash whitey.
@Hoodlum,
Are safe spaces only for certain students?
To formulate the question is to answer it -- Yes, of course, it's only for certain students.
But you knew that...
Thank god I left university after 1995.
mccullough:
There is truth in this observation. Since the most successful cultures and people in the world have adopted "whiteness", it can only be assumed that the motive to denigrate "whiteness" is to secure the benefits of whiteness exclusively for the advocates. Similar to environmentalists who are only concerned about their backyard, mothers who are pro-choice for women's rights, "=" activists who overlook construction of congruences to establish selective exclusion, pro-immigration activists who are anti-native, etc.
They don't want a conversation. They want a platform from which to hector the rest of us. They have their conversation in committee rooms where these things are decided among themselves secretly from the rest of us. They don't *want* to hear from the other side. That is not how these things work. All that could possibly come of conversation is compromise, they do not want compromise, they want power.
That's why they freak about Republican "Dark Money," they are swimming in it and they assume that the other side must be doing the same thing.
I don't have a problem with whiteness, but others do, big time.
The Problem of Whiteness, A Critical Analysis
This course will focus on White Privilege as it affected white United States soldiers during World War II. We will focus on the Normandy Invasion, the Battle of the Bulge, and other major battles fought against the Nazis. Of particular interest will be how participating in these battles reinforced the belief of these men of how privileged they were by the fact of their whiteness.
Those ethnic studies courses are known as easy A's. In fact, all politicized courses are known as easy A's. You just regurgitate what the professor said, you don't have to think at all. It's fun. And fun is what college is all about.
Maybe we need courses in "Shiftlessness" to encourage minority enrollment. Why, yes, I AM fed up with the "Problem of Whiteness" crap Make your own damned antibiotics then.
The reason for all this is that racist leftists are taught that every one of them is a better human being than any conservative. A never ending succession of 15 minute hate sessions will do that. Now, the leftist is aware of his own racist thoughts. For what they are taught to be true, the conservative *must* be more racist than the leftist. No evidence is required, as "dog whistles" can be manufactured without any.
What drove this home for me was losing a friend who told me, with no qualifications, that conservative ideology is inherently racist. This after having heard him go off on the evils of those f'ing jews for at least an hour 4 out of the last 5 times we hung out for dinner. It was so obviously pure projection which he used to exonerate himself from his own intense racism. I believe this phenomenon to be damn near universal among the Left. Everyone is racist because they are racist and they are better than everyone else so they must be the least racist person there is - so of course "racism is everywhere".
Self-hatred is a form of self-flagellation designed to settle a dissonant mind. These immature adults have been indoctrinated into a pro-choice cult established on constructed congruences that are the cause of unreconciled paradoxes. Their naivety prevents them from coping with this chaotic state and instead directs them to turn inward and outward in order to quiet the noise that has corrupted and destabilized their lives. Apparently, promises of wealth, pleasure, and leisure are insufficient to compensate and realize peace of mind.
One cool thing is that if Mexicans ever become the majority whites can then talk about the problem of Hispanics. And can say white is right and white is beautiful and no one can complain.
My daughter was forced to take a freshman year required indoctrination class. Along with about 50 of her fellow engineering students in the 300 person lecture hall, she vocally criticized the lack of logical thought and corrected with facts the statements of the instructor from Day 1.
By Day 10 or so the instructor gave up trying to indoctrinate the class, which had uniformly adopted the position of the engineers - that the class was a load of manure deserving of ridicule only. Films were shown. Lectures became handouts without discussion.
300 freshman survived the indoctrination course, and have been a cancer on that campus ever since.
God bless engineering students who don't give a damn for groupthink, and only care about measurable, objective reality.
"A bit of free advice for self-flagellating white wimps like that professor-"
LOL he's not "self-flagellating" anymore than the Marxists with middle class backgrounds (bourgeois) were self-flagellating. He's a leftist who sees a struggle between White males and POC's and he's on the other side.
no it's even worse. Meadhouse think they're "neutral" laughing at the rest of us.
I hope some art professor makes a class titled The Problem With Whiteness and uses it as a way to investigate negative space and its use in art.
I experienced similar disgust when I heard Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders answer the question, "Do black lives matter or do ALL lives matter?" Of course he immediately gave the politically correct and absurd answer, "Black Lives Matter" and then went on to rationalize this in his answer. Whatever happened to intellectual honesty? I can't support institutionalized stupidity by universities or politicians even if they mean well.
I read through the UW undergraduate requirements and was struck by the absence of any requirement to study any American history. You have to take 3 hours to study marginalized ethnic groups in the US, which is theoretically OK (assuming the course isn't straight out agitprop) but minor field of study, but you don't have to know a damn thing about American history. Or economics. Go figure.
No whiteness (lost) is so white as the memory of whiteness
God bless engineering students who don't give a damn for groupthink, and only care about measurable, objective reality.
Most medical students are that way, too. The feminist trend in medical school is eroding the reality but it is still holding out pretty well.
300 freshman survived the indoctrination course, and have been a cancer on that campus ever since.
More like 300 units of chemo killing the cancer of leftist bullshit.
The Problem of Whiteness: Indentured servants could more easily escape, and permanent indenture lacked appeal.
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