Whiteness Studies
Posted: Sun Aug 06, 2006 7:21 am
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.
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.
