For John, BLUF: Those pushing "White Supremacy" as the key to unlocking the secrets of society have a narrow view of society and of history. Nothing to see here; just move along.
From The American Conservative, by Commentator Rod Dreher, 8 April 2021, 7:51 PM.
Here is the lede plus one:
Writing at Yahoo! News, Prof. Jennifer Ho, president of the Association of Asian American Studies and a faculty member at the University of Colorado Boulder, would like you to know that when black people attack Asians, it’s really white people’s fault:This makes everything the fault of Caucasian males of European origin. That they represent a culture is not relevant. It is the wrong culture. However, it is a serious question to ask, if Admiral Zheng He had sailed East, rather than West, in 1405, would the West still be the wrong culture, or would it be an oppressed minority under the colonial thumb of another culture?The point I’ve made through all of those experiences is that anti-Asian racism has the same source as anti-Black racism: white supremacy. So when a Black person attacks an Asian person, the encounter is fueled perhaps by racism, but very specifically by white supremacy. White supremacy does not require a white person to perpetuate it.
Later in the article is this summation of the state of academia.
This is what totalitarians do: they destroy the cultural memories of a people in order to make them easier to control. It is gobsmacking that the gatekeepers and guardians of educational institutions are capitulating in the destruction of the institutions they have been charged with defending.Perhaps, as we broaden our knowledge of other cultures, and of world history, we will come to appreciate what contributions Western Cukture has made.Why would anyone want to go into academics today? Serious question. I keep saying it over and over, and maybe somebody will believe me and act: all those who want to save the humanities in this Dark Age had better stop trying to shore up this rotten imperium, and instead start building the equivalent of early medieval monasteries: communities within which knowledge and traditional academic practices can survive this barbarian epoch. I’m not exaggerating. It’s that serious.
Perhaps we will come to realize the Declaration of independence promised more than mere mortals could deliver all at once, but that it was a framework for overcoming our own narrow views and for making it a better world.
Regards — Cliff
Here in the USA, the founding fathers believed that all of mankind is created equal. A lesser well-known fact is that they also believed that only educated citizens could preserve the nation's democracy. In silent support of that belief, our nations university and community colleges are open to all who gain admission and who have secured the funds to attend. Specifically it is not the case that a bright high school student who perhaps blossomed later in their teenage years has been relegated to a demographic group designed as not-suitable college-level material. Sadly, most every other nation on the planet has at least this two-cast educational framework in place. The USA cannot effectively export democracy which necessarily relies upon the tenet that all of mankind is created equal until we can export the equal access university level education to the remaining nations on the planet. Consider an individual who is a man or woman from some non-USA country who has the drive and the intellectual skill sets, to include sufficiently high prior grades, needed to thrive at one of his or her nation's institutions of higher learning, and who has gone to the lengths needed to secure the financial funding to privately pay for a Bachelor's degree level education. Now suppose that this person has received letters from every institution of higher learning in their nation which declines them from admission to the school simply because of some middle or high school teacher's remark written in their educational file which is the equivalent of "not university material". Lastly, project yourself into this human's place--would you feel that you were created equal to all the other nationals in your country who were accepted to at least one school, regardless if this other individual attended said school or not? Probably not...the stratified academic access levels which exist in other nations on the globe will always and actively hinder our efforts to export the version of democracy which has made this nation so great. This author's criticisms of the discriminatory actions at school of higher learning in our nation, therefore cause me a great deal of concern. Equal access to higher-levels of education (not also implying cost free access!) is both necessary and sufficient for the success of our nation's type of democracy, premised on all mankind are created equal, whether realized at home or abroad depends on US.
ReplyDeleteI truly wish rather that than stating only "Black lives matter", that the African American community had been more inclusive and more grassroots-minded and had instead stated "Human lives matter". Perhaps being more inclusive would generate more financial support. From a racial perspective folks, I am totally color blind! All I perceive is the universality of the fact that all humans can bleed; all humans do at times hurt; that all humans can choose to love; and lastly, that all of mankind has the capacity to be kind to one another.