Whiteness studies in United States universities are mainly a historical critique of oppressive ubiquitous “white culture” and how notions like “race” and related constructs came to be. IMO while some of this may be very useful the main take generally seems to be explicit and scathing critiques of white European/American culture that offload a huge load of liberal white guilt wrapped up with an academic syllabus and a reading list. I’m kind of surprised in that I thought this “we’re so bad” hair shirt stuff went out with polyester and disco, but now it’s apparently dressed up and ready for another dance.
She we really be that apologetic for being the descendants of a powerful and successful culture that has shaped the world? Are other cultures morally and ethically superior to ours? Should we feel guilty? Are the sins of white culture so vile?
Black/Hispanic/Women’s etc. studies are celebrations of that culture or perspective. “White Studies” are scathing self-criticism. What other ethnicity or culture would ever have the stones to do this? In a way, doesn’t this ability to formalize as a field of academic study a critique of white culture, really just hammer the nail home that the culture and privilege of “whiteness” is so powerful and arrogant it can afford to indulge in self criticism.
I don’t like Black and Women’s studies either, because it’s mostly stuff people make up, but taught as if it were true. White studies is also unvalidated stuff. It has no place in a university, which should be devoted to knowledge and truth. It’s just not an academic area.
To add insult to injury, students and their parents often make financial sacrifices to be brainwashed in this way.
I wasn’t aware that there were whiteness studies at the university level. Or any other level for that matter. I don’t remember them from my college days and I’ve been out for only 5 short years.
Oh well, after reading the article it doesn’t seem as though this course covers anything I wasn’t already taught in history class. They do seem to put a different slant on things though. I seriously doubt Jefferson invented the concept of race or that it was even invented in the United States.
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Apologetic, no. Though we should be aware of the terrible things men have done to other men over the course of civilization.
Ahh yes, december, the retired white male actuary who knows what college-aged girls want so much more than they do.
If you actually look closely at “studies” programs, there is a lot of criticism. The one thing that you can learn in any liberal arts setting is critical thinking. These programs are not celebrations at all. Instead they are a look at the debates surrounding the topic. Women’s studies classes may look at the debates surrounding pornography, motherhood, etc. I know one Chincano studies book I read focused on how the author tries to reconcile her alliegence to her culture with its problems- machismo, strict gender roles, controlling behavoir. These courses teach people how to think, how to make and convey sound arguments, and how to come to their own conclusions. I think that makes them as valid as any other liberal studies major.
I’ve done some “whiteness” studies as parts of other classes. It is not just a bunch of demonization. Instead, they look at how a “White” identity is constructed, both in life and in the media, and what it means to be White. It’s pretty interesting stuff. I certainly learned new ways of looking at my own whiteness, and it’s always good to see things from a different perspective now and then.
While there may be many legitimate claims against whiteness studies, I don’t find the abolition of whiteness (as a concept) as being all that bad. Race as we practice it in the US originates from an us vs. them ideology which permitted the subjugation of native Americans first and Africans second by European colonists. Whiteness took on a whole new meaning as slavery shaped the nation’s consciousness of what it meant to be human. One product of those times is the infamous “one drop rule”, which even though many people publicly decry as being antiquated and racist, still subconsciously apply it to people of mixed race today.
Discarding the notion of whiteness may be the start to eliminating the usefulness–and political consequences–of all racial labeling. That may be the intent of the people who advocate whiteness studies.
by december:
Care to back up this declaration with cites? Anecdotes, even? How many Black and Women’s studies courses have you sat in? And what gives you the bright idea that your opinion is applicable to all Black and Women’s studies?
I took a black history course. Black people were not celebrated at all. Instead, we looked at how black Americans had been perceived and treated throughout time, and how black Americans responded to their hostile environments. We didn’t even look at their accomplishments; just their constant struggle.
Even in a black history course, we spent the majority of the semester talking about whites’ feelings, whites’ perceptions, whites’ behavior, and whites’ reactions. The class may have well been a whiteness studies course without me even realizing it at the time.
I don’t think you’ve ever taken a black studies course, december, so how can you even talk about stuff being made up? Everything you spout on this board is made up. Give us a break.
Even though I’m not the original poster and you seem to enjoy having an argument all by yourself, I jump in. It’s not even possible to abolish “woman-ness” and I don’t even know what abolishing “hispanic-ness” would even mean, but yes, abolishing “blackness” would be a good thing.
Do you know anything about U.S. history, and how “blackness” was invented? Well, back in the early days of the U.S., a whole class of people where legally enslaved. These people were called, by their enslavers, “Negroes”. Because of their dark skin color, they were said, by their enslavers, to have belonged to a seperate race meant to be dominated by whites. They passed this information onto the Negro slaves, who were until then completely ignorant of the fact that they were black. For two-hundred years, the black-white dichotomy was used to justify slavery, as that was it’s main reason for being invented. Suddenly, slavery ended. But the black-white seperation existed so long and had been so important, that it couldn’t just disappear overnight, and so we still have it today. However, if “blackness” and “whiteness” had never been invented in the first place, maybe we wouldn’t have all these problems today.
In short, blackness was only invented to justify racism, so of course it should be abolished.
I’m perfectly willing to “throw down my sword” when everyone else does. It won’t refer to myself as “black American” if people would cease looking at me like I’m an interloper. The other day, some coworkers remarked that my hair wasn’t “normal” because it shrinks when it’s humid. It didn’t occur to them to think that their concept of normal is “white-people hair”. It didn’t occur to them that it would hurt my feelings to have my hair type called “abnormal”. When people like my coworkers stop looking at others as “abnormal”, I will personally stop acknowledging my difference from the “mainstream”.
When we stop equating “mainstream” with “white”, then there won’t be “blackness” studies anymore. Notions of race will cease to be important. That’s what I believe you with the face was saying.
Why, yes, I am a hypocrite. How wonderful it is that you could deduce that from my post, you brilliant scientist, you.
But seriously, to answer your question, I don’t think doing away with labels will have one iota of an effect on how we treat one another, unless the change goes deeper than names. That’s why I think it has to be a conceptual revolution, and in order to figure out how to go about that, we have to figure out what the concept really is.
One point of view would have it that it doesn’t matter if we abolish blackness or whiteness, the effect would be the same. But I disagree. I do think that if one category needs to be eradicated, it needs to be whiteness. That doesn’t make me a hypocrite. Before launching into a name-calling diatribe, people, please read why I feel this way.
Historically, it has been much more advantageous to be white than black; the former has been something people tend to run to and embrace and the latter has been something people tend to flee from and reject. That’s why you’ll hear stories of light-skinned blacks passing for white, but you’ll never hear stories of dark-skinned whites passing for black. Whiteness, historically, has been a prize. Blackness, historically, has been treated as just the opposite.
So what does this all mean now, in the year 2003? The theory goes that if everyone who is in the prized position of claiming whiteness would call themselves black, then whiteness would eventually lose whatever remaining privilege it has leftover from the slavery days. Subsequently, the stigma of being non-white, too will fade away. This is what some people mean by abolishing whiteness. Frankly, I think that particular idea is way too simplistic to have a place in the real world, but I do agree with the idea that our problem with race in America does not stem so much from “blackness”. It stems from “whiteness” and all the ideas surrounding that concept that divide us as a people.
I’m not december, but he isn’t making up the fact that some of the things taught commonly in Black Studies are fiction.
One of the more common ideas is that Greeks stole all or most of their philosophy from African thinkers. Mary Lefkowitz of Wellesley College published a whole book Not Out of Africa debunking the claims of a Black Studies professor at her own college who claimed that, among other things, Aristotle had gotten his ideas by stealing them from the library at Alexandria. Lefkowitz pointed out that this would be difficult, since the library was not built until after Aristotle’s death. Cite.
Another, more bizarre notion, is that melanin is a psychoactive substance that makes Black people more spiritually aware and athletic. Cite.
Leonard Jeffries, a professor of Black studies at CCNY, teaches a theory that Black people are “sun people” who are naturally more intelligent than whites, who are “ice people”. Cite.
See, the thing is that there are a lot of things that are “commonly taught” that are made up. Making stuff up is something academics do quite well. There are also more than than a few professors teaching black studies courses in the US. Jeffries happens to be the most controversial, but he shouldn’t be held up as a type specimen of anything, let alone an academic.
Nothing I learned in my black history class was made up. My experience is anedoctal, but citing it is no less valid than pointing to a couple of examples and using them to generalize about an entire discipline of study. If december came to his conclusion after having taken a black studies course, then I’d be willing to cut him slack. But I know he hasn’t. So like always, he’s talking from what he’s read about than what he actually knows to be true.
You are contradicting yourself more than once here, monstro.
You claim that lots of things that are “commonly taught” are made up. But you also assert that nothing in your black studies class was “made up”. Why is fiction so common everywhere else, but you are quite sure (despite the examples cited) that none of what you were taught is imaginary?
Again, “making stuff up is something academics do quite well”, but Jeffries, who made lots of things up and is an academic, should not be taken as representative of black studies academics. Why is that?
Your anecdotal experience, based on one example (your black studies class) should be taken as valid. But the three examples cited cannot be taken as such, because neither december (AFAIK) or I (certainly) have ever taken a black studies class. Why is that? Since we seem to have established that, despite your confidence, we cannot be sure that everything in your black studies class was really true, why is the experience of being in the class so definitive of reality?
I disagree with the notion that no one who has not taken a black studies course can object to the instances where it lacks intellectual rigor. I know rather little about Black studies. (Actually, that would depend on how you define the term. I took a “Black IQ Test” in my educational psychology class back in college, and, in a class that was perhaps 20% non-white, I got the highest grade in the class.) But I know something about history, and something more about logic, and the idea of someone stealing ideas out of a library that didn’t exist until long after he was dead is not an idea you can base a course on.
I’m not december, but he isn’t making up the fact that some of the things taught commonly in Black Studies are fiction.
Shodan, your cites in no way support your claims. The theories you’ve mentioned are simply not part of black studies curricula at University of Wisconsin, Harvard, or UCLA - some of the leading black studies programs in the country. You just don’t know anything about black studies.
When you approach black issues, you tend to make arguments from ignorance. Entertaining, but hardly enlightening.
Claiming that Leonard Jeffries represents all black studies, or that his views are commonly held in black studies programs, is akin to claiming that Phillippe Rushton represents all evolutionary biologists, or that Michael Levin represents all philosophy professors.
You take the most extreme, absurd ideas in a field of thought, use those exteme ideas to characterize the entire field, and then dismiss the field entirely.
How is this a contradiction? Isn’t it possible that monstro took a black studies course that very well corroborated with reputable history texts, thus indicating the information presented was not fabricated by the professor? How do you know that anything you’ve learned is not false?
I think monstro took issue with december’s broad-brush condemnation of all black and women’s studies, as if the presence of a few questionable academicians justifies maligning two whole disciplines.
For the same reason that picking one fradulent physician out of the whole population of physicians and saying that he typifies the whole profession is wrong. Remember that december did not imply that some black studies professors were crocks; he implied that the whole thing is a crock.
Well, before criticizing a whole discipline (oops, make that two disciplines), it would help your case if you actually have first-hand experience with some black studies curriculum. It is not enough to do google searches and pluck excerpts out of anti-black studies websites. If you’ve never taken a class or had a chance to critically review the information presented in your average black studies course, how can you say it’s “made-up”, across the board? Maybe some classes at some schools are taught by professors with political perogatives that outweigh their educational ones, but that may not be the case in most classes at most schools. And in thoses cases, it wouldn’t be the fault of the curriculum so much as the fault of the professors.
Sorry, Shodan, but it is apparent in this thread that you know little about logic if you see nothing logically wrong with december’s comment.
I’m sure if I felt hot and bothered enough to do a search, I could find instances where professors of “mainstream” subjects had taught something as equally made up as Leonard Jeffries. But I wouldn’t use these instances to defame those subjects.
I don’t think my history course was unusual among history courses or black studies courses. If there were “made up” things in it, they were either too subtle to be detected by my radar, or they coincided with the other “made up” things I had learned from other more “mainstream” history courses.
It sure doesn’t help someone’s stance when they argue against black studies courses without ever setting foot in a single lecture or ever opening a textbook written by an academic in the field. When his or her only experience is not first-hand, but second or third-hand, then yes I will roll my eyes. Being familiar with the big controversial stories does not mean that much to me. (I don’t consider myself an expert either, but then again I’m not using my anecdotal experience to generalize about black studies either).
If people in other countries based their judgments of the US based only on the horrible stories they see on the news, a normal person wouldn’t take their arguments about the US very seriously. That’s how I feel about this issue.
