Whiteness Studies

Me too, Boo.

Booman, You are allowed to use wet noodles for your fight. c.i.

I guess the reason i said earlier that this course seems silly to me is that i would consider it an abdication of responsibility for these students not to have been taught the truth about Jefferson and his slaves, and his attitudes toward them. He understood the irony of his position, and removed the slave from his life as much as possible. Go to Monticello sometime, it's an eye-opener. There is a very long passageway cut into the earth under the lawn, so that the slaves from the kitchen and stables who went to fetch water would not spoil the view by crossing the lawn. The kitchens are in the basement, and there is a dumb waiter to bring the food to the dining room, where the white servants could serve it to guests. He devised an automatic opening door so that no slave would appear in the house; storm windows, so that no slave need appear to put up the shutters. The man was pathological. If this sort of thing were taught properly in history courses, then the need for such "whiteness studies" would not arise. Charles Cotesworth Pinckney made it his crusade at the constitutional convention to protect slavery. When George Washington determined from an objective view of how his estate worked, that slavery were inefficient, as well as unjust, he hired labor--white and black--and then determined to educate his and Martha's slaves (the estate whereby Martha inherited on behalf of her children was entailed, meaning the George could not alienate [i.e., sell] any part of it) so that they could persue trades, and might be manumitted (freed) to seek their livelihoods in northern colonies. The Burgesses immediately passed an act to make it illegal to educate a slave, because they knew the effect of George's great influence (this was before the revolution, and he was already a highly respected figure in Virginia). Every move by George to find an equitable means of ridding the estates (his and Martha's) of the curse of slave labor, while providing decently for the slaves, was balked by statute. His estate, in the end, paid pensions to the slaves of his and Martha's estates until 1832, more than a generation after his death.

If students learned these sorts of things in the normal course of their history education, and discussed them in those courses, following a path from the introduction of slavery by the English in 1609 through to the death of Malcolm X in 1965, and that of Martin Luther King in 1968, they might develop the necessary perspective to understand the tortured history of race relations in this country--and to understand that the problem has not been resolved.

Setanta
Top notch. Couldn't have been said better.

Harking back to earlier posts re "godless, and "ethnic";

It seems Boom..; you are using the wrong dictionary; I quote from "Oxford" (that's where your language originally came from):
ethnic adj. 1 having to do with a group of people who have a common national or cultural tradition. 2 refering to origin by birth rather than by present nationality: ethnic Albanians. 3 belonging to a non-Western cultural tradition.

And as for "godless/heathen", that's where all this came from in the first place. Go back, way back to tribal groups in our "cradel" Africa.
Neighbouring tribes had to come up with some reason to hate all their neighbours, to avoid having to share all their local wealth; their crops, their water, their caves, their females,...... but since they were all virtually the same it was hard to come up with any "ironclad" reason.
Then some bright witch doctor hit on it; of course, we hate them because their "spirits" are different; since only our spirits are powerful and reliable, theirs must be evil and dangerous, so we must hate them.
And we never got over it!

Setanta -So... you're saying you think these studies are silly because the schools have "abdicated" their responsibilities to teach them as a matter of normal course? I mean, its easy to say "If they did it right, this would not be necessary." But the fact is, it wasn't and isn't being taught (and I need to talk to you to clarify whether or not you are trying to say George Washington was an abolitionist) as a matter of normal curriculum. Far from it, when to some this is considered at best revisionism, and at worst, heresy.

Anyone who would claim, Snood, that this is revisionism is playing that tired old reactionary game of turning the valid charges of a critic back upon the object of the criticism. These things have been known forever. I lived in Virginia as a child, and visited Monticello while still an adolescent--they freely told of Jefferson's many innovations which obviated the need to have slaves appear before his guilty eyes. As for Washington as an abolitionist, that would be problematic, because there would be no written record to justify the claim. There is ample written record however, that he saw slave labor as ruinously inefficient (based upon an assumption of a life responsibility for the slave, and that he assumed such can also be found in his correspondence), and that he wished to rid his estate of the burden of supporting slaves, when it could function profitably on hired labor. He hired blacks and whites. I am not trying to sanctify the man. He used to complain in his letters about the number of negroes who were sent to him by state recruiters in response to Congressional quotas for recruitment. As well, given his experience in the French and Indian war, he hated and mistrusted Indians--when the Iroquois confederation, principally the Mohawks, sided with the British, he sent Sullivan to destroy them. They managed to escape, largely, and reside in Canada to this day. I'm not trying to whitewash George (pun intended), just to point to some of the history, which, if it is not being taught as it can be shown through documents long known, and studied, represents an abdication of the responsibility of the educational system. Any grammar school which teaches about Jefferson as a statesman (please, i'm going to be ill) needs to teach about Jefferson the slave owner, about the "Africanophobe."

I've been reading and re-reading this thread, and I've re-thought some things. I think whiteness classes are a good idea - depending on how they're taught.

Racism is an issue that is brought up all the time in many different ways. So many whites, claiming that some of their best friends are black. (almost as good as the Jews, here.) Pointing out all the ways in which things have improved - look, no more drinking fountains for whites only. Yet, the story of Tulia is today, and continues. Colin Powell gets touted as an example of the Bush blind eye.

We can't pretend that it doesn't exist. It does, and may always. Maybe it's simply inherent in human nature that one feel superior to another one. If everybody were coffee-colored, there would always be a distinction among the colors. So if a class teaches that this does exist, and gets students to recognize this, then it's step one. Next would be lessons in harmony. You don't always have to intermingle, but you do have to respect equality among people. And the equality should be taught in terms of intelligence, of creativity, that the insides are the important parts.

Ethnicity is used all the time - discussions about the black vote, the Jewish vote, the hockey moms (translate that to white protestant). And that perpetuates the idea. I guess I'd look upon whiteness classes as awareness classes.

I am in favor of the classes. Particularly in states like Texas, where I happen to live.

Setanta-
Well, we agree that they should teach history from a less ethno(euro)centric perspective, and we agree that they don't. I just got a little lost as to your reasoning that these classes are "silly", when remedial learning is all that's left for those who've long since lost their innocent impressionability.

mamaj, I would only extend that to "awareness" class for everybody. c.i.

I suppose i could be charged, Snood, with being naive about what has been taught as history in the many, many years since i left school. I had a very, very racist history teacher in high school, which taught me a great deal about the tortured reasoning of the racist--as for the history, i knew it already by the time i got to high school. I confess a complete ignorance about what is taught as history in secondary schools. If it does not include an examination of "race relations" (clearly, a euphemism), then it's bankrupt teaching methodology.

I think the classes needed, are "Real History 101"

Thanks for the good thoughts folks. I know everyone has problems, I was just afraid my sheilds were down. Ah,ah...that's enough about me now. :wink:

Bojowo,....Since we won the war, shouldn't our dictionary be the correct one?

Oh yeah,...one more thing.....I'm sure, you all know, that bare-foot folk, and witch doctors aside, Africa had advanced civilizations, universities, etc.while Europeons were in caves, right?

I totally failed on the recognize-the-asian-identity test - "Very bad - Obviously you can't tell the difference."

Course this is pretty logical since we have a lot of Chinese here but hardly any Japanese, let alone Koreans - only Japanese and Koreans ive known were exchange or summer school students or holidayers.

But thats exactly the background of something i caught myself at - so the test totally did its work, cause it confronted me with my instinctive prejudices. Like I said, the Japanese and Koreans I've met were almost all students, and students on an overseas adventure at that. Whereas most of the Chinese I see, barring the odd colleague, are random faces in the supermarket or at the Chinese take-away - such is life.

So what I now caught myself doing, forcing myself not to think twice before picking the answer, is identifying all the hip- and alternative looking ones as Japanese or possibly Korean, and all the regular-Joe looking ones as Chinese. Whereas, of course, half the time it was the other way round.

Asked to identify by group, I interpolated from the selection I knew of that group, without thinking twice about what constituted that selection. Well, I did think twice, otherwise I wouldnt be posting this, but still, that instinct was pretty strong. Anyways. Interesting.

nimh, I'm third generation Japanese American, and I have difficulty with the far eastern Asian races, and sometimes even Eskimos. Don't even try any more. c.i.

My score was 11.

What criteria did you use? I didn't look at style or hair...I was looking at facial features--and even then I didn't really know what I was looking for.

For some vague reason, I think of Chinese people as having lighter, clearer skin, and more heavily-lidded eyes. Japanese people with a darker complexion generally, and more "Westernized features" and I don't know what the hell to make of Koreans.

Needless to say, I only got 7 right--and I think it was just luck.

I got a 8? That's funny! c.i.

It's quite easy, IMO, to differentiate between Chinese, Japanese and Koreans. But that test intentionally avoids the typical looks of the three nationalities.

Well, I have re-read this thread and find myself feeling rather depressed. It seems people are unwilling or unable to address the heart of the issue. To me, it's just plain obvious that racism is so ingrained in every aspect of life in the United States that people are actually not able to remain on topic and delve deeper into this very hurtful subject. I don't want to gross everyone out, but "I feel your pain" seems most apt each time I read one of Snood's or Booman's posts; I realize Snood sometimes appears cloaked in intellectualism and Booman generally adds a touch of humor; but I feel the underlying emotions both must have would be enough to send me into a corner to cry. Perhaps I am over-identifying because I feel my ethnicity (Jewish) has suffered in similar ways, I don't know, that probably plays a part, but I'd like to believe that I would be affected as much by this thread even if I were a white, anglo-saxon protestant, to coin a phrase.