{"id":1831,"date":"2018-03-01T09:16:03","date_gmt":"2018-03-01T14:16:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/?p=1831"},"modified":"2018-03-01T09:16:03","modified_gmt":"2018-03-01T14:16:03","slug":"academia-reason-promotes-white-heterosexual-male-privilege","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2018\/03\/academia-reason-promotes-white-heterosexual-male-privilege.html","title":{"rendered":"Academia: Reason Promotes White Heterosexual Male Privilege"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over 50 years ago, Susan Sontag infamously declared: \u201cThe white race is the cancer of human history.\u201d\u00a0 Sontag explained that \u201cit is the white race and it alone\u2014its ideologies and inventions\u2014which eradicates autonomous civilizations wherever it spreads, which has upset the ecological balance of the planet, [and] which now threatens the very existence of life itself.\u201d<\/p>\n

America, \u201cthe culmination of Western civilization,\u201d alone suffices to prove that \u201cthere must be something terribly wrong with\u201d it.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe truth is that Mozart, Pascal, Boolean algebra, Shakespeare, parliamentary government, baroque churches, Newton, the emancipation of women, Kant, Marx, Balanchine ballets, et al., don\u2019t redeem what this particular civilization has wrought upon the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since Sontag made her remarks, the left, particularly in academia, has become even more opposed to the West.\u00a0 At least Sontag could be read as suggesting that Mozart, Pascal, and so forth may be notable exceptions to the rule of Western depravity.\u00a0 In contrast, what all too many contemporary academics maintain is that those ideas that have served to distinguish the West from the rest, ideas such as a common humanity, individualism, and the ideal of \u201ccolor-blindness,\u201d say, along with the disciplines of philosophy, mathematics, and literature, are themselves weapons of white, Christian, masculine bourgeois repression.<\/p>\n

Another American philosopher, the late Iris Marion Young, goes even further to expressly renounce the ideal of a shared humanity transcending differences of race, gender, religion, and so forth.\u00a0 Such an ideal, she insists, has \u201coppressive consequences [.]\u201d<\/p>\n

The problem, as Young sees it, is that currently, in the West, \u201cthe privileged groups implicitly define the standards according to which all will be measured.\u201d This is \u201coppressive\u201d because, insofar as \u201ctheir privilege\u201d prevents them from \u201crecognizing these standards as culturally and experientially specific, the ideal of a common humanity in which all can participate without regard to race, gender, religion, or sexuality poses as neutral and universal.\u201d<\/p>\n

In other words, this ideal of \u201ca common humanity,\u201d being the product of the \u201cdominant culture,\u201d is actually \u201cAnglo, European, Christian, masculine, straight.\u201d<\/p>\n

Young\u2019s thought is representative of the Critical Race Theory (CRT) wing of the postmodern academy.\u00a0 Will Oremus, writing<\/a> in the popular left-wing publication, Slate, <\/em>accurately characterizes the CRT perspective: \u201cClassical liberal ideals such as meritocracy, equal opportunity, and colorblind justice\u2026actually served the white elite by cloaking and reinforcing society\u2019s deep structural inequalities.\u201d<\/p>\n

In other words, as the title of one particularly popular text on Critical Race theory reveals, proponents of CRT, or \u201ccrits,\u201d obsess over \u201cracism without racists.\u201d<\/p>\n

Oremus notes that the term \u201ccritical race theory\u201d was a \u201ctakeoff\u201d of \u201ccritical legal theory.\u201d The latter is \u201ca branch of legal scholarship that challenges the validity of concepts such as rationality, objective truth, and judicial neutrality.\u201d Yet critical legal theory was in turn taken from \u201ccritical theory,\u201d \u201ca philosophical framework with roots in Marxist thought.\u201d<\/p>\n

Oremus is also correct in pointing out that CRT \u201cis widely taught and studied, not only in law but in sociology, education, and other fields.\u201d<\/p>\n

More recently, Rochelle Gutierrez, a professor of mathematics education at the University of Illinois, wrote<\/a> that even something as apparently universal, as race and gender-neutral, and as apolitical as mathematics is, in effect, a species of racial politics.\u00a0 \u201cOn many levels,\u201d Gutierrez claims, \u201cmathematics itself operates as Whiteness.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mathematics facilitates \u201cWhiteness\u201d insofar as\u00a0 who \u201cgets credit for doing and developing mathematics, who is capable in mathematics, and who is seen as part of the mathematical community is generally viewed as White.\u201d\u00a0 For instance, \u201cmathematics curricula\u201d in schools \u201cemphasizing terms like Pythagorean theorem and pi perpetuate a perception that mathematics was largely developed by Greeks and other Europeans.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet even \u201cmore importantly, mathematics operates with unearned privilege in society, just like Whiteness.\u201d<\/p>\n

What Gutierrez means by this is that mathematics \u201cis viewed as so pure that it has become the discipline by which we measure other disciplines.\u201d \u00a0Due to \u201cits perceived purity, we assume mathematics should be the basis for how we think about the world and what is important.\u201d Thus, math \u201coperates as a proxy for intelligence.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mathematics is treated \u201cas if it is a natural reflection of the universe,\u201d a realm that \u201coccurs outside of human influence\u201d and that is a way of \u201cencoding the universe with eternal truths, a natural order of things that should not be questioned.\u201d<\/p>\n

Due to this popular conception of mathematics, the latter \u201cis viewed as a version of the world that is proper, separate from humans, where no emotions or agendas take place.\u201d<\/p>\n

And what is true of mathematics is equally true of Gutierrez calls \u201cWhiteness.\u201d<\/p>\n

So, it isn\u2019t just that the teaching <\/em>of mathematics is \u201cpolitical.\u201d\u00a0 Mathematics as a discipline <\/em>is political, for in multiple ways, \u201cknowledge, power, and identity are interwoven with mathematics [.]\u201d<\/p>\n

Mathematics is inescapably political, the \u201ceffects\u201d it has are \u201clasting.\u201d\u00a0 \u201cSo many people are walking around in society who have experienced trauma, microaggressions from participating in math classrooms where the idea of being a successful person, being an intelligent person, is removing oneself from the context, not involving emotions, not involving the body, and being judged by whether one can reason abstractly.\u201d<\/p>\n

As far as Gutierrez is concerned, \u201call knowledge is relational.<\/em>\u201d Knowledge is not \u201cobjective\u201d but, rather, \u201csubjective.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gutierrez\u2019s view is representative of the contemporary academy.\u00a0 In an abstract<\/a> of her essay, Donna Riley, a professor of engineering education at Purdue University, contends that in the fields of \u201cengineering, engineering education, and engineering education research,\u201d the very notion of academic \u201crigor\u201d\u2014\u201cthe aspirational quality academics apply to disciplinary standards of quality\u201d\u2014is the cause of \u201cdirty deeds.\u201d<\/p>\n

These \u201cdirty deeds\u201d are the activities of \u201cdisciplining, demarcating boundaries, and demonstrating\u201d\u2014what else?\u2014\u201cwhite male heterosexual privilege.<\/em>\u201d (italics added).<\/p>\n

The concept of rigor, hence, must be \u201crelinquished\u201d so that \u201cwe can welcome other ways of knowing\u201d and \u201cways of being\u201d and form a \u201ccommunity for inclusive and holistic engineering education.\u201d<\/p>\n

Not incidentally, the journal in which Riley\u2019s essay appears has featured articles with titles like: \u201cHydrocracies, Engineers and Power: Questioning Masculinities in Water;\u201d \u201cThe Perilous Whiteness of Pumpkins;\u201d \u201cCivility and White Institutional Presence: An Exploration of White Students\u2019 Understanding of Race-Talk at a Traditionally White Institution;\u201d and \u201cIntroduction: Blackness as Method.\u201d<\/p>\n

From the vantage of the hard academic left, reason is nothing more or less than a smokescreen designed to facilitate the power <\/em>or \u201chegemony\u201d of what it perceives as the \u201cdominant class\u201d of white, heterosexual, Christian men.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over 50 years ago, Susan Sontag infamously declared: \u201cThe white race is the cancer of human history.\u201d\u00a0 Sontag explained that \u201cit is the white race and it alone\u2014its ideologies and inventions\u2014which eradicates autonomous civilizations wherever it spreads, which has upset the ecological balance of the planet, [and] which now threatens the very existence of life…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1831","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nAcademia: Reason Promotes White Heterosexual Male Privilege<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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