Posted on 11/20/2015 4:33:55 PM PST by Altura Ct.
A student at Columbia University is urging the school to inject more diversity into its required courses, claiming she suffered severe emotional trauma from reading too many books by and about white people.
Columbia students and faculty gathered Wednesday night for a panel discussion on âRace, Ethnicity, and University Life.â According to the Columbia Daily Spectator, much of the commentary revolved around the idea that minorities on campus simply spend too much time being traumatized by the white-centric content of their classes.
One of the panelists at the event was black Columbia student Nissy Aya. Aya was supposed to graduate in 2014, but instead is only on track to receive her degree in 2016. That, Aya says, demonstrates âhow hard it has been for me to get through this institution,â though itâs worth noting she is an exceptional case, as Columbia has one of the highest four-year graduation rates in the country.
Aya attributed some of her academic troubles to the trauma of having to take Columbiaâs current Core Curriculum, which requires students to take a series of six classes with a focus on the culture and history of Western, European civilization. Aya says this focus on the West was highly mentally stressful for her.
âItâs traumatizing to sit in Core classes,â she said. âWe are looking at history through the lens of these powerful, white men. I have no power or agency as a black woman, so where do I fit in?â
As an example, Aya cited her art class, where she complained that Congolese artwork was repeatedly characterized as âprimitive.â She wanted to object to that characterization but, in the Spectatorâs words, was âtired of already having worked that day to address so many other instances of racism and discrimination.â
Roosevelt Montás, Columbiaâs associate dean for the Core Curriculum, didnât exactly offer a spirited defense, instead saying Aya was showing the troubling racism that may lurk inside the Core.
âYou cannot grow up in a society without assimilating racist views,â he said, according to the Spectator. âPart of what is exciting about this conversation is that itâs issuing accountability for us to look within ourselves and try to understand the way that racism shapes how we see the world and our institutions.â
This isnât the first time students have complained about the mental anguish of studying the Western canon. Last spring, four students published an editorial for the Spectator complaining that a student was triggered by having to read Ovid, and proposed replacing his offensive works with those of Toni Morrison.
Perhaps she should go to a historically black college since Columbia is too full of triggers for her
Racist academic with a chip on her shoulder against history.
They tried to bury the texts of ‘dead white men’ in the 90s too.
No doubt
How about reading books on great scientific discoveries from Africa? or how the Arabic world has advanced civilization.
Should have stayed in her role as a baby factory.
A SJW's work is never over.
I’m hoping that liberal looniness we are seeing is a last gasp of the far left. I think they see that there will not be a far left loon in the Oval Office for a long time and are trying to get it all out now..
What a light weight! Rap music give me trama!
Just Damn....
So, now it is Whitey’s turn to be victimized not on the content of their character but, by the color of their skin...
She looked at it.
I’m sure that Sissy, or Missy, or whatever and other black racists are going to have a fine time reading the great works of Black Africans going back 500-1,000 years.
Oh, one problem. I don’t think there are any because:
*they had no writing systems
*they were unable to print books even if they had a writing system
*the Egyptians essentially invented the Papyrus materials to record their language/writing thousands of years before Black Africans first learned how to write anything.
*there were no great works by Black Africans. A few who migrated to Egypt, Greece, and Moslem countries, may have written good works but in Arabic or Greek, not Swahili, Yoruba, Kish, Bameleke, Bushmen Click language, etc.
I guess Sissy/Missy didn’t take the right classes at Columbia, or perhaps she did but was such an uptight racist that she didn’t bother to read a history book about Black Africa and how unproductive is was before the bad white man introduced written languages, paper, printing, real schools, pencils/pens, and a transnational perspective on life.
Perhaps the best movie on how a Black African perceives and can’t understand the Western world, or one of its products, is “The Gods Must Be Crazy”. He was a Bushman and the white man’s technology befuddled him and scared him. This little satire is a gem of a movie to enjoy on the stark differences in the various civilizations of the world.
Sissy, I took a lot of Anthropology courses at both the undergraduate and graduate level on world cultures (Subsharan Africa, Latin America, Southeast Asia, Indigenous Siberians from Ob Ugrians to Reindeer Chukchi), etc.
Black Africa’s contributions to world learning (i.e. printing, writing, books, etc). was literal non-existent until the arrival of the White Man.
All you have to do is to look around much of Sub-Saharan Africa and see how many multi-storied buildings there were before the introduction of steel. Most buildings were of mud/brick and some sandstone because the metallurgy knowledge necessary to make steel didn’t exist in Black Africa (there was some basic knowledge re smelting of various ores (copper, iron) but not on an industrial level. Without steel, you cannot make structurally sound buildings beyond two stories. Exception might be the sandstone buildings at Mesa Verde, made by American Indians).
Sissy, spend those two extras years at Columbia learning something useful instead of being afraid of the Big Bad White Boogey Man (who is probably you teacher, anyway).
Columbia University is the birthplace of Cultural Marxism in the U.S. education system. A good history on how it was born http://www.academia.org/the-origins-of-political-correctness/
Looks to me that she just can’t cut it in college and is using this as an excuse. And if you took her complaint about having to read too many books by and about white people and changed “white” to “black”, you would be condemned as the worst kind of racist.
She is incompetent and a racist. She probably has a bright future in today’s America.
“...claiming she suffered severe emotional trauma from reading too many books by and about white people.”
Seems mental illness is much higher among students at Ivy League colleges.
I’m traumatized every time I hear “dial 1 for English.*
Good. Write more about white people.
Hype.
He is given credit for inventing peanut butter, but in fact it wasn't him. He was a great man and did make some contributions to agriculture, but he's given a lot more credit than a white man would have gotten for the same work.
He is a far cry from Da Vinci.
She'd have a tough time in Africa too. Judging from the Africans I have met, they are quite a bit like the Chinese in terms of seeing what Asia has accomplished over the last 15 years, and saying why not us? There are a lot of Nigerians getting advanced degrees in the US and other countries. The African economy is growing thanks to partnerships with Asia. #BlackLivesMatter people wouldn't fit in with an entrepreneurial culture that is developing there. About all they could get is some UN NGO charity work or something. But they wouldn't go there and step into the front of the line.
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