Teacher: I Don’t Teach Shakespeare Because He’s White

The Washington Post has published a guest article by a California teacher arguing that American high school students shouldn’t read Shakespeare because he’s a dead, white man.

Dana Dusbiber, who teaches English in Sacramento, says she avoids Hamlet and all the rest because her minority students shouldn’t be expected to study a “a long-dead, British guy” (Dusbiber herself is white). And while Shakespeare is widely regarded as the premier writer of the English language, able to timelessly portray themes central to the human experience, Dusbiber says he only is regarded that way because “some white people” ordained it and he can easily be replaced.

“Why not teach the oral tradition out of Africa, which includes an equally relevant commentary on human behavior?” She suggests. “Why not teach translations of early writings or oral storytelling from Latin America or Southeast Asia other parts of the world? Many, many of our students come from these languages and traditions … perhaps we no longer have the time to study the Western canon that so many of us know and hold dear.”

To bolster her case for dumping the Bard, Dusbiber says that minority students, like those who dominate her own classroom, deserve to study their own cultures rather than being exposed to “Eurocentrism.” But at the same time, she takes the exact opposite position for whites, saying school should be a place for them to explore cultures other than their own.

Another self-hating white liberal/leftist.

From what I’ve heard that she said, (esp. if her heritage is German, or by marriage), she would have made a great “Good German”, cleansing the literature and music of all Jewish influence because they were white, submenschens.

I hope her new job is picking up the bone fragments of the million victims of the Nazis, off the ground, at Auschwitz.

I saw the wonderful black actor Avery Brooks (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) do the character “Othello” in Shakespeare’s play of the same name.

It was done in traditional Shakespearean language.

He gave one of the best presentations of Othello’s soliloquys and the final monologue (as he is going crazy) ever.

Even the black communist Paul Robeson was a great Shakespearean actor. Other famous actors who did Shakespeare ( as required in the British classical theatre training) including the recently deceased Christopher Lee, Jeremy Bullock (Star Trek’s Bobba Fett), Mel Gibson, Laurence Olivier, etc.

Other great British writers of good English include Marlowe, Chaucer, Ben Johnson, Jonathan Swift (Gulliver’s Travels), etc.

All great black American writers wrote in English, be it Shakespearean in style, or deep southern Negro dialects. Langston Hughes, Toni Morrison, WEB DuBois, Dunbar, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. all wrote and spoke English, not Ebonics, Hip-Hop Rap, or gangster.

Their works, as well as those of Shakespeare, Marlowe, etc., were meant for “the people” to enjoy as well as the upper crust. That is why it is so crucial that inner-city whites and blacks, and now Hispanics, learn to enjoy them as well as Cervantes, Marques, etc.

English is the great equalizer of language, which is why America became so great as a nation. We all learned from the same books, spoke the same language despite our ethnic origins or racial backgrounds, and made it an universal tongue (I spoke both English and French in So. Vietnam and Cambodia during the war, and English in South Korea and the Republic of China/Taiwan).

People I had never seen or heard of before became my conversation companions and we opened up the world before us, in a common language, English.

In Dostoyevsky's Possessed there is a scene where a couple of leftists are discussing the great future utopia envisioned by one of their comrades, Shigalov:

"He's written a good thing in that manuscript," Verhovensky went on. "He suggests a system of spying. Every member of the society spies on the others, and it's his duty to inform against them. Every one belongs to all and all to every one. All are slaves and equal in their slavery. In extreme cases he advocates slander and murder, but the great thing about it is equality. To begin with, the level of education, science, and talents is lowered. A high level of education and science is only possible for great intellects, and they are not wanted. The great intellects have always seized the power and been despots. Great intellects cannot help being despots and they've always done more harm than good. They will be banished or put to death. Cicero will have his tongue cut out, Copernicus will have his eyes put out, Shakespeare will be stoned—that's Shigalovism. Slaves are bound to be equal. There has never been either freedom or equality without despotism, but in the herd there is bound to be equality, and that's Shigalovism! Ha ha ha! Do you think it strange? I am for Shigalovism."

Dostoyevsky understood early that the destruction of intellect was an important part of Leftist Equality.

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