Posted on 12/01/2015 10:50:06 AM PST by Kaslin
Two weeks ago, the Columbia University newspaper, the Spectator, published an article titled "Students, faculty address institutionalized racism at University Life event."
As described in the article, one example of the institutionalized racism that black Columbia students must endure is the university's Core Curriculum.
In the words of one of the panelists, fifth-year undergraduate student Nissy Aya, a young black woman, "It's traumatizing to sit in Core classes. We 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?"
Her words are worthy of analysis and response.
First, they provide a fine example of how successfully universities have indoctrinated students with leftist ideas and rhetoric. For example, who, outside of academia, ever uses the word "agency" as she did? Did you ever say to anyone that you have or don't have "agency?"
This is not trivial. When people use words or terms that are used in only one setting, it means that that setting has profoundly influenced them and that the setting is a closed intellectual universe.
Her use of the word "traumatizing" is also a product of indoctrination. Columbia taught this young woman to be traumatized by its own Core Curriculum. Some things -- war, torture and the murder of a loved one, for example -- are objectively traumatizing. No one is taught to be traumatized by such things. But a university curriculum that attempts to convey the finest ideas and art developed in Western culture, and often in the entire world, and which has been taught to tens of thousands of students of all backgrounds for nine decades -- that should not constitute a trauma.
The notion that she is "looking at history through the lens of these powerful, white men" means that race trumps profundity, wisdom, beauty and excellence. Thus, Shakespeare is not the greatest playwright we know of, he is just a white European (and male, to boot). Likewise Beethoven, Bach and other Western composers did not compose what is arguably the greatest music ever composed; they, too, were first and foremost white.
Whereas the Columbia Core Curriculum originally set out to teach the history of the West and the best art and literature that has been produced, the left has succeeded in teaching that no art is better than any other. It has done so by substituting race, gender and class for wisdom, beauty and profundity, and through its doctrine of multiculturalism, which asserts that all cultures are equal.
And how did Columbia respond to Aya?
Director of the Center for the Core Curriculum Roosevelt Montas said: "You cannot grow up in a society without assimilating racist views. Part of what is exciting about this conversation is that it's 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."
And, according to the Spectator, Executive Vice President for University Life Suzanne Goldberg "added that in addition to meeting with students, the Office of University Life is convening a task force of students, administrators and faculty to further explore issues of diversity on campus."
In other words, instead of defending the pursuit of wisdom and human greatness, Columbia sided with Aya and all the other students lamenting the "institutionalized racism" and resultant traumas endured by non-white students at the university.
At an actual learning institution, rather than at the left-wing seminary Columbia and nearly all other American universities have become, administrators would have told Aya that if she has really been traumatized by the Columbia Core Curriculum, she stands little chance of navigating any of the inevitable vicissitudes of real life because she has opted to remain a child, and therefore woefully unprepared for adulthood.
At a real university, administrators would have also told her and all the other "traumatized" students of all colors and backgrounds, that by using the word "traumatized" they have trivialized the suffering of all those individuals the world over who really have been traumatized.
But of course any administrator who said something so honest would be labeled racist by faculty and students at that university, The New York Times, Hillary Clinton, MSNBC and the rest of the American left.
After all, in their view, if you think students should concentrate on studying Bach, Shakespeare and Leonardo da Vinci, you are depriving black students of their agency. Is that not clear?
How about a FOAD, with an extended middle finger from my left hand and a .357 in my right hand.
Institutional racism is real but comes in the form of affirmative action, racial quotas for mostly Africans, and dumbed down courses for those that don’t belong in higher education. Apparently this student doesn’t know who brought the world science, literature, mathematics, and high technology. It dang sure didn’t come from Africa.
Lemme guess.
She ain’t no engineering student.
No arithmetic classes.
Ain’t taking no science class either.
The leaders and organizers of these Third World “tools” smell a kill. Western Civilization seems so sick that its people can no longer mount resistance to Non-Western assaults whether verbal or physical. In my lifetime these clowns would never have even obtained a hearing. If by accident such people as mentioned in the article were even mentioned they would have died from our peals of Homeric laughter.
Who is paying her tuition? And sorry kiddo, it’s history.
With a quarter-keg of Guiness and Beethoven’s 9th in the background...
“so where do I fit in?”
_____________________________________
How about in the Welfare line with 4 different chillrens by 3 different baby daddies looking for more TANF and EBT Cards?
No?
Then shut your hole and be glad some white man gave you an education instead of a welfare check.
Words have meanings, and “traumatized” does not mean having your little feelers hurt in conversation. The most important thing about Aristotle, Shakespeare, Dante, Newton, Copernicus, Goethe, Kant, and Montesquieu was not the color of their skin.
I now support lower high school graduation rates if it means fewer of these pukes at universities.
5th year undergraduate student?
Sounds like the university said this woman is a racist.
Prager for President!
See my tagline for the cure to this idiocy. It will take a couple of generations and the schools will have to be retaken but it can be reversed....
Great tagline
More deck furniture on the Titanic...
From the ^very proud black man^ Sam Cooke (by way of Lou Adler and Herb Alpert);
Don’t know much about history
Don’t know much biology
Don’t know much about a science book,
Don’t know much about the french I took
But I do know that I love you,
And I know that if you love me, too,
What a wonderful world this would be
Don’t know much about geography,
Don’t know much trigonometry
Don’t know much about algebra,
Don’t know what a slide rule is for
But I do know that one and one is two,
And if this one could be with you,
What a wonderful world this would be
Now, I don’t claim to be an “A” student,
But I’m tryin’ to be
For maybe by being an “A” student, baby,
I can win your love for me
Don’t know much about history,
Don’t know much biology
Don’t know much about a science book,
Don’t know much about the french I took
But I do know that I love you,
And I know that if you love me, too,
What a wonderful world this would be
My reply to Nissy Aya:
Well, Nissy, if you are looking at history, just what lens are you referring to? Let's take a look at the history of lenses.
If you are referring to the lenses in average eyeglasses, they were invented by the Italians sometime in the 13th Century. Who developed eyeglasses?
White men.
The gradual refinements in lens grinding led to the invention of microscopes in the Netherlands in the 1500s, so if you are looking through a microscope lens, you are using an instrument that has an unparalleled impact on advances in science and medicine. Who invented it?
White men.
Or maybe it's a telescope lens, which was also invented in the Netherlands about the same time as the microscope. It has also aided in science by giving us an understanding of the universe, as well as having some practical military applications. Who invented it?
White men.
Of course, if you don't like to wear glasses to look through the lens of these powerful white men, you could always use a contact lens, invented in 1888 in Zurich;
White guy.
But since those glass contacts are so uncomfortable to use to look through the powerful white man lens, chemists developed the much more comfortable hydrophilic soft contact lens in the 1970s. Who would those chemists have been?
White men.
Of course, you would need to record what you saw, and what better way than a photograph, as a picture is worth a thousand words. And you can't take a photograph without a camera lens, invented in the 1840s, by whom?
White guy.
And if you want to zoom in to really focus on history, you might want to use a zoom lens, variously attributed to Barlow, Ignazio, Walker, Back or Angeniux. Who were they?
White men.
So Nissy, I don't know how you look through the lens of history without it being a white man's lens.
Maybe if you had actually studied history, you'd know this. And you would also know that virtually every single technological development of any significance in the past 300 years that you consider essential to your comfortable modern life all have one thing in common.
They were all developed by white men.
Not this crap again *rme* (
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