Grateful for the opportunity
This doesn’t seem like something that ought to be taught in schools.
There’s an expanded version.
Below is a list of characteristics of white supremacy culture which show up in our organizations. Culture is powerful precisely because it is so present and at the same time so very difficult to name or identify. The characteristics listed below are damaging because they are used as norms and standards without being pro-actively named or chosen by the group. They are damaging because they promote white supremacy thinking. They are damaging to both people of color and to white people. Organizations that are people of color-led or a majority people of color can also demonstrate many damaging characteristics of white supremacy culture.
It all seems very circular. Who says they’re “characteristics of white supremacy culture”? What is wrong with them? “Objectivity” for instance – that’s often an essential tool, not a “characteristic of white supremacy.”
Do anti-racism by all means, but don’t do it by telling kids in school that objectivity is a bad and suspect thing.
Worship of the Written Word
if it’s not in a memo, it doesn’t exist
the organization does not take into account or value other ways in which information gets shared
those with strong documentation and writing skills are more highly valued, even in organizations where ability to relate to others is key to the mission
In other words booooooo literacy.
Come on now. You can’t teach this in school. Literacy opens a billions doors, and lack of it slams them shut. Don’t do that to children – especially don’t do that to non-white children.
Only One Right Way
the belief there is one right way to do things and once people are introduced to the right way, they will see the light and adopt it
when they do not adapt or change, then something is wrong with them (the other, those not changing), not with us (those who know the right way)
similar to the missionary who does not see value in the culture of other communities, sees only value in their beliefs about what is good
Often there is only one right way to do a particular thing. Creativity and flexibility are good, but so is knowing the right way to do things.
I hope this isn’t really getting into the Ann Arbor public schools.
You know, there isn’t one right way to paint or sing or write (though using the proper syntax, etc for whatever language you are writing in helps a hell of a lot). But I am a scientist, and I can tell you that there sure as hell are right ways to do a number of things. How many flexible creative ways do you want your mechanic to use in fixing your brakes? If he doesn’t want them to actually stop things, he’s just being creative, right? And asking for our brakes to actually stop our cars is white supremacy thinking, I suppose.
I suspect at least some of this is being taught, even here in the ‘heartland’. The single most missed question on my syllabus quiz is the True or False: The instructor considers all opinions to be equally valid. They miss it the first time they take the quiz; they miss it the second time; if they retake it fifty times, or a hundred, they will continue missing it. They cannot comprehend that the answer to that question is FALSE. Even though it is in my syllabus that I don’t accept that, it is on all the paperwork, I tell them that the first day…
There is one right way to sing in some senses – getting the words and music right. You can’t sing “Bad Moon Rising” when you say you’re singing “Nessun dorma”: that would be not right. It would be objectively not right, even.
I think the trouble here is not what is objective, but rather, what is called objective, but is not.
Eg. Women are not competitive, hence their lack of success.
I guess I’m talking about the difference between performance and creation. There’s no one right way to create, but performance is less flexible than that, even though it does allow some variation. There are infinite ways to act Hamlet, but you can’t swap in a script from Buffy the Vampire-slayer.
I’d agree with you entirely.
Objectivity is functioning in part as a value and virtue that is claimed as natural to males by patriarchy, hence why women are dismissed summarily even with objective evidence on their side though.
But you can set it to the music from Carmen on Gilligan’s Island…
This is just so self-refuting. Once you see that “the belief that there is one right way to do things” is WRONG, you will see the light and adopt THEIR view.
@Your Name’s Not Bruce? #6:
Thanks a lot for reminding me of that right before I go to bed (“do not forget … stay out of debt …”)
Andre Previn: “You are playing all the wrong notes.”
Eric Morecambe (grabbing Previn by the lapels and pulling him face-to-face): “I am playing all the right notes, but not necessarily in the right order.”
That’s how they play the game against well intentioned, intelligent people: they make a preposterous claim that can be interpreted in a limited, arguably reasonable way, and while we’re busy discussing the nuances of creativity in music, they’re convincing everyone that 2+2=4 isn’t an analytic truth.
Okay, I followed the links, and the “expanded version” which seems to be the original one, is actually not part of a school program, nor intended to be. Rather, it’s the sort of thing that might get put forward at a workshop for a community organization that is seeking help to be more effective–and yes, for such groups, it’s important to be ready to accommodate the culture of the community you want to help. It’s meant for adults, in a specific context, and if it’s being used as classroom material, then that’s simply wrong, like using a cheesecake to repair a flat tire is wrong.
I have definitely heard of well-intentioned programs that floundered because the organizers came in with an attitude only half-a-step removed from “The White Man’s Burden”, where they were going to show members of an oppressed community how to solve all their problems, but without any real understanding of what the problems actually were, how they were caused, or how to communicate to the locals. (A current example–a lot of immunization efforts for COVID are getting stymied because the organizations involved are not considered trustworthy by populations of color, and aren’t trying to adapt. The “Worship of the Written Word” is, in this case, absolutely part of the problem–you can’t educate folks with a pamphlet that they don’t read. It takes finding a spokesman, and having them go to churches and other groups that ARE trusted by the locals, to listen and answer questions and concerns.)
That said, while this sort of lecture is something a lot of would-be do-gooders should hear, I’m not certain I’d link all of them to white supremacy directly–rather, the attitudes are fostered in an environment where non-white individuals are either marginalized or not present, then carried over when the organization actually gets t the community in question.
Additionally, I’d note that the list contains both “quantity over quality” and “perfectionism”. With an apparently straight face.
And when the CRT people say that objectivity is a tool of white supremacy, they actually mean that objectivity is a tool of white supremacy. They don’t mean that white supremacists control our conceptions of objectivity. They actually mean exactly what they say.
It’s like telling sheltered urbanites that fundamentalists really do actually literally believe that the world is at most six thousand years old, that Moses parted the Red Sea, that Noah put two of every kind of animal on a boat, and that a talking snake convinced a woman to eat an apple from a magic tree. The typical response is, “No, they must be using that language to describe something else, something rather reasonable.” No. No, they’re not. It’s magic sky daddies all the way down.
@Nullius in Verba #9
In Critique of Pure Reason, Kant said that 5 + 7 = 12 is not analytic. TBF, Kant had a narrow definition of “analytic”.
If objectivity is so bad, how can you test to make sure you’re not doing it?
Kant also predated Bertrand Russell, Alfred North Whitehead, and Principia Mathematica. *shrug*
Freemage, there is another way that is used, though. When I first started teaching here, we had a lecturer telling us how to teach Hispanic students. Things like “they shouldn’t have to be on time to class, because being on time is not a value outside the western world” and “they will take you as the absolute authority on things, right up there with the Madonna”. There were a lot of other things, but most of them don’t actually fit that many of my Hispanic students, who are not a monolithic group any more than any other group of students.
By the end of the lecture, it became obvious what the lecturer was saying. A lot of Hispanic parents were upset that their children wanted to adopt certain aspects of Western culture, and they wanted us to help them keep their children 100% Hispanic. I can sympathize, but I also think that the children have a right to their own choices, and also that not all aspects of western culture were bad.
The particular emphasis in this lecture was on critical thinking; we were not supposed to encourage that. The thing is, my entire curriculum is based around critical thinking, and that is what my role is as set down by my employer, and by the state. And I believe in critical thinking. If critical thinking leads someone away from certain aspects of your culture (the parents seemed particularly worried that their children would not remain Catholic)…well, my mother was really good at critical thinking, as long as she wasn’t thinking about the things she really believed, only what others believe. I continue to teach my Hispanic students right along with the rest of my class, and they continue to do well and thrive in my classes.
Cheesecake? Hilarious! Everybody knows the best fix for a puncture is sticky toffee pudding.
Good question! I’m not sure, but you might be on the right track if you’re using cheesecake to repair a flat tire.
I mean, totes obvs, “Objectivity is itself an example of the reification of white male thought.”
@Nullius in Verba #14
True, but how many current mathematicians agree with Russell and whitehead on that?
@Colin: I dunno. I’m not a mathematician. My expertise lies in computer science and philosophy (mostly epistemology).
From those perspectives, it’s hard to see how arithmetic truth could be anything other than analytic. But then, when I say analytic, I don’t mean discoverable through reason alone, because that’s an impossible standard. Arithmetic knowledge, on the other hand–and especially mathematical intuition, as Frege would have used the term–is more amenable to description as synthetic or mixed.
B&W commenters: Make cogent, informed critiques and commentary on the subject of the OP.
Me: Trying to imagine the words to Bad Moon Rising sung to the tune of Nessun Dorma, and vice-versa.
lol