University of Wisconsin stands by 'Problem of Whiteness' course

[JonathanL]

There's no such thing as reverse racism, racism against white people is just regular racism.

That's true, but typing "racism against white people" takes longer to type than "reverse racism".

[Darth Executor]

The reason there is no need to fear this class is because reality dooms it and it's adherents to failure.

The moment someone goes through the trouble to actually build something is the moment they begin to look for the best people to do the job. That is going to be a person who doesn't care to explore ridiculous theories regarding skin color. You put money on the table and all the very fine notions about fairness evaporate like a morning mist in the noon day sun.

Only academics and government officials, who aren't actually expected to produce anything for a living, can afford to be so foolish.

I say this because the class cannot produce anything. If your goal is to hire the best people for your business your business is the most likely to succeed. Those who want to muck up the hiring process with white guilt and other nonsense are going to end up hiring people who are less fit for the job. Ultimately those businessmen will either grow up or end up bankrupt. Capitalism is ruthless. The people who are too immature to look past race can go work in government - they'll be overpaid but at least they won't get in the way of people who want to work for a living.

hey guyze don't worry, the best these guys'll ever do is go into government where they have absolute power over you and decide what you can't and can't do XDXD

to paraphrase general mattis, gerbil, I'm begging you with tears in my eyes, stop being so easy to bash. it's breaking my heart

[Jaecp]

Yeah well given the rate at which you've been replying I won't hear about it until April anyway.



Every time a Democrat mentions Paul Ryan, my alarm starts going off.

Sorry, the holidays. I will try to respond faster, but I have a lit on my plate.

As for Ryan? Economic conservatism hurts the poor. Are there no liberal Catholics at your Diocese?

[Starlight]

Every time a Democrat mentions Paul Ryan, my alarm starts going off.

Um, why? When the Republican party was really really struggling to find a speaker of the house that everyone could live with, he was pretty much the only person that all factions liked. That would seem to make him the best exemplar of Republicanism. So you viewing references to him as a straw man seems pretty strange.

I mean, I get that the Republican party as a whole is pretty factional and no two republicans seem to agree with each other on just about anything, other than that everything the left does is wrong because they hate the left. I thought this recent article summed it up nicely to be honest.

If starlight were to say so I'd be offended, but since it's you

You're well to the left of me. Communist.

[robrecht]

Catholic social teaching is in some respects very liberal and in other respects rather conservative. Is that because the popes of the last 150 years can't make up their minds? Or perhaps because liberal and conservative idealogues generally don't do a good job of looking at both sides of a question fairly? As a loyal Catholic I tend to give the benefit of the doubt to the popes, not to mention the fact that political functionaries, hacks, and idealogues tend to disappoint on a regular basis.

[Spartacus]

As for Ryan? Economic conservatism hurts the poor. Are there no liberal Catholics at your Diocese?

Nope, there haven't been any liberal Catholics in Chicago since Cardinal George excommunicated them all when he took office in '97. Good thing I'm too young to remember that wishy-washy Cardinal Bernardin.

Liberal Catholics, in my experience, have gotten a little too complacent. I can't think of a single one (unless I count as a liberal Catholic now?) who seriously and charitably engaged Paul Ryan regarding Catholic social thought back in 2012, much less the ways in which he's changed since then. Even the letter which Catholic scholars signed on to criticizing Ryan from a Catholic perspective missed the point. Rather like a number of the conservatives in this thread attacking the college course, they attacked a comfortably familiar strawman instead of, y'know, actually listening to what the other side has to say.

As much as I find this topic interesting and as much as I'd like to rant about this for the next couple of weeks, this really isn't the right thread to discuss either Paul Ryan specifically or the relationship between Catholicism and contemporary American politics generally.

[Starlight]

Catholic social teaching is in some respects very liberal and in other respects rather conservative. Is that because the popes of the last 150 years can't make up their minds? Or perhaps because liberal and conservative idealogues generally don't do a good job of looking at both sides of a question fairly? As a loyal Catholic I tend to give the benefit of the doubt to the popes, not to mention the fact that political functionaries, hacks, and idealogues tend to disappoint on a regular basis.

Back when I was a mainstream protestant Christian I recall literally sniggering out loud whenever I read a statement on social issues by a Roman Catholic authority in the newspaper. The primary reason for that was that I viewed their teaching on condom use to be so absurd as to render anything else they had to say moot. I would have viewed a quote on social issues from a literal bunch of circus clowns with the same level of seriousness.

I guess, more than a decade later, my view of the RCC's social authority has gotten substantially less positive than that, because I'm aware that things such as the condom ban aren't just hilarious, but have learned how they also kill people - the AIDS epidemic in Africa is serious and a teaching not to use preventative measures like condoms costs lives, and Africa likewise suffers from overpopulation / famines and teachings to not use contraception seriously worsen the humanitarian crises in the region. So a misinterpreted bible verse and absurd teachings aren't merely amusing, they are actively a cause of the destruction of human lives. So I guess the RCC would have to rank as one of the most active causes of human suffering in the world, possibly above something like ISIS.

[robrecht]

Back when I was a mainstream protestant Christian I recall literally sniggering out loud whenever I read a statement on social issues by a Roman Catholic authority in the newspaper. The primary reason for that was that I viewed their teaching on condom use to be so absurd as to render anything else they had to say moot. I would have viewed a quote on social issues from a literal bunch of circus clowns with the same level of seriousness.

I guess, more than a decade later, my view of the RCC's social authority has gotten substantially less positive than that, because I'm aware that things such as the condom ban aren't just hilarious, but have learned how they also kill people - the AIDS epidemic in Africa is serious and a teaching not to use preventative measures like condoms costs lives, and Africa likewise suffers from overpopulation / famines and teachings to not use contraception seriously worsen the humanitarian crises in the region. So a misinterpreted bible verse and absurd teachings aren't merely amusing, they are actively a cause of the destruction of human lives. So I guess the RCC would have to rank as one of the most active causes of human suffering in the world, possibly above something like ISIS.

I was thinking of social teaching in the sense of economics, not issues of personal (and private IMHO) morality such as artificial contraception. I have not followed this much of late but I thought the Catholic Church finally dropped their opposition to the distribution of condoms as a means of disease prevention.

[Meh Gerbil]

hey guyze don't worry, the best these guys'll ever do is go into government where they have absolute power over you and decide what you can't and can't do XDXD
to paraphrase general mattis, gerbil, I'm begging you with tears in my eyes, stop being so easy to bash. it's breaking my heart

Right.

They take that power and obsess over goofy things - thousands of these drones spend their days compiling statistics on racial breakdowns and catering to every bit of transient lunacy imaginable. They run around and have meetings about things that have no impact and suffer sleepless nights over imagined dangers. They don't have the emotional depth or wisdom necessary to actually effect a real change. They slaughter more of their own than any military ever could. They comfort themselves with lies that cannot bear fruit. I can think of no better place for someone with such dangerous and ridiculous ideas but in government, where they can spin their wheels and go nowhere, change nothing, and do so until they are found, face down, on a golf course in Florida.

Look at Europe: It is being defeated by people whose only redeeming quality is they still mate and bear children. The absolute bastion of free thinking is going to get bulldozed by biology. It is hysterical.

They're building a house of cards that falls at the breath of a child.

By all means allow these people to be in government.
When the apocalypse comes who is going to be useful, a virtuous farmer or an intellectually gifted Harvard Professor?
Put the crazy ones where they can be culled when the time comes, culled while having no impact on the rest of us to survive.

Pity these people, Darth, they're going to watch their kingdom fall to pieces and not understand what they're seeing.

[Teallaura]

I think some of you are totally missing a fundamental point of the course, namely that race is not merely a biological fact but is also a social construct, at least when it is studied from a sociological perspective. The course or professor is decidedly NOT defining people merely by their skin color.

So,

So, redefining racism to make it okay to use against a particular group because <insert reason here> is STILL racism and still a BAD thing.

If you truly want to end racism you start with NOT doing it. Not defining a group by their skin color - which is in fact what the guy does. He starts with skin color and moves on to <insert social evil here>. This is IDENTICAL to the 'Southern Segregationalist' thing. Whites in the South (and the North, for that matter) didn't define Blacks as sub-human (that was an argument made, yes but it was never the defining argumentation) - they defined them by a number of racial 'traits' that made slavery a 'favor' (because Blacks were too primitive/childlike/unable to control themselves/ et cetera) and Jim Crow a necessity.

This course does the same exact thing - and while consistent with the (borderline irrational) view of Post-modernism, that doesn't make it any the less racist.

Until we decide that judging people by the color of their skin instead of the content of their character is utterly unacceptable, racism has a permanent foothold, and not where you might think.

[Teallaura]

The prof's a postmodernist for whom race is a construct and in whose mind, consequently, Rachel Dolezal actually became black.

The prof's an idiot - got it. So, why should a University fund this thing, again, exactly?

And the question stands - would you question it if the title focused on another race - or are their some things even postmodernists aren't 'allowed' to do?

[Teallaura]

Ah, sorry: I missed that post. The only discussion of a course description I'd noticed was in the OP. Thanks for pointing it out.

But even in the context of the full course description, I don't even feel like it's a stretch to say that "institutional racism" is meaningfully distinct from segregation-era personal prejudice or eugenic theory.

Okay, found it. Now, explain this one to me because it sounds nonsensical - segregation was unquestionably institutional and so were all of the unfair prejudiced supports. It sounds like you're saying that they are different in terms of overtness - which I would grant - but that wouldn't make them necessarily distinct.

[Spartacus]

The prof's an idiot - got it. So, why should a University fund this thing, again, exactly?

And the question stands - would you question it if the title focused on another race - or are their some things even postmodernists aren't 'allowed' to do?

One could certainly examine and deconstruct e.g. cultural assumptions and social pressures related to various Asian ethnicities and technology, etc, yes.

[Teallaura]

One could certainly examine and deconstruct e.g. cultural assumptions and social pressures related to various Asian ethnicities and technology, etc, yes.

Now, how do you do that without not only offending Asians but actually defining people by their skin color?

In truth, you can't. This is one onion that is best cut straight down the middle and not dissected by layer. The instant you start examining a layer, you're committing the very social sin that you are examining.

So, the catchy title does more than merely whet the scholastic appetite - it crosses the line into institutional racism. <Insert color/race here> people are <bad/evil/socially unacceptable/ et al> because of their <insert associated trait/habit/cultural thing here>. This is the heart of racism - judging others by their skin color. Pretty academic words and bad philosophy don't change what the critter IS.

[Spartacus]

Now, how do you do that without not only offending Asians but actually defining people by their skin color?

If they can't take a little postmodernism, maybe those special snowflakes aren't ready for college.

So, the catchy title does more than merely whet the scholastic appetite - it crosses the line into institutional racism. <Insert color/race here> people are <bad/evil/socially unacceptable/ et al> because of their <insert associated trait/habit/cultural thing here>. This is the heart of racism - judging others by their skin color. Pretty academic words and bad philosophy don't change what the critter IS.

How'd you manage to read that sentiment in to the course description?