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The Proletariat Is Getting Counter-Revolutionary
This piece in the Atlantic is a very good read. Reed College, in Portland, OR, has endured 13 months of outrage over Humanities 110, the college’s signature humanities course. In the course, students are trained to engage in critical reading of various ancient works from the perspective of different disciplines. A group of snowflakes formed themselves into “Reedies against Racism” in response to a call to protest police violence against blacks. Of the list of demands, one was reforming Hum 110.
But for RAR, Hum 110 is all about oppression. “We believe that the first lesson that freshmen should learn about Hum 110 is that it perpetuates white supremacy—by centering ‘whiteness’ as the only required class at Reed,” according to a RAR statement delivered to all new freshmen. The texts that make up the Hum 110 syllabus—from the ancient Mediterranean, Mesopotamia, Persia, and Egypt regions—are “Eurocentric,” “Caucasoid,” and thus “oppressive,” RAR leaders have stated. Hum 110 “feels like a cruel test for students of color,” one leader remarked on public radio. “It traumatized my peers.”
Blah blah blah. We’ve heard it before. But something interesting is happening with freshmen starting to push back against the increasingly aggressive rhetoric of the leaders of RAR. The first class was canceled due to another protest by RAR inside the classroom, disrupting the lecture. The freshmen had enough.
Two days later, a video circulated showing freshmen in the lecture hall admonishing protesters. When a few professors get into a heated exchange with RAR leaders, an African American freshman in the front row stands up and raises his arms: “This is a classroom! This is not the place! Right now we are trying to learn! We’re the freshman students!” The room erupts with applause.
Here’s that video. The “discussion” begins around the 5-minute mark.
I don’t know about you but I felt my heart skip a beat. Who’d of thought that students, of all people, would lead the revolt against their own peers?
Published in General
Well, looking back, I think it did indicate something about them that the other, usually working low level jobs, working class women living around me, in about 1984, in a dirt road neighborhood near a state park in New Jersey, obsessively read Harlequin romances. Yes, of course it indicated they hadn’t been exposed to better books. But that isn’t (couldn’t be) all it indicated.
Who hires these people? And why?
Mine pronounced “zero” as “deero.” That became obvious quickly, but still led to one hilarious page of notes.
The TAs? They’re cheap.
The rest of us? Most of us did okay.
It’s nice to know that leftism (or any philosophy for that matter) starts to lose its popularity when it inconveniences and bullies people.
…which is right around the time they resort to the use of violence against the common people to push their goals forward.
The French Revolution started out popular, then the people started to be inconvenienced, and then the heads started rolling.
The Russian Revolution started out popular, then the people started to be inconvenienced, and then the Bolsheviks took over.
Re: comment # 36
Re # 3 You mean the Harlequins were more pornagraphic than that “Shades of Grey” thing that sold so many copies just a few years ago?
But the book itself doesn’t provide the same day to day insight that a Jane Austen romance provided.
You got a better feel for what was expected, how they ordered their lives, how they spoke, and how they conducted interpersonal relationships.
Harlequins were just tawdry and unrealistic :p
Could also be indicative of an increase in female knowledge that they might demand higher quality books…
That or most book markets are down.
No, but the “Shades of Grey” thing sorta seems like a bit of a last hurrah for smut printed on dead trees.
Or just that everything’s going digital these days, and Harlequin is owned by a (left-wing) Canadian newspaper company.
Also, I’m not trying to analyze Harlequin’s true meaning. I’m merely trying to predict what a future archaeologist might surmise from the evidence left behind.
That’s fascinating; deeply disturbing and fascinating.
Oh, wait, I see they sold Harlequin to HarperCollins in 2004.
Mea culpa.
But still, it was owned by TorStar from 1975 until 2004.
Stina, I couldn’t agree with you more about Harlequins (based on the 3 or 4 pages I once made myself read of one of them. That was prior to stupidly alienating one of my neighbors by telling her, in so many words, what garbage I thought it was.) As for Jane Austen, I was too immature to “get” her as a teenager. For me, the biggest suprise in rereading Pride and Prejudice, at age 50 plus, was how funny Jane Austin is while telling profound truths about us. I love that book.
My point is this: If, back in 1984, I had wanted to understand my neighbors, for whatever good or bad purpose, I would have suffered through at least one of those Harlequins they most raved about, because people are drawn to stories that reflect their often unarticulated desires, values or fears.
Re: comment #45
From 1975 until 2004 ? Wow, yes, it would be interesting to look at some of the messages slipping through the Harlequin formula of their bestsellers during those years.