Questioning the Teaching of Ethnic Studies and Cultural Judgments Directed at Past Political Figures

I have sat quietly through every lecture session and tried my best to view things as objectively as possible. While I find much of the information interesting and informative, some of the ideas and bias presented in the class tear at my heart. I strongly believe some of these concepts are leading people in “the wrong direction”. I feel compelled to make these things known to you in this letter. If you decide to respond, I ask only that you please read this entire document in an open mind before formulating a response.

I’ll start with the interpretation of the past as presented in you Ethnic Studies 101 class. When the nature behind Thomas Jefferson and his regards to slavery and his personal affair with Sally Hemming was brought up, you began by displaying the facts about the situation and then jumping directly into asking students questions on his moral character and what they thought about it. (I’ll give specific examples of students responses further on) The students responded almost immediately with cultural and personal judgments. They began judging Thomas Jefferson with the morals and universal humanity that we experience in our current society. Right here is my first problem.

Cultural relativism, which is almost universally accepted by modern day Anthropologists, tell us that a specific cultural practice can only be judged in the construct of it’s culture’s values. I heard multiple students say “Jefferson’s a fake” “He SHOULD have freed his slaves” “Jefferson is a horrible person” ectâÂ?¦ ect.. In the discussion section MANY students went as far to say “I would have freed the slaves if I were him” “There no questions.. he should have freed his slaves.. it’s disgusting he didn’t”. All these statements are judging a past person, in a past culture, with a present cultural view of humanity and universal equality. Judging a past culture or any culture from a different cultural standard is usually inaccurate and has the potential to do A LOT of very bad things. Many of the students gave observations that made it seem as if they saw an obvious answer to Jefferson’s problems and there was a clear thing he “should have done”.

How many students in the class have ever really helped someone of a different ethnicity? Have you? The next statements are broad generalizations, but my end point should be simple and easily understood. I would guess that most students haven’t helped almost anyone outside their ethnicity and even without that statistic I can gather from my own personal experiences that most people rarely help anyone outside of their family/friend group. In our culture it’s encouraged and comparatively easy to help people. In the society Thomas Jefferson lived racial hierarchy was the norm and he was probably taught those values as a little kid. His entire political career to some degree rested on his acceptance of those norms. He choose to free some of his slaves after his death. Most southern slaveholders did not free their slaves, this put Jefferson in the minority. Jefferson believed in the abolishment of slavery (I know this was a contradiction to his actions and he still believed in racial hierarchy) ,but that is unimportant. The important concept is, is that Jefferson was a man of the culture he lived and you can’t judge him outside of that culture. Would you have seen a universal humanity (against what you culture taught you) stood up for it and committed political and finical suicide? If you say yes that would put you in the “one in a million” category.. Which is theoretically possible, but what in your currently life resembles the “one in million” humanitarian?

There is a huge danger with judging cultures outside their cultural values. It’s one of the reasons for the formation of racism. If you judge primitive peoples form the viewpoint of a more technologically advanced society it’s easy to make negative comments on their practices. When these negative views of a culture combine with ulterior motives you can lead to situations like the decimation of Native Americans.

Now I’m going to move on to something that is more directly related to your teaching. On the lecture when you were covering Hispanic Americans and we watched a video on the racism they faced and the Chicano Movement, you mentioned the high level of poverty rate for Mexican Americans. You mentioned that it was higher then any other racial group. You went into no detail on why. No real world problems I can think of in as complex a society as ours relates to just one single variable. For example the very high rates of legal and illegal immigration will add to that number, because of the time it takes to assimilate (whether or not you agree with it) into the culture and learn the skills necessary to make larger amounts of income (learning English for example). Other considerations include maladaptive cultural practices (maladaptive referring to the ability to earn larger amounts of money in the U. S. not the moral implication of a particular culture’s customs). Even if racial prejudice was magically wiped out tomorrow a higher percentage of poverty amount Hispanics would remain for many years until the other problems affecting that number were slowly solved (most problems are solved with time). It seems to me that you almost gave a call to “statistical equality”. Like all the numbers of poverty is a proof of racial discrimination and that the numbers “should be” equal. Maybe in an ideal world, but the real world isn’t ideal and NOTHING is equal (I’ll explain later)

In your class you never really talk about equality. No one ever really looks at the VERY modern idea. Scientifically in a complex world with so many variables it’s basically impossible for any two people to be equal. It’s a social construct in order to produce a better society. Say two children are born (race doesn’t matter.. there are no biological implications based on “race” As you know and teach, race is social construct not scientific) one child is developmentally challenged and can’t live independently and the other is 6ft 4 athletic, smart, and super good looking. The second child is going to have more opportunities and the chance at a better life. You can’t say these two individuals are equal. You can treat them equal in a society, but their human potentials aren’t equal. They have equal “humanity”. It seems to me that our society has clung to an idea of “absolute” equality. I definitely believe strongly in the social construct of equality, but I believe people take this too far. Taking this into account lets look at idea of paying people back in cash dollars for past wrongs or racism.

The idea of paying people back for past wrongs or racism is absolutely ridiculous to me for a variety of reasons that utilize concepts I mentioned above.. First it’s evaluating the past from a present perspective. Yes we know that a lot of wealth was created for the US and from the exploitation of other races and an unequally large portion of that wealth went to the majority (white people). This is true, but the perspective of holding “people back” from what they could have earned or what they earned for other people is inaccurate, because it’s based on an assumption of all other things remaining constant and being equal with a modern perspective on income, earnings and distribution. One could JUST as easily argue (even though it’s immoral) that they should pay us back for bringing them into a modern richer society then their origins. For example say a very poor family immigrated from Mexico in XXX date.. Later they want to be paid back for not getting equal treatment for loans to buy houses, unequal schools ectâÂ?¦ Well using present “logic” and a modern perspective on income, earnings and distribution the argument that if that family would have stayed in Mexico with much lower earnings per year that they actually still made MUCH more and have a much better opportunity then they had before so they should pay us back. Using this immoral argument you could even apply it to slaves and compare earnings in Africa region Black earnings to Black Americans in the U.S. To me this is the same as adding up all the man hours the slaves worked and trying to get a payment on that or houses ect. There is NO way to interrupt something as complicated as that. Not to mention there is no way to assign money to most things like who can put a price on human life?

The SECOND reason and this REASON ALONE makes the argument to get retribution ridiculous is that in life nothing is equal. Absolute equality doesn’t exist and individuals always profit from their position in the world and their individual biology. (not referring to race biology.. individual.. like mentally disabled compared to extra intelligent) Race is just ONE way of categorizing people on pheono type. It has been used to do a bunch of different things (horrible things), but it’s essentially a category of people that share a common or perceived common pheno type. Argue that because a shared pheno type has put those individuals in a disadvantage and “cheated” them out of earnings, although true is true to the same or greater extend to an unlimited possibility of groups of people with shared characteristics. For example.. if your born developmentally disabled you experience a much greater loss of opportunity of income then if your born a different race. The argument is the same.. Why not pay them back? They can’t help it that they experience this problem just because of there biology? Life isn’t equal, things are painful. Paying people back for past wrongs might be “nice”, but uses inferior logic. Basically paying people back for not treating them as equal (when absolute equality doesn’t exist and people just RECENTLY moved to universal humanity)

I don’t know if It’s good to focus so exclusively on “white” privilege. Even though it does exist and is extremely prevalent in the past, present, and probably the immediate future, I don’t know it’s the right way to go about things. In on of the essays in “white over black” it mentions how a white student wanted to be known as “human” and not acknowledging a race. The author goes on to say how ignorant this is and how you benefit from it whether you acknowledge it or not. I think people are too quick to “play the race card”. I see a society filled with fear and uneasiness. When one of the white students raised her hand to tell a story about herself as a kid she immediately said “I’m not racist.. my best friend was black at that time”.. It’s like there is an atmosphere where white people are assumed racists and assumed to have all these advantages whether or not they are or have them. I’m not a racist and many times I feel as though I have to some how “prove” that.

Here is my personal story, which may help you relate to me. My family is relatively poor and I didn’t have enough money to go to college so I joined the ARMY and was sent to train in Fort. Sill, Oklahoma. My basic training unit was 50% black. I did well and stood out from the group. This black man would always say things like “You think your better then me because I’m blackâÂ?¦ probably a rich little white kid”. I never responded negatively for a variety of reasons and one day he called me a racist and hit me in my face. He was a foot taller then me and probably buying into a cultural stereotype about fighting. Well I hit him a few times and threw him on the ground, after which I was rushed by a group of black people. All kinds of racial slurs erupted and I was corned against a wall, after which a group of white people in my unit came approached and for a second it looked as if there was going to be a face war, before the Drill Sergeants busted in. That was a very scary experience.. It was pure ignorance and hatred. I didn’t even know the kid who hit me, yet he HATED me so much. When I finished training and was permanently stationed in Fort Sill with similar racial percentages I experienced a TON of “reverse” racism, which makes me very fearful of the future and concerned with how race is portrayed.