Beautiful quote: “In order to create an alliance with those who are oppressed - one must deal with the primary source of their own oppression. One must first come to terms with what it feels like to be a victim. If one were truly to do this, it would be impossible to discount the oppression of others, except by again forgetting how we have been hurt.” -Moraga
An unfortunate website: (12 “worst” classes offered at U.S. universities as defined by the conservative, Young America’s Foundation)
http://www.christianexaminer.com/Articles/Articles%20Feb07/Art_Feb07_17.html
Random thought: “African- American fitness for citizenship was measured in terms of how much their sexual, familial, and gender relations deviated from a bourgeois nuclear family model historically embodied by whites.” (Aberrations in Black) Although this quote is referring to African-Americans it is just as easy to replace “African-American” with “people of color” whether they are U.S. citizens, immigrants, or citizens of another country. This can also be expanded on a larger scale to the international community translating to: non-western countries fitness for inclusion in the international political, economic, and cultural community is measured in terms of how much their communal, economic, political, societal, colonialist, and war relations deviate from the bourgeois western-capitalist model.I thought this quote was relative because its important to keep in mind why we are struggling for social justice and what we are struggling against. We are not fighting in order to become a part of an oppressive system, but rather to overturn a hierarchal dominant society. A society that determines our worth through our relative success/failures in assimilation.
“Cultural criticism can be an agent for change only if we start from a mindset that is fundamentally anti-colonialist, one that negates cultural imperialism in all its manifestations.” - bell hooks
First, thank you for sharing your ponderings (this one as well as the others). Since finding your blog I actually have something to read every now and then.
I stumbled upon it when I was looking up some LGBT articles for a newsletter I produce. Tiona’s Film project at Cipher later this month led me here.
I appreciate your ability to see how all of our struggles are interconnected. Its a way of seeing too few of us have. Intersectionality can be both a blessing and a curse can’t it?
Second, I think its HILARIOUS that someone else picked up on this list.
I’ll have you know I have 3 of those classes on my transcript from Occidental College:
Whiteness (Prof. Elmer Griffin) - which was on the first list
Blackness (Prof. Elmer Griffin) - replaced Griffin’s whiteness on the list you posted
& The Phallus (Prof. Jeffrey Tobin)
I thought it might tickle you to know that we started all of those classes breaking down the stupidity of the lists, as well as the inherently flawed logic employed in trying to discredit the class.
paz.
[...] Barsan posted Pondersome on this blog about the list made by the Christian Examiners on controversial classes. One that [...]