IGX

The Most Persuasive Case for Eliminating Black Studies? Just Read the Dissertations

You’ll have to forgive the lateness but I just got around to reading The Chronicle’s recent piece on the young guns of black studies. If ever there were a case for eliminating the discipline, the sidebar explaining some of the dissertations being offered by the best and the brightest of black-studies graduate students has made it. What a collection of left-wing victimization claptrap. The best that can be said of these topics is that they’re so irrelevant no one will ever look at them.

That’s what I would say about Ruth Hayes’ dissertation, “‘So I Could Be Easeful’: Black Women’s Authoritative Knowledge on Childbirth.” It began because she “noticed that nonwhite women’s experiences were largely absent from natural-birth literature, which led me to look into historical black midwifery.” How could we overlook the nonwhite experience in “natural birth literature,” whatever the heck that is? It’s scandalous and clearly a sign that racism is alive and well in America, not to mention academia.

Then there is Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, author of “Race for Profit: Black Housing and the Urban Crisis of the 1970s.” Ms. Taylor believes there was apparently some kind of conspiracy in the federal government’s promotion of single family homes in black neighborhoods after the unrest of the 1960s. Single family homes! The audacity! But Ms. Taylor sees that her issue is still relevant today. (Not much of a surprise since the entirety of black studies today seems to rest on the premise that nothing much has changed in this country in the past half century when it comes to race. Shhhh. Don’t tell them about the black president!) She explains that “The subprime lending crisis, if it did nothing else, highlighted the profitability of racism in the housing market.” The subprime lending crisis was about the profitability of racism? Those millions of white people who went into foreclosure were just collateral damage, I guess.

But topping the list in terms of sheer political partisanship and liberal hackery is La TaSha B. Levy. According to the Chronicle, “Ms. Levy is interested in examining the long tradition of black Republicanism, especially the rightward ideological shift it took in the 1980s after the election of Ronald Reagan. Ms. Levy’s dissertation argues that conservatives like Thomas Sowell, Clarence Thomas, John McWhorter, and others have ‘played one of the most-significant roles in the assault on the civil-rights legacy that benefited them.’” The assault on civil rights? Because they don’t favor affirmative action they are assaulting civil rights? Because they believe there are some fundamental problems in black culture that cannot be blamed on white people they are assaulting civil rights?

Seriously, folks, there are legitimate debates about the problems that plague the black community from high incarceration rates to low graduation rates to high out-of-wedlock birth rates. But it’s clear that they’re not happening in black-studies departments. If these young scholars are the future of the discipline, I think they can just as well leave their calendars at 1963 and let some legitimate scholars find solutions to the problems of blacks in America. Solutions that don’t begin and end with blame the white man.

The Most Persuasive Case for Eliminating Black Studies?

Grandpa's Spells wrote:This was an awkward story. Black Studies is mostly ridiculous victimology. OTOH, the author of that essay later acknowledged that she had not herself actually "read the dissertations."

BucketHead wrote:Help me out, is "Black Studies" a major in colleges? Is it paid for by the students? Is there a difference in administering the discipline than, say, "Art History"? I don't disagree the dissertations may be useless, but how's that different from other college dissertations? What exactly is the beef here?

BucketHead wrote:Help me out, is "Black Studies" a major in colleges? Is it paid for by the students?

BucketHead wrote:So Turd and I agree. The only "case" here is not liking the subject matter of a college program.

Kazuya Mishima wrote:

BucketHead wrote:So Turd and I agree. The only "case" here is not liking the subject matter of a college program.

IMO, it goes deeper than that...blacks complaining for decades about lack of opportunity, and you see them squandering opportunity left and right. Getting sucked into a "black studies" program as opposed to pursuing one's education in accounting, engineering, banking, medicine, skilled trade school, etc.

No, those career paths won't fix social and economic standing...we need minds sucked into the task of studying black midwivery in order to undue decades of harm.

powerlifter54 wrote:

The Most Persuasive Case for Eliminating Black Studies?

Barrack Hussein Obama

Fat Cat wrote:If black people want parity with whites in wasting their money on useless degrees, I am totally fine with that.

Fat Cat wrote:I don't know, give me an example of what you are talking about.

Fat Cat wrote:Can't really see what you are getting at, as usual. They are hardly the only business that inflates the value of their product, and LOL at $29,000 a year being enticing.

Gorbachev wrote:Poor article and the usual watery group-think follow-on comments from the IGx brigade. The idea that the black experience in natural childbirth might have been overlooked and is worthy of examination is precisely the sort of idea that suits a dissertation. There is no critical analysis or counter-point in the article. Instead, it's emotive hyperbole. Lapped up here.

Romanticising blue collar jobs and decrying academic pursuit for lack of real-world application is a strong theme here. As is mixing in a bit of gratuitous "fuck blacks" speak. Doesn't it all get tiresome? Isn't it all quite embarrassing?