<< Hasn't it always been obvious to everyone that western civilization is an
enormous con game, simply picking out predecessors of whom we approve?
>>
This is a caricature of PC-ness. All cultures and civilizations pick their antecedents. The Hebrews in the old days went through a bunch of writings, edited them, kept the ones they liked, and this is the Hebrew Bible or old Testament. The rest is Apocrypha. Does that make ita con game or somehow disreputable?
Likewise, I think that my students, in the old days when I had students, so maybe I should say, my children, should get out of school with some exposure to Homer, Plato, Praxitales, medieval scholastic architecture, Dante, Leonardo and Michelangelo, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Descartes, etc. because that is what a civilized educated modern American should have as part of her equipment. She should know a lot of the Bible pretty well too, Od and New, despite the faat that I'm Jewish. Sure, its' all constructed and contested, but so? I would say that that is their cultural heritage and stuff worth knowing.
I would also like my kids to have some acquaintance with the Koran and the Arabian Nights and The Story of the Stone and the I Ching and the Tale of Genji and a Gita or so because it's good they should know about how other cultures do things and what their great works are. I'd put in African work for completeness, but I myself am quite ignorant of that sort of thing. This was a fault in my education and I hope it would be corrected in theirs. They get a boatload of African American culture from me, because that's their cultural heritage too, from Brer Rabbit and Frederick Douglass and Duke Ellington to Dr. King and Sweet Honey in the Rock. Sure, that's appropriation. But why is it a con job to say, Ellington is American and so am I, so he's mine too? Or am I being narrowly nationalistix here?
Enthocentrically yours
--jks, a white male American of European descent (who doesn't feel guilty about it: how un-PC can you get?)