[lbo-talk] The Wanted Man, Smorgasbord, and Student as Customer

Stephen Philion philion at hawaii.edu
Thu Apr 27 12:46:47 PDT 2006


I pointed out in my latest post just why the students were probably really upset with the smorgasbord thing: not b/c of the food issues, but because the very rejection of the smorgasbord approach challenges the way they think about rcism to begin with: from a very individualistic perspective where racism is something blacks practice on whiates and vice versa and there's no structure or logic to it. Thus, equal time for all is what they think is right. By dismissing that approach, they read you as dismissing them. But, since they don't know any other way to think about it, they latch on to the food thing and run with it. They are, themselves, confused as to what's bugging them.

--Yes, that's entirely my reading of it actually. Nicely put. Hamline and other schools essentially market themselves as 'diverse' and the whole 'dialogues' approach is their commodity that is supposed to make students of color/international students, etc. feel that the school offers something that helps 'raise consciousness'. In fact it tends to kill the capacity of students to link issues of race to problems of economic inequality, capitalism, war, etc. I wrote something about this in a piece for MRzine on 'sustainable' dialogues, an idea that is very popular with the students that were horrified by my class content,

http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/philion171205.html

In a coming MRzine piece on the 20th anniversary of the Fordham 9 CIA blockade [hopefully coming out soon :-)] I compare the impact the 'dialogues for diversity' approach limits the scope of military recruitment activism at a school like Hamline...

Steve



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