perfidy

The Washington Post is running an article today on the new "fad" in academia, whiteness studies. Even better, the program cited is at UMass-Amherst, where I got my advanced smart-person credentials. I remember the advent of "whiteness studies." Since my work tends to address questions of identity, group identity, and that horrible word "othering" I was excited by the possibilities even as I became weary of the dogma. Despite the involuted recursiveness of the very concept (doesn't that just trip gaily off the tongue?) I found the concept of "whiteness," that is, the construction of an explicitly white identity by discernible groups, to be very handy. It can help immensely when trying to understand the finer points of racial dynamics in, say, Murfreesboro in 1885. 

However, the lure of the dark side is strong. David Horowitz correctly points out that the easy, consensus conclusion to draw from women's studies, African-American Studies, and whiteness studies is that whiteness is, predictably, an evil hegemonic force against which no retaliation is unjustified. The UMass class cited in the article certainly seems to move along those lines. The article's lead sentence:

Naomi Cairns was among the leaders in the privilege walk, and she wasn't happy about it.

Oh, lordy. See my comments below, and I'm going to reiterate what I said on Wednesday: "We all know what happens when college students get ahold of Big Ideas That Explain Everything. For a padawan learner such weapons are not, only for a Jedi are they. Mmm, yes. If you give a student Foucault, Hamlet is only about sex. If you give a student Marx, King Lear is a parable of Capitalism. These tools are powerful, but they are also crutches, and in the wrong hands lend themselves easily to arrogance, narrowness, and false first principles." 

I'll be danged if that doesn't sound better every time I read it! I'm so great.