A group of Notre Dame students has become the latest pack of scolds promoting senseless racialism in the name of ending racism. The proper response is to tell them to grow up already.
Racialism is the practice of interpreting events or policies through the lens of race. Unlike racism, it is not necessarily insidious, as when pollsters or demographers analyze data — but outside of a narrow range of legitimate social science based on hard numbers, racialism usually is almost equally destructive and divisive. Far from judging people, as advised by Martin Luther King Jr., on the “content of their character” and of their achievements, a racialist approach emphasizes skin over substance and color above content.
Alas, a group called “End Hate at ND” does not seem to understand this. As the group is of indeterminate size, its demands would not be worth a response, except that it is representative of viewpoints commonly expressed at colleges and cultural institutions across the country and the Western world.
The ”End Hate” group presented a list of demands to the university community, one section of which, using the self-important jargon and odd capitalization that today passes for thought, reads as follows:
“Decolonize academia: Cultural competence is key in building empathy for marginalized folks. No course or program of study should have a view limited to white, western, and/or male voices. We demand that people who are of Color, Indigenous, Black, queer, or not male are represented in the authorship of at least half course and major required readings. Diversifying the canon helps eliminate the violence of only privileging white scholarship. Everyone should see themselves represented in coursework.”
The levels of nonsense here are numerous. Putting politics above good grammar, as in capitalizing “Color,” “Indigenous,” and “Black,” but not “western,” is a rather juvenile way of sticking a finger in the eye of common culture. Ditto the strange use of “folks” for “people,” the notion that there is “competence” in “culture,” and the idea that being “represented” involves not thoughts or views but skin color.
The most damaging and substantive demand, though, is the insistence that more than half of required readings be authored by those not white and male. This sort of ethnic bean-counting puts race over reason, refuting MLK’s dream entirely. Of course, white males don’t have a monopoly on wisdom, insight, or artistic genius, but those are virtues that stand on their own completely apart from race or gender. Wherever those aspects of excellence flourish, they should be celebrated and studied.
Of course, the “canon” of study should not be static. Of course, efforts should be made to rediscover achievements by those not white or male. To turn humane studies into ethnic arithmetic is to further divide humanity into sub-groups, rather than to revel in the content of the genius or insights themselves. Far better to keep adding people and examples of merit to the canon, no matter the pigment or gender of the author or artist, than to include or exclude based on physical attributes having nothing to do with the subject at hand.
Galileo was no less insightful or courageous because he was white. Tawana Brawley was no more a truth-teller because she was black.
Chief Justice John Roberts famously wrote in one court decision against racial quotas that “the way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” The Notre Dame students today should take to heart that lesson.
