[FRIAM] "certain codes of conduct"

Tue Jul 28 23:29:17 EDT 2020

Thanks, Eric,

>From the point of view of This Old White Male, you lay the argument out pretty exactly.  Including the part at the end where we all open up our middle shirt button and start contemplating our navels.  I would REALLY like to get beyond that.  Do we identify different communities of linguistic and discursive practice and hire our “English” department from them?  Do have a section of every writing course in which we demonstrate our competence in speaking and writing “black” English?  

Nobody has responded yet to my idea of a National Discrimination Observatory, whose job is to identify systematic disadvantaging of any type and a redistributive taxation code that counters the that disadvantage.  The idea is that there will always be invidious assignments in any society based on one or another silly criteria and the important thing is to see that they don’t get reinforced by economic consequences.  Soon the disadvantaged people will be heard to say, “Yes, I may have attached earlobes, but with the tax refund I got yesterday, I am making more than you are.”  

I know, Glen.  Only a fundamentalist Liberal like myself could even conceive of such an idea. 

Nick 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

 <mailto:ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com> ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com

 <https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of Eric Charles
Sent: Tuesday, July 28, 2020 8:45 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] "certain codes of conduct"

Nick, Frank, et al,

I'm not a fan of this line of thinking, but i know how to hum a few bars ----------------------------------------------

Frank said: " I don't see that any of those had to do with unconscious racism or implicit bias"

Ignoring the content of the reading entirely (because that's a different discussion): Were you graded for grammar, syntax, good writing, and the like? 

If so, was the syntax and grammar used in your household and your general community considered acceptable?

Would those who grew up in different households and communities be thereby disadvantaged? Communities where ending sentences in prepositions was normal? Or dropping the verb "to be"? 

Would your 500 word essay have been acceptable if you were talking about how "Children in rye fields need catched. Holden wants do that. Hard."?

Why is that acceptable when spoken within the community that student comes from, but not acceptable when written in college? I'll tell you why! It is because college is a tool of cultural imperialism. Those English classes are one of many ways we systematically make things harder for those who are already disadvantaged and marginalized in society, while giving a leg up to those already advantaged and centered in society. We shouldn't put up with that crap any longer. We should  equally value the contributions from those other perfectly valid cultures. If the student summarized the book, they summarized the book. 

You need to understand: A college degrees is, first and foremost, a symbolic accomplishment essential to get ahead in current society. By making degree-attainment require that people conform to the cultural trappings of the already dominant group, you are institutionalizing the preexisting power structure and further mentally brutalizing the already-oppressed. You are telling them that who they are and where they come from isn't good enough. It is no different than imperial Britain looking down upon those who couldn't speak "The King's English", and effectively barring them from having successful lives in the colonies where their ancestors had lived for generations. Stop doing it. Examine every thought you have about how to teach. Be better.  

--------------------------------------------- that's how the argument goes anyway. 

On Tue, Jul 28, 2020 at 10:03 PM Frank Wimberly <wimberly3 at gmail.com <mailto:wimberly3 at gmail.com> > wrote:

I'm trying to remember my freshman English class.  Every other Friday we had to submit a five hundred word essay on the class readings. On alternate Fridays we had to write an in-class paragraph or two on those readings.  The readings included the following:

Catcher in the Rye by Salinger

Victory by Conrad

The Republic by Plato

All the King's Men by Warren

Brave New World by Huxley

Numerous essays on personal integrity by various authors.

I don't see that any of those had to do with unconscious racism or implicit bias unless the personal integrity essays did.  I think I had to read The Invisible Man by Ellison but that may have been in a later year in a political science or US history class at Berkeley.

All this was 54 years ago.

Frank

---
Frank C. Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz, 
Santa Fe, NM 87505

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

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