Moving to a new website

From now on, I will be posting everything on my new website:  ericgerlach.com

You can find all of the class lectures, as well as prompts for essays and reviews, on the site by choosing Lectures, and then your particular class.

BCC Unboxed: A Multiculturism Video Project

Hey everyone.  If I forget to announce this in each of my classes, I wanted to make sure that all of you know of what we are going to start at BCC.

I am going to spearhead a group this summer and coming fall for producing short videos about teaching from a multicultural perspective.  I am calling the group BCC Unboxed.  Specifically, the videos will aim to address the gap between cultures in our society and the gap between the sciences and humanities.  While I am going to take the initiative and create the first few videos based on my own lecture content, I would very much like for you to be involved as a contributor and adviser.  Being included in the group does not obligate you to do any amount of work, though initially I would like for you to review the short scripts I am putting together for the first videos for corrections, suggestions and insights.

I am planning on having the first script together by the end of June.  The first video will be about teaching from a multicultural perspective.  I have spoken with Debbie Budd, president of BCC, and I plan to give a flex day workshop for faculty in the fall on this same topic and offer the video as an additional resource that attendees will hopefully share with others.  Soon after that, I hope to create a second video about the history of eurocentrism, and then following that a third video about the history and philosophy of science from a multicultural and anti-racist perspective.  I already have most of the content completed for this in my lecture notes.

The first videos will be simple audio narration accompanied by static photographs and possibly static illustrations.  I will seek to add animation and video presentation for future videos.  We already have the technical equipment and human resources we will need at BCC for this.  If you think that any of our fellow BCC faculty, students or staff would like to be involved in the project, please let them know about it and encourage them to email me.  I am going to be contacting faculty, students and staff I know at BCC about this project myself.

Please let me know if I can include you in the group, and know that this does not obligate you to do anything.  If you choose to be in the group, I will email you short transcripts and you can reply with comments or not at your leisure.

Much love,

Eric

Violence and the Exploitation of Counter-Violence

Reading about the KKK in the South I just came upon their strategy of "violence and the subsequent exploitation of counter-violence". It strikes me that hate and the exploitation of counter-hate is equally important in human affairs. While the Klan may not be bright enough to have this as a conscious strategy, in studying sexism and racism the last few weeks for Ethics and Social & Political Philosophy it is common for a reactionary group to be labeled as the very problem they oppose. Feminists are seen as "man-hating" sexists and black and Latino groups are seen as white-hating racists. While nations such as the UK and US brutalize other countries, the reaction against it is seen as the hate and the terrorism.

It is true that everyone hates and everyone is capable of violence, so those who fight fire with fire are indeed engaged in the problematic and all-too-human. However, the real issue is the hypocrisy, the inability of human beings to see in themselves what they see clearly in others. Thus, after Klan members killed four middle aged black women with shotguns drive-by style in Chattanooga, Tennessee (1980), the black riots that followed the light jail sentence were used by the Klan as clear evidence that they stood for justice and defense of the white population. The counter-violence was used as a recruiting tool.

There is no easy solution to this problem. It may be that we will always swim upstream, but as it is with so many things in life, transparency, the ability to see all sides of what is going on, is a worthy goal and sometimes is the difference between life and death.

The Southern Strategy & Dog Whistle Politics

I was reading an article on the Southern Poverty Law Center's Hatewatch website when I found the term "Southern Strategy". I looked it up, which then led to the term "Dog Whistle Politics". This is good stuff for studying racism, which we are doing for Social & Political Philosophy as well as Ethics. Please read if you are interested. Essentially, when Nixon, Reagan, Bush I & Bush II say, "State's Rights", Southern people often hear that as, "Keep the federal government from making you interact with black people".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog-whistle_politics

Social & Political Philosophy: Postcolonialism, Fanon & Said

Colonialism & Postcolonialism

Before Europe rose and dominated the world by the mid-1700s, China and Islam were vast empires that developed technology, science, law and culture. Islam was in fact the last great contiguous land empire, stretching from Spain to China. Ironically, Chinese achievements such as ships, gunpowder and magnetic compasses, developed further by Muslims with algebra employed in such fields as cartography (mapping the world), enabled Europe to sail to Africa and the Americas, and to set up colonial empires that could be controlled in spite of separation by great distances. America became the largest slave colony in all of history, and just as Britain ruled the sea less than a century ago America now rules the skies as well as corporate economics. We can now dominate independent others. Chomsky and Zinn are two critics of American empire and its brutality, as well as the fact that “the West” is still hailed as the authoritative voice, the voice of authority and objectivity above and beyond all other cultures.

Islamic civilization was the world’s great civilization before European civilization rose, so it is the natural place to look for the progression and development of philosophy, technology, and culture before Europe, and it gave Europe an astonishing amount of culture, technology and science. In spite of this, most scholars remain entirely ignorant of Islamic achievements as we rarely look outside of ancient Greek or Roman history to find influences on modern society. There is a greater appreciation of India and China in American scholarship, one that does not acknowledge equality with Europe but which acknowledges some depth. Here are some awesome Ahadith, sayings of the prophet Mohammed, the second source of Islam after the Koran:

Go in quest of knowledge, even unto China.
It is better to teach knowledge one hour in the night than to pray straight through it.
A moment’s reflection is better than 60 years devotion.
The ink of the scholar is holier than the blood of the martyrs.

Law and protections for a diverse population were developed the most in Islam before Europe rose and took over. A woman had the right to sue her husband for divorce, and use algebra to get a percentage of his income. Nestorians and Jews fled to Islamic lands from European persecutions. Islam thus thrived as a multicultural and ‘cosmopolitan’ society. It would be centuries before Europe passed them. 1492 is a good example: it is the year that the Christian Kings of Spain and Portugal retook those lands from Muslims, and the start of the Spanish Inquisition that brutally attacked Jews, Muslims and non-Catholic Christians. Thus there is no reason to celebrate the rationality or freedom of the West over and above the rest of human history.

Postcolonialism is a movement in scholarship that argues the effects of colonialism persist in spite of decolonization. As Fanon and Said argue, the West and the white is privileged and pronounced the true humanity which knows itself while all others are marginalized and denounced as savage and ignorant.

Franz Fanon (1925 – 1961)

Franz Fanon was a philosopher, existentialist, Freudian and Marxist who began his career in psychiatry and became a revolutionary whose writings are one of the central sources of the Postcolonial school of thought along with Edward Said. Fanon’s two most famous works are the Wretched of the Earth (or Damned of the Earth, as an alternative translation of the French title) and Black Skin, White Masks. His writings have been an inspiration to many anti-racist and anti-establishment groups including the Black Panthers.

Fanon was born on the Caribbean island of Martinique, a French colony as it remains today similar to US control of Puerto Rico. Though middle class, he witnessed the racist brutality of the French military toward the African population who were descended from slaves brought by the French to Martinique to work on plantations, as Africans had been brought to Haiti by the French and to Jamaica by the British. Nevertheless, Fanon joined the French military fighting Germany and Italy in Algeria. When Germany was defeated, the white soldiers were featured in parades while the black soldiers were removed from sight. Fanon went to France and studied psychology and medicine, becoming a doctor and psychiatrist. He also studied philosophy, and attended lectures by the Phenomenologist Merleau-Ponty, former student of Husserl like Heidegger, who argued that phenomenology and existentialism must be put in the context of the human body and physical experience like Freud and later Korzybski and Piaget.

In 1952, Fanon wrote Black Skin, White Masks as an expansion of his doctorial thesis, arguing that colonialism had a destructive impact on the physical and mental health of black people. Soon after writing the book he moved to Algeria to practice psychiatry, soon becoming the head of service for a major psychiatric hospital. Fanon began experimenting with therapy that took cultural background of Arabic and black patients and the effects of racism into account. When the Algerian Revolution against the French broke out (well portrayed in the famous French film The Battle of Algiers), he sided with and secretly supported the revolutionaries as a member of the Algerian Liberation Front, providing them with medical treatment and supplies. Fanon encouraged and trained interns and nurses to support the cause, and in 1957 Fanon was deported from Algeria and the hospital dismantled. Fanon became a member of the close existentialist circle of the philosopher Jean Paul Sartre in France who followed the work of Nietzsche and Heidegger, and Sartre would later write the preface and lend his fame to The Damned of the Earth, writing famously that it was not a book for white people but white people should have the courage to read to come to a greater understanding of what is at stake for the oppressed in a world dominated by ignorant and racist first world European people.

In the Damned of the Earth, which was published only in 1961 just before his death, Fanon argued that colonialism had taught black people to interiorize racism such that they considered themselves evil and ugly and become self-destructive and violent against their fellow black people. Fanon, in accord with the existentialism of Heidegger and Sartre, saw racism as a form of lying to oneself to avoid the endless transformation of our existence and the questioning gaze of the other. The black body and mind is denigrated to affirm and celebrate the West, white culture and achievements including colonial control of the globe.

Just as Jews are marginalized as the abnormally mental human subspecies, black people are marginalized as overly physical, and thus sensual, musical, and sexual. While Marx argues that class is the central struggle, the rich oppressing the poor and the poor rising up in revolution, Fanon argues that racial inequality is the key to class oppression. Rather than merely “celebrate diversity”, all the while supporting the idea that Western culture is rational and other cultures are less rational, we must accept not only the rationality of all people but our own individual irrationality as human beings. Thus, we accept the rationality and irrationality of white, black and all people, getting beyond the Manichean categorical dualistic thinking that separates both black from white and rational from irrational.

However, going beyond the simple universal humanism of Sartre, Fanon argued that black culture asserting itself as an “other” to white culture is valuable in the struggle, so we should celebrate black culture as an independent and separate voice while celebrating human equality and unity. Rather than impose capitalism or communism, we should allow economies and nations to develop individually and see what works for each local group. Gramsci argued for the same in the wake of Stalin while imprisoned by Mussolini’s fascist regime. Through continuous bottom-up transformation of society (much like Trotsky had wanted for Soviet Russia), we can understand and enable the individual, the various cultures, and the whole.

Fanon argued that in some cases, such as the American Revolution, the Algerian Revolution, and the Haitian Revolution, violence is an appropriate means for resistance to oppression and brutality. Many Black Panther leaders and supporters, including Marcuse’s student Angela Davis, read this text in Oakland and applied it to their own violent and brutal oppression by the Oakland Police and began carrying shotguns to defend themselves and their community, technically not a crime if the weapon is unloaded and unconcealed. Soon, city ordinances were passed to make this illegal in spite of the fact that no one had considered this a threat before the Black Panthers. Fanon remained a revolutionary for the rest of his life, writing on tactics and support structures to aid African rebels and all third world people attempting to gain independence from European colonial powers. For this, there were numerous assassination attempts made on his life. It is rumored that the CIA prevented Fanon from receiving treatment for leukemia just before his death in America. In 1965, four years after Fanon’s death, Time Magazine wrote that he was “an apostle of violence” and “a prisoner of hate” after the assassination of Malcolm X. Fanon likely would have replied, “You and I both, Time Magazine”.


Edward Said (1935 – 2003)

Edward Said, like Fanon one of the central sources of Postcolonialism, was a Palestinian American and professor at Columbia University who grew up Palestinian Christian during the founding of Israel and the wars that followed. Like Chomsky, he first got tenure in another subject (Comparative Literature) before he became a famous cultural critic and hip within left leaning academia like Marcuse and Foucault. He is most famous for his book Orientalism (1978), which argues that “the Occident” an old term that has been replaced since the 1950s by “the West”, views “the Orient” as other through a Manichean lens much like Fanon describes that Said labels “Orientalism”. European white people, including scholars, identify reason and freedom with the West, as Western virtues, while marginalizing other large cultural groups such as African, Chinese, Indian and Islamic as ignorant, authoritarian, emotional, and unselfconscious. Said is particularly focused on Eurocentric prejudice against Islamic cultures and populations, criticizing the romantic portrayal of the wonders of the East by Renaissance painters as well as modern day scholarship. The East, the Orient, is presented as an alien place full of wondrous splendor but also authoritarian despots and pre-scientific irrationality.

Today, we see much of the same in pundits labeling Muslims as a violent and unreasonable people. Bush saying “They hate our freedom” rather than looking to economic oppression originally structured through colonialism and now alive and well in spite of decolonization is a perfect example. Rather than understand September 11th as a result of colonialism, it is presented as a clash of civilizations between the reasonable and free West and the ignorant and authoritarian Islamic Middle East. Asia and China, as Russia was, is seen in a similar light. Russia was the East, vs. America and Britain as the West openly in the rhetoric. My professor Ken Jowitt, a specialist in Eastern Europe during and after the fall of the Soviet Union, told a full auditorium, his political science classroom, that since the fall of the Soviet Union America needs a new enemy, and that it is either going to be Islamic terrorism or communist China. This was less than a year before September 11th. He had argued this in 1990 in a piece included in his book, New World Disorder: The Leninist Extinction, published in Berkeley. This was 10 years before September 11th, and we are still involved in multiple wars in the Middle East 10 years after.

Especially given this situation today, Said is hip on campuses around the world, his work spawning many followers including the author of the book Said and the Unsaid, a joke only funny to humanities graduate students. The TV show Lost, which names several characters after philosophers and scientists, named its Middle Eastern character Said, a name which means 'happy' in Arabic.

You can watch Said speak on YouTube. We will be watching these clips in class.

Edward Said On 'Orientalism'
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjlRR-qRkcc

Edward Said, "The Myth of the Clash of Civilizations" 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=boBzrqF4vmo

Documentary Film List

I have been asked for a list of documentaries I have used in creating and teaching Ethics, Social & Political Philosophy. Here is the list, which I will add to over time.

Italian Fascism in Color
The Russian Revolution in Color
The Sorrow and the Pity – French acceptance of Nazi occupation
The Fog of War – McNamara discusses his role in the Vietnam War
Control Room – follows Al Jazera in reporting during the Iraq War
Hearts and Minds – America’s distortions of the Vietnam War
The Trials of Henry Kissinger – Kissinger’s role in Vietnam and Latin America
War on Democracy – John Pilger shows us the Pink Tide of Latin America
South of the Border – Oliver Stone shows us the Pink Tide of Latin America
Our Brand is Crisis – US democrat strategists work in South America
American Drug War: The Last White Hope
The Corporation – how corporations are powerful and problematic
Inside Job – how Wall St. and economics professors caused the financial crisis
Life & Debt – how the US and IMF are making Jamaica poorer
The End of Poverty – how economic policy makes the poor poorer
American Anarchism
The Weather Underground – 60s radicals and violent activism
Food Matters – the poor state of healthcare and lack of nutrition awareness
Food Inc. – corporate food production and its impact on health and the environment
Supersize Me – Fast food and its effect on health and economics
The Botany of Desire – how four plants have interacted with humans over history

Social & Political Philosophy: Tribal Society & City State Politics

PRIMITIVE MAN AS PHILOSOPHER by Paul Radin

Modern Historians are supposed to look at societies other than their own free from bias and prejudice. However, historians have so far been prejudiced and assumed that aboriginal/tribal societies are innately inferior. This is due to the profound differences of social customs and because the tribes people could not stick up for themselves against the modern historian. Romanticism also played a part in sustaining the assumption that tribes people are simple children and savages, unintelligent and lacking individuality. The rise of the theory of evolution convinced many that tribes people are pre-logical and pre-individualistic because they have not reached required stages of social development, and this view has gained academic and scientific credibility.

Because of this, the most pressing need in history, sociology, psychology and other fields is to examine and question this prejudice, particularly the convictions that tribal people have a dead level of intelligence, that the individual is always submerged in the group, and that there are no thinkers or philosophers. This book particularly examines the role of intellectuals in the earliest societies.

Every human group has members who are different in their individuality and who examine life and its problems with what we can call philosophy. Languages of tribal peoples are sometimes more complex than our own and their vocabularies are sometimes just as large. Their vocabularies have words with the same abstract connotations as our own, but in spite of this there are many theorists who do not believe tribal people to be capable of abstract thought. They point out the concrete nature of words and expressions while ignoring that our own modern languages use similar concrete terms to express abstract thought.

The complexity of a society has little to do with the existence of philosophy or individual thought. Indeed, complex civilizations can often stifle or even prohibit philosophizing and the asking of deep and abstract questions.

Often, academics has held to the view that the ancient Greeks and their cultural descendents have a special kind of mentality that allowed and still allows them to think individually, critically, and philosophically, but it is not clear what the nature of this special mentality is. The best way to critically examine and correct this error is to provide examples of tribal people indulging in philosophical speculation.

Aristotle and the Greeks are called special for thinking systematically, even though all cultures transmit their thought in whole, unified systems.

Philosophical speculation flourishes most in times of crisis and change, as it did in the greatest periods of Greek and Chinese philosophy.

Throughout this book it is assumed that tribal people have the same distribution of intelligence and ability as do modern societies. This has grown from a hypothesis to a conviction through the direct experience of tribal societies by the author. The object of the book is to describe tribal society from the viewpoint of the intellectuals and thinkers of the tribe.

The intellectual often looks down on the practices of the ordinary people, but the ordinary person also looks with amusement on the distance between the real and practical world and the behavior of the scholar. It is, however, the scholar who writes the history books and so it is this perspective that we often encounter when reading about the past of this and other civilizations.

When looking at isolated practices of “magic” ritual, such as the Winnebago Native American shooting an arrow at a trail to ensure good deer hunting, it is often forgotten that this act does not guarantee success and is interwoven with many practical behaviors. If one asks the tribal individual if magic alone will bring home a deer or grow crops, they are quite amused at the lack of understanding.

Tribal people are in direct contact with their reality, while modern people are removed from many aspects of their own lives. Magic was not a world apart from physical reality, but interwoven with it such that practical and physical situations were recognized while interpreted in traditional ways. One does not ask for rain from a cloudless sky, nor seek protection for actions that are impractical or dangerously stupid. The traditional systems of thought are an aid for dealing with physical and practical reality, not a substitute for reality.

Tribal people, like advanced modern people, do and do not understand reality and the forces behind it, so they work in accord with systems that sometimes do and sometimes do not work so that generally the society and individual will be well and overcome obstacles.

Individuals have relative freedom and individuality in tribal societies. It is possible that we view the tribal individual as an automata, with no freedom or individuality, because modern life saturated with technologies has turned human individuals into automata.

It is a mistake to believe that tribal people do not have variation in ritual and belief but modern people do. There is always variations in ritual and belief amongst any people, and modern life has in fact standardized beliefs more than they ever have been.

When one draws the community together and asks about the reasons behind an aspect of culture, one will find not only variation but contradictions and arguments. This is as true of tribal beliefs as it is of modern academics and science. A community is always an agreement and disagreement of beliefs and perspectives.

All societies, tribal or modern, believe that there are immutable and permanent truths, but there is no complete agreement as to what these truths are or how they are structured or caused. Even if there is a great deal of consensus, this does not prevent radical variation in belief among individuals and minority groups. If this variation is sometimes concealed, this is due to fear of ridicule or rejection by the majority. Individuality that contrasts with the beliefs or behavior of the majority is in danger of being labeled a mistake or deviancy. It is always safer to either conform to the majority or remain silent.

Individual members of any society have to balance and integrate their individuality with society.

Sometimes it is even asserted that tribal people are so varied in belief that they cannot form coherent systems. It is often asserted that the Greeks and Europeans are “systematic thinkers” relative to others, but also that they are also free and various in thinking relative to others.

With the development of writing, a welcome oasis given the dynamic and ever-changing world, beliefs and systems of thought were able to be highly standardized. The written word was deified and identified with the unchanging way of the cosmos.


HISTORY BEGINS AT SUMER by Kramer

Sumer is the birthplace of the written word, one of the earliest city state societies. Sumer was a city state at the mouth of the Tigris Euphrates which was then taken over and incorporated into Babylon, which then was taken over by Assyria, which was then taken over by Persia. These were multicultural societies in which citizenship did not belong exclusively to one ethnicity. The primary way that cultures were dominated was, as it is today, not with war but with trade. War typically means efforts to dominate through economic means have failed.
Sumer had some of the first schools, textbooks (in science and the liberal arts), medical texts, tax reduction, wisdom proverbs, and laments. One excellent proverb is, “You go and carry off the enemy’s land, the enemy comes and carries off your land”. My favorite Sumerian lament is recorded about 3000 BCE, in which an elderly Sumerian complains that teenagers are running around and breaking laws and having sex, concluding that the world will certainly end soon.

Very important for this class, in Sumer we find the first democratic bicameral congress. In the Epic of Gilgamesh, one of the first recorded myths in human history, we read that Gilgamesh wants to go to war so he appeals to the elders of the senate. The elders do not want war because they have fragile investments in the situation, so Gilgamesh appeals to the larger and lower house and they enthusiastically accept his proposal. Gilgamesh, the king, must seek approval from the community as a whole and needs the house to override the smaller but higher senate.


MYTH TODAY by Roland Barthes

Barthes, a French thinker and literary critic, argues that any speech can be mythologized and through any medium. He uses the example of roses being given as a gesture of passion to illustrate his concept of a sign, and then describes how signs can serve myths which then become larger signs that signify other things.

At the barbershop one day, he is upset by the cover of Paris-Match (a magazine much like Newsweek & Time in America). On the cover is a young African boy in French military dress saluting. Barthes writes that the boy is clearly being depicted saluting the French flag, and the cover is meant to signify that France is a great empire in which all are equal and love the empire. Barthes writes that this boy is being made to serve his colonialist oppressors and that the image is a sign that serves a modern myth: France stands for freedom. It is a game of hide and seek with meaning. It is an open association or coherence that does not demand what it means but highly suggests what it means. In doing this, it is a deformation and distortion of the realities of French colonial Africa. It is a gesture that is deliberately misleading, alienating the meaning from the situation. It is an alibi for French colonialism.

Consider that, coupled with Radin, we may wonder whether we live in times of less or greater mythology considering the forms of media and the dislocation of modern society.

Ethics: Racism & Multiculturalism

As we discussed last time, after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 there was a shift in American culture powered by movements against sexism and racism. Today there remains much prejudice but it is covert, not overt. This means that the majority of prejudice is invisible to the privileged while a constant uphill battle to the marginalized. If you are marginalized and you point out covert racism, you are often accused of overt racism by privileged people. If you are privileged, you are accused

The best evidence against both sexism and racism is the French psychologist Piaget’s studies of Child developmental stages. Children of both genders and all ethnicities go through the same four stages of development at the same ages (1, 3, 7 and 11). Another great piece of evidence against racism in particular is an experiment where they gave urban American and rural African kids laptops and found that there was no difference in the learning times for basic games.

One of my favorite subjects is teaching against eurocentrism in academics. While the laptop experiment suggests that we all learn and think similarly regardless of culture, one of the central messages in education in America and Europe is that we belong to a special culture called “the West” which is superior to other civilizations, particularly in regards to reason and freedom. Often examples from ancient Greece are used to illustrate this superiority, and then the focus becomes modern Europe (ignoring all other cultures and the thousands of years in between the cultures of ancient Greece and modern Europe). This situation, which many like myself call eurocentric (and thus ignorant), is very recent. It came about in the last three hundred years in the wake of European success and dominance of the world. Before that time, Greeks, Romans and Europeans did not describe themselves as “the West”, nor did they claim to be superior in terms of reason or freedom relative to all other civilizations.

Greek civilization is indebted to Egyptian, Persian, Mesopotamian and Indian thought. Rome has been the ‘father’ of Christian Europe since the Roman Empire conquered much of Western Europe and converted them to Roman Catholic Christianity. How did the Greeks come to be the Grandfathers of civilization? How did the myth of “the West” happen?

The Italians, though lighter than the Romans from constant invasions from the north (the Fall of Rome and afterward), were convinced in each city state that they were the Romans, and so they depicted the Romans like themselves. They also read Greek to read the Christian bible (written in Latin and Greek) and so they depicted the Greeks as looking like the Romans. However, it was not until the late 1700s early 1800s that the Greeks were conceived as the origin of European civilization and the birthplace of rationality and modern politics. This coincides with what Hannaford tells us about the formation of racism.

This is the theory that we can disprove but we still believe, and enshrine in museums, textbooks and most importantly, fictional and nonfictional TV and movies. The last has the greatest effect. What you see your culture present is much more important than an academic argument. The eyes are much harder to doubt than the ears or the structure of an argument. (Consider: Mel Gibson having an all white cast speak Aramaic for “historical accuracy” in The Passion).

It surprises many to learn that the term “the West” came largely into use in the years following WWII, after the Holocaust showed terrible anti-Semitism. Before WWII, academics freely used the term ‘European Race’ to describe the ancient Greeks, ancient Romans, and modern Europeans equally. After the Holocaust and the Civil Rights Movement, the term became an eyesore. Academics began increasingly referring to this “race” as “The West.

All sorts of ridiculous statements in the first paragraphs of philosophy and history books show us this, where the Greeks are ‘the birthplace of reason’ without context. One of my favorite examples is the British historian who stated in the 50s that the most important event in British history was the battle at Marathon (holding out the Persian ‘Orientals’, who as Wolf points out were paying Greeks to fight the Athenians and Spartans, as they had done with the Athenians and Spartans in the past). Marathon is often cast as the birth of “the West”, even though no one, including the ancient Greeks, used the term until after WWII.


Hannaford’s Race: The History of an Idea in the West

Race seems obvious today, a fact of biology. There seem to be distinct ethnic groups that are easily divisible into recognizable races. Hannaford argues that in fact racism rose with science and modernity in the rise of Europe since the 1600s. There was, of course, always ethnocentrism (my tribe is familiar, your tribe over the hill is scary) that correspond to self-centered thinking on an individual level, but ‘black’ and ‘white’ people did not always exist. In English, ‘ras’ meant a course or current (show branching tree form, trace one branching as a ‘race’). The word did not mean a fully separate category of people until after 1700, as Europeans got wealthy beyond everyone and very successful with sciences. Today research on genetics shows that there is no definable or divisible races that can be fully separated. Rather, there is a tangle of genetic material that is mostly common to a people.

The Greeks hated Barbarians (like the Slavs, Germans and even the Romans at first) but considered the Egyptians, Phoenicians, and Persians to be civilized and were trying to imitate them and consider themselves thus civilized. Plato and Herodotus loved Egypt and considered it the root of all civilization (Timaeus) and Aristotle thought Mesopotamia was the first civilization and the birthplace of science and philosophy. Greece, like ancient Israel, was caught between these two great empires. Plato argued against ethnocentrism to give the Greeks credit as a civilized people. Aristotle argued that the Germans could never be civilized because they were an inferior race.

There is evidence that the Chinese may have been the first to consider certain women ‘white people’ (think Geishas of Japan). Soon after this the Persians were the first to consider themselves ‘white people’ in these words (‘Whites vs. the Blacks’ play by Persian playwright). Just as European civilization got most everything from Islamic civilization, including most of the texts of Plato and Aristotle, Europe could have easily gotten it’s ‘white race’ from Islam (many of whom, like top-caste Indians, still call themselves ‘white’).

Ethnic conflict was originally between Religions, not races. Thus, Europeans were not white, but ‘Christians’, and they were prejudiced and afraid of Jews and Muslims (1492, the re-conquest of Spain, the Inquisition, and Columbus, and BLUE BLOOD). As Europe developed, race came to be a solidified concept, backed by Science & History (as Barthes calls them, the two great myths). This is when historians made the Greeks and Romans part of ‘the European Race’, as opposed to the Jewish race, the Mohamedian race, the African race, and others. Often, these were paired with colors in common speak but not always. Eventually, German historians and anthropologists centered their study on Nordic and Aryan race as origin of Greek civilization, ancient Israel, and thus the civilizing force of mankind. Kant’s On the Different Races of Men (1775, one year before the Declaration of Independence), says that there are fully separable races and mixing is bad as it degrades the quality of a race.

This thinking has dominated European thought until only recently, and it remains covert within academic understandings today. After the Holocaust, white Christians and Ashkenaz Jews could no longer speak of ‘European Race’ comfortably, so Europe became ‘The West’ over a period of time. We still speak this way today, thought we all know ‘West’ means ‘white’.

Famous joke about European nations’ strengths and faults:
In Heaven, the police are British, the chefs are Italian, the mechanics are German, the lovers are French and everything is organized by the Swiss.
In Hell, the police are German, the chefs are British, the mechanics are French, the lovers are Swiss, and everything is organized by the Italians.
This old joke shows us that Europeans did not consider themselves to be a single race with a single character until very recently. In America, where European peoples blended together to make “white” people, these differences disappeared while color based racism remains today.

Great Moments in American Racism:
The Jews and Muslims are best shown in the 1492 example (killing Jews upside-down, lending).
The Treatment of the Native Americans (reservations today).
The African Slave trade, jim crow and black marginalized communities today.
The taking of Latin America by America, Zoot Suit Riots of 1943, and domination today.
The Chinese exclusion act and post WWII ‘Asian Problem’ (dragon lady syndrome).

Bill O’Reilly went to a restraint with Al Sharpton, and said on the radio that black people have gotten very civilized in the last year or so. Roland Marin, correspondent for CNN says: obviously (bill O’Reilly) doesn’t hang out with many black people.

Racism in America Today:

Black and Latino people are 3 times likelier to be poor, on average earn 40% less that the average white person and have ONE TENTH the net worth.

Racial profiling by police criminalizes the marginalized, keeping them marginal (DWB).

Redlining is the practice of not lending to particular people or selling new homes to let people get out of certain areas based on the area from which they apply.

In the 1940s most white people supported segregation. In 1970, one fourth did. Now, it is estimated that 20-50% of white people agree with racist stereotypes openly, and often do not think of this as racist but rather simple observation of culture and reality (like O’Reilly).

Racism has real costs: study in the American Journal of Health estimated that “over 886,00 deaths could have been prevented from 1991 to 2000 if African Americans had the same health care as white Americans”, stemming from lack of sufficient insurance, poor services, and reluctance to seek care (that is almost a million man march in itself).

In the last article in your reader, called White Privilege, there is a great list that spells out what privileged vs. marginalized means in terms of racism in America today. White people can be in the company of other white people in most environments, can move and travel without fear, can shop without being harassed, can hear about their people’s achievements and how it makes the world a better place while being educated and entertained, can swear and dress in old clothes without people thinking white people are stupid or evil, do not have to speak for their race in particular (remember the Myth of the Model Minority article), can criticize the government and our way of life without fear of becoming an alien, can get pulled over or audited without fear of discrimination, and can get medical and legal help without fear of discrimination.

The media does not cover racism or talk about it as a problem at all, just like the Democratic party (including Obama if you listen to his campaign speeches). Just days ago, there was a study published by Brandeis University in Boston that got coverage by the British newspaper the Guardian and many left leaning websites (many who quoted the Guardian article) but got NO COVERAGE by CNN, the Chronicle, The LA Times, or the Chicago Tribune. The NY Times mentioned the study in the economics blog, which is in the opinion section and not considered an official article. The study shows that even as class differences have widened, white people have made five times the economic gains that black people have made across all economic groups. The study shows that not only have the economic policies of the last 25 years favored the rich and privileged, but that racism is a real economic barrier to black and latino people.

On a final note, we must consider the legislation in Arizona right now. Many are now aware of the “breathing while latino” law that would require police to question latino people they suspect of being illegal immigrants. There is another law, however, that was signed by the Arizona governor making it illegal for any course in a public school to “advocate ethnic solidarity”. The law is aimed at teachers who teach their students about latino cultural heritage and the brutality that latinos endure in America. The governor says that these teachers are racist and are telling their latino students, falsely, that latinos are an oppressed minority. The bill starts off saying it is illegal for teachers to “promote the overthrow of the United States government”, and then shifts to saying that it is equally illegal to teach classes that “promote resentment toward a race or class of people”.

Cucumber, Ox, Sign and Substitution

In copying an article for inter-library loan, I stumbled upon a hilarious article.
Here are the first two paragraphs:

* * * * * *

Ralf Norrman:

A Note on the Cucumber-Sacrifice among the Nuer

In Nuer Religion Evans-Pritchard relates in detail how the Nuer, who normally - or at least ideally - sacrifice an ox, will sometimes sacrifice a cucumber instead, if an ox is not available. When a cucumber is substituted for an ox the sacrificial ceremony is nevertheless carried out as if the cucumber were an ox, and the fruit is spoken of as "the ox" (or, strictly speaking, "the cow", yang, which is the standard term on such occasions).

I believe that Evans-Pritchard's analysis of the mechanism of signification involved in the custom gives a valuable insight into this type of phenomenon. I wish to make a further contribution to the picture of Nuer sacrifice by considering briefly one specific detail in the sacrificial ceremony, namely the nature of the cucumber as a sign. My thesis is that the cucumber is an intrinsically appropriate symbol in the context; that it has natural suitability for its role as a sacrificial victim, specifically as a substitute for an ox - and ultimately, above all, as a substitute for the life (or lives) of the sacrificer(s).


* * * * * *

Consider the double substitution going on in these two paragraphs. In the first paragraph, the Nuer substitute a cucumber for an ox. In the second paragraph, a scholar substitutes a sign for a cucumber.

Which substitution is more deceptive? I imagine that the Nuer, a group of tribes from Ethiopia and Sudan, understand that the cucumber is not actually an ox much more than the scholar understands that the cucumber is not in fact an abstract academic conception of signs and signification.

Which substitution helps its own tribe more? The sentence, "I believe that Evans-Pritchard's analysis of the mechanism of signification involved in the custom gives a valuable insight into this type of phenomenon" speaks for itself. I propose that the Nuer have a more immediate grasp of substitution and signification than the scholar, at least in so far as the scholar believes he has offered us new insight while in fact he has translated the Nuer sacrifice into academic-speak and done little else. If everything is a sign (thanks a lot, Saussure) the author is not offering us much of a thesis, signification, or sacrifice.

My Teaching Philosophy (for Teaching Philosophy)

Typically the study of philosophy, history and science in America, Europe and Australia is eurocentric. Lectures and texts focus on the achievements of "the West" (ancient Greece, ancient Rome, the Italian Renaissance, the European enlightenment and modern nation states). Instead, we should study the achievements and problems of all human cultures, European and non-European alike, to understand ourselves.

Typically the study of philosophy, history and science removes religion as irrelevant. Both religious and non-religious people would rather ignore religion and leave their own beliefs unchallenged. Instead, we should study all cultures of human thought, religious and non-religious alike, to understand ourselves.

Typically the study of philosophy, history and science encourages us to identify with "rational" cultures rather than "irrational" cultures. It is consistently asserted that "the West" is distinguished from other cultures by rationality, individuality and a scientific mentality. Instead, the goal should be to learn from and critically engage with all cultures of thought so that we can increasingly think for ourselves.

From artdaily.org, a photo of a 4,300 year old Egyptian tomb. Notice the dark red/brown skin color of the Egyptians.

Ethics Lecture May 21: Racism and Eurocentrism

BCC: Ethics
Eric Gerlach
5/21/2010


LECTURE ON RACISM AND EUROCENTRISM

As we discussed last time, after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 there was a shift in American culture powered by movements against sexism and racism. Today there remains much prejudice but it is covert, not overt. This means that the majority of prejudice is invisible to the privileged while a constant uphill battle to the marginalized. If you are marginalized and you point out covert racism, you are often accused of overt racism by privileged people. If you are privileged, you are accused

The best evidence against both sexism and racism is the French psychologist Piaget’s studies of Child developmental stages. Children of both genders and all ethnicities go through the same four stages of development at the same ages (1, 3, 7 and 11). Another great piece of evidence against racism in particular is an experiment where they gave urban American and rural African kids laptops and found that there was no difference in the learning times for basic games.

One of my favorite subjects is teaching against eurocentrism in academics. While the laptop experiment suggests that we all learn and think similarly regardless of culture, one of the central messages in education in America and Europe is that we belong to a special culture called “the West” which is superior to other civilizations, particularly in regards to reason and freedom. Often examples from ancient Greece are used to illustrate this superiority, and then the focus becomes modern Europe (ignoring all other cultures and the thousands of years in between the cultures of ancient Greece and modern Europe). This situation, which many like myself call eurocentric (and thus ignorant), is very recent. It came about in the last three hundred years in the wake of European success and dominance of the world. Before that time, Greeks, Romans and Europeans did not describe themselves as “the West”, nor did they claim to be superior in terms of reason or freedom relative to all other civilizations.

Greek civilization is indebted to Egyptian, Persian, Mesopotamian and Indian thought. Rome has been the ‘father’ of Christian Europe since the Roman Empire conquered much of Western Europe and converted them to Roman Catholic Christianity. How did the Greeks come to be the Grandfathers of civilization? How did the myth of “the West” happen?

The Italians, though lighter than the Romans from constant invasions from the north (the Fall of Rome and afterward), were convinced in each city state that they were the Romans, and so they depicted the Romans like themselves. They also read Greek to read the Christian bible (written in Latin and Greek) and so they depicted the Greeks as looking like the Romans. However, it was not until the late 1700s early 1800s that the Greeks were conceived as the origin of European civilization and the birthplace of rationality and modern politics. This coincides with what Hannaford tells us about the formation of racism.

This is the theory that we can disprove but we still believe, and enshrine in museums, textbooks and most importantly, fictional and nonfictional TV and movies. The last has the greatest effect. What you see your culture present is much more important than an academic argument. The eyes are much harder to doubt than the ears or the structure of an argument. (Consider: Mel Gibson having an all white cast speak Aramaic for “historical accuracy” in The Passion).

It surprises many to learn that the term “the West” came largely into use in the years following WWII, after the Holocaust showed terrible anti-Semitism. Before WWII, academics freely used the term ‘European Race’ to describe the ancient Greeks, ancient Romans, and modern Europeans equally. After the Holocaust and the Civil Rights Movement, the term became an eyesore. Academics began increasingly referring to this “race” as “The West.

All sorts of ridiculous statements in the first paragraphs of philosophy and history books show us this, where the Greeks are ‘the birthplace of reason’ without context. One of my favorite examples is the British historian who stated in the 50s that the most important event in British history was the battle at Marathon (holding out the Persian ‘Orientals’, who as Wolf points out were paying Greeks to fight the Athenians and Spartans, as they had done with the Athenians and Spartans in the past). Marathon is often cast as the birth of “the West”, even though no one, including the ancient Greeks, used the term until after WWII.


Hannaford’s Race: The History of an Idea in the West

Race seems obvious today, a fact of biology. There seem to be distinct ethnic groups that are easily divisible into recognizable races. Hannaford argues that in fact racism rose with science and modernity in the rise of Europe since the 1600s. There was, of course, always ethnocentrism (my tribe is familiar, your tribe over the hill is scary) that correspond to self-centered thinking on an individual level, but ‘black’ and ‘white’ people did not always exist. In English, ‘ras’ meant a course or current (show branching tree form, trace one branching as a ‘race’). The word did not mean a fully separate category of people until after 1700, as Europeans got wealthy beyond everyone and very successful with sciences. Today research on genetics shows that there is no definable or divisible races that can be fully separated. Rather, there is a tangle of genetic material that is mostly common to a people.

The Greeks hated Barbarians (like the Slavs, Germans and even the Romans at first) but considered the Egyptians, Phoenicians, and Persians to be civilized and were trying to imitate them and consider themselves thus civilized. Plato and Herodotus loved Egypt and considered it the root of all civilization (Timaeus) and Aristotle thought Mesopotamia was the first civilization and the birthplace of science and philosophy. Greece, like ancient Israel, was caught between these two great empires. Plato argued against ethnocentrism to give the Greeks credit as a civilized people. Aristotle argued that the Germans could never be civilized because they were an inferior race.

There is evidence that the Chinese may have been the first to consider certain women ‘white people’ (think Geishas of Japan). Soon after this the Persians were the first to consider themselves ‘white people’ in these words (‘Whites vs. the Blacks’ play by Persian playwright). Just as European civilization got most everything from Islamic civilization, including most of the texts of Plato and Aristotle, Europe could have easily gotten it’s ‘white race’ from Islam (many of whom, like top-caste Indians, still call themselves ‘white’).

Ethnic conflict was originally between Religions, not races. Thus, Europeans were not white, but ‘Christians’, and they were prejudiced and afraid of Jews and Muslims (1492, the re-conquest of Spain, the Inquisition, and Columbus, and BLUE BLOOD). As Europe developed, race came to be a solidified concept, backed by Science & History (as Barthes calls them, the two great myths). This is when historians made the Greeks and Romans part of ‘the European Race’, as opposed to the Jewish race, the Mohamedian race, the African race, and others. Often, these were paired with colors in common speak but not always. Eventually, German historians and anthropologists centered their study on Nordic and Aryan race as origin of Greek civilization, ancient Israel, and thus the civilizing force of mankind. Kant’s On the Different Races of Men (1775, one year before the Declaration of Independence), says that there are fully separable races and mixing is bad as it degrades the quality of a race.

This thinking has dominated European thought until only recently, and it remains covert within academic understandings today. After the Holocaust, white Christians and Ashkenaz Jews could no longer speak of ‘European Race’ comfortably, so Europe became ‘The West’ over a period of time. We still speak this way today, thought we all know ‘West’ means ‘white’.

Famous joke about European nations’ strengths and faults:
In Heaven, the police are British, the chefs are Italian, the mechanics are German, the lovers are French and everything is organized by the Swiss.
In Hell, the police are German, the chefs are British, the mechanics are French, the lovers are Swiss, and everything is organized by the Italians.
This old joke shows us that Europeans did not consider themselves to be a single race with a single character until very recently. In America, where European peoples blended together to make “white” people, these differences disappeared while color based racism remains today.

Great Moments in American Racism
The Jews and Muslims are best shown in the 1492 example (killing Jews upside-down, lending).
The Treatment of the Native Americans (reservations today).
The African Slave trade, jim crow and black marginalized communities today.
The taking of Latin America by America, Zoot Suit Riots of 1943, and domination today.
The Chinese exclusion act and post WWII ‘Asian Problem’ (dragon lady syndrome).

Bill O’Reilly went to a restraint with Al Sharpton, and said on the radio that black people have gotten very civilized in the last year or so. Roland Marin, correspondent for CNN says: obviously (bill O’Reilly) doesn’t hang out with many black people.

Racism in America Today:

Black and Latino people are 3 times likelier to be poor, on average earn 40% less that the average white person and have ONE TENTH the net worth.

Racial profiling by police criminalizes the marginalized, keeping them marginal (DWB).

Redlining is the practice of not lending to particular people or selling new homes to let people get out of certain areas based on the area from which they apply.

In the 1940s most white people supported segregation. In 1970, one fourth did. Now, it is estimated that 20-50% of white people agree with racist stereotypes openly, and often do not think of this as racist but rather simple observation of culture and reality (like O’Reilly).

Racism has real costs: study in the American Journal of Health estimated that “over 886,00 deaths could have been prevented from 1991 to 2000 if African Americans had the same health care as white Americans”, stemming from lack of sufficient insurance, poor services, and reluctance to seek care (that is almost a million man march in itself).

In the last article in your reader, called White Privilege, there is a great list that spells out what privileged vs. marginalized means in terms of racism in America today. White people can be in the company of other white people in most environments, can move and travel without fear, can shop without being harassed, can hear about their people’s achievements and how it makes the world a better place while being educated and entertained, can swear and dress in old clothes without people thinking white people are stupid or evil, do not have to speak for their race in particular (remember the Myth of the Model Minority article), can criticize the government and our way of life without fear of becoming an alien, can get pulled over or audited without fear of discrimination, and can get medical and legal help without fear of discrimination.

The media does not cover racism or talk about it as a problem at all, just like the Democratic party (including Obama if you listen to his campaign speeches). Just days ago, there was a study published by Brandeis University in Boston that got coverage by the British newspaper the Guardian and many left leaning websites (many who quoted the Guardian article) but got NO COVERAGE by CNN, the Chronicle, The LA Times, or the Chicago Tribune. The NY Times mentioned the study in the economics blog, which is in the opinion section and not considered an official article. The study shows that even as class differences have widened, white people have made five times the economic gains that black people have made across all economic groups. The study shows that not only have the economic policies of the last 25 years favored the rich and privileged, but that racism is a real economic barrier to black and latino people.

On a final note, we must consider the legislation in Arizona right now. Many are now aware of the “breathing while latino” law that would require police to question latino people they suspect of being illegal immigrants. There is another law, however, that was signed by the Arizona governor Tuesday of last week making it illegal for any course in a public school to “advocate ethnic solidarity”. The law is aimed at teachers who teach their students about latino cultural heritage and the brutality that latinos endure in America. The governor says that these teachers are racist and are telling their latino students, falsely, that latinos are an oppressed minority. The bill starts off saying it is illegal for teachers to “promote the overthrow of the United States government”, and then shifts to saying that it is equally illegal to teach classes that “promote resentment toward a race or class of people”.

Teaching Multiculturalism, Not Eurocentrism

This is a basic guide to learning and teaching from a multicultural view, not a eurocentric view. I hope that our understandings of history, science, philosophy and all areas of study progress from eurocentrism to multiculturalism.


The Eurocentric View of the Ancient World:

Ancient Greece was the birthplace of the Western mind and culture, distinct from others in critical rational inquiry and diverse individual freedom.

The Multicultural View of the Ancient World:

All ancient cultures had critical rational inquiry and diverse individual freedom. Ancient cultures, including ancient Greece, were neither exceptional nor perfect in the exercise of reason and freedom.


The Eurocentric View of the Modern World:

Modern Europe is the rise and success of the Western mind and culture, distinct from others in critical rational inquiry and diverse individual freedom.

The Multicultural View of the Modern World:

All modern cultures have critical rational inquiry and diverse individual freedom. Modern cultures, including modern Europe, are neither exceptional nor perfect in the exercise of reason and freedom.


The Eurocentric View of Trade and Cultural Influence:

Ancient cultures had little contact or trade. Thus, there was little cross-cultural influence in the ancient world. Ancient Greece, ancient Rome and modern Europe share the same culture and so influenced each other. In modern times Europeans opened the world to international trade.

The Multicultural View of Trade and Cultural Influence:

Ancient cultures had much contact and trade with each other. Thus, there was much cross-cultural influence in the ancient world. Ancient Greece, ancient Rome and modern Europe are one example of a chain of cross-cultural influences. In modern times Europeans took over trade that was already international since ancient times.


The Eurocentric View of Mathematics:

The great discoveries in mathematics were made by the ancient Greeks and modern Europeans.

The Multicultural View of Mathematics:

Much of the ancient world, including Greece and Rome, shared the Egyptian system of mathematics. Islamic Algebra, which took much from Indian mathematics, replaced the Egyptian system in modern times because it was far more useful and precise.


The Eurocentric View of Science and Technology:

The great discoveries in science and mechanics were made by the ancient Greeks and modern Europeans.

The Multicultural View of Science and Technology:

Much of ancient science and mechanics were discovered by the Babylonians, Persians and Egyptians. The Chinese and Muslims made great leaps in science and mechanics just before the great leaps of modern Europe.


The Eurocentric View of Philosophy:

Ancient Greece was a philosophical culture, and ancient Rome and modern Europe share this culture. Thus, Western culture is more critical and skeptical than other cultures.

The Multicultural View of Philosophy:

All cultures have philosophers, critics and skeptics, even though these thinkers are often counter-cultural and go against the dominant culture as they did in ancient Greece, ancient Rome and modern Europe. Western culture is not distinctly philosophical.


The Eurocentric View of Politics:

Ancient Greece was the first democratic culture, and ancient Rome and modern Europe share this culture.

The Multicultural View of Politics:

Since ancient Sumer, most societies have had a democratic body or group decision process that supported the rulers in decision making, even though this body was often composed of land-owning elites as it was in ancient Greece and Rome.