223 Comments

Commenting has been turned off for this post
Elana's avatar

This type of post is what made me subscribe to FdB initially. My dad was a lefty public school social studies teacher in NYC. I grew up with the notion that unions and tenure were there to protect teachers and professors from "the man" -- the administrators (translation: the conservatives). He passed away in 2015 but I wish he were alive today to see that those entities are needed to protect teachers and professors from the left these days. The left -- we are eating our own. I don't get it. I feel so bad for those in academia these days. I can't imagine what it's like to teach in this environment. Eggshells everywhere.

Expand full comment
Daniel T's avatar

This point on how it doesn't lead to the elevation of the opinions of the actually oppressed is really one of the worst parts of this.

I remember a few years ago when this was breaking through suddenly being casually accused of racism for such things like not voting for Hilary. What was weird is that these were people who had lived the most lilywhite lives possible. Until I graduated law school I spent most of my life around POC, Black people particularly. I was raised in a church that was 50% Black. I worked lots of blue collar jobs. I interacted with a lot of Black people, few of whom were college educated, none of whom were from elite institutions. All of whom were actual human beings with a wide diversity of thoughts and opinions, but broadly to the right of me. Meanwhile, here's white people (or people claiming POC status with no actual real world experience as a POC) stealing their mantle to spout a bunch of things they probably wouldn't be saying.

But I don't think it's out of malice or duplicity. Because when I'd ask what Black people they actually know it would almost always be someone they went to school with, another PMC, another elite institution graduate. So in their life experience, this is actually what Black people believe. They actually do think LatinX is the preferred term because that's what a half Colombian in their PhD program told them, and they haven't had a conversation with Guadalupe and Angel because they eat at TGI Friday's and shop at Wal-Mart and really they find them as icky as they do white working class people.

I don't think what we're seeing with "marginalized voices" (lol) is that different from what happens with white people. It's just replacing the voices of working people with those of elites because we professionalized society.

Expand full comment

No posts