[Linganth] It turns out that Jane Hill is white(!)

[Frank Bechter]

Critical scholars, take a critical look at your own discursive practices.
If the question is how to get the helpful message across, be willing to see
your own bad chess moves. We see in this piece,
http://jezebel.com/watch-these-two-white-ladies-freak-out-about-asus-white-1681368338,
that Fox leads with a string of specific words -- indeed, a string of
specific *types* of words -- found in the *course description* of the
disputed course, U.S. Race Theory and the Problem of Whiteness:
"... postcolonialist, psychoanalytic, deconstructionist, feminist, new
historicist." The anchor omits the lead phrase, "Major critical schools of
recent decades," so as to make the wash of hyper-intellectual terms as
incoherent as possible. They are as alienating as possible, thus allowing
any construal of "whiteness" or "problem" to fly. One cannot stop Fox and
misguided students from selectively omitting phrases, but one should wonder
whether the string of words that Fox did latch onto for its own purposes
are actually helpful in any other way, i.e., in the goal of greater
critical awareness in the world at large, or especially in a course
description. If your goal is to equip students with tools to fight
institutional racism and disenfranchisement, these terms are not helpful.
They are not tools. To the contrary, they -- especially when you rattle
them off all in a row -- are the very discursive forms which can ensure, in
the minds of many readers, your complete irrelevance and hauteur. To me,
they ensure that you probably don't know what you're talking about. If
critical scholarship is to be useful in the world (which, of course, need
not be its function), then hit hard in your advertisements of it, explain
any big term you use, or simply don't use it. Realize what you're up
against. If a wash of such terms actually attracts select students and
colleagues who are content to have this discourse remain provincial,
consider how many more you will attract with terms that are designed to
arrest a much bigger audience, which hopefully is the real goal.

Frank Bechter
Charlottesville, VA

On Thu, Feb 5, 2015 at 12:00 PM, Matthew Bernius <mbernius at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Fri, Jan 30, 2015 at 12:01 PM, Peterson, Mark <petersm2 at miamioh.edu>
> wrote:
>
>> What we think of as "objective" journalism evolved in a particular
>> historical and economic context. Before that, it was not at all uncommon to
>> have the Republican and Democratic newspapers in the same city, each
>> sniping at different targets the other supported.
>
>
> And to that point, when one looks at the entire history of American
> Journalism, the "objective period" (which I'd argue we are approaching the
> end of) is more of a historical anachronism rather than the norm. To Mark's
> point, the reality is that the Fox News approach is, in many respects,
> closer to the traditional form of the press.
>
> Great discussion all,
>
> - Matt
>
> -----------------------------
> Matthew Bernius
> mBernius at gMail.com | http://www.mattbernius.com | @mattBernius
> My calendar: http://bit.ly/hNWEII
>
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