The Washington Post has this article on 'Whiteness Studies.' Read the article for a summary of the academic idiocy which is "whiteness studies." But there are some curiosities in the article, which might lead one to infer that the author has some kind of agenda. Let me illustrate:
But opponents say whiteness studies has already done that. David Horowitz, a conservative social critic who is white, said whiteness studies is leftist philosophy spiraling out of control. "Black studies celebrates blackness, Chicano studies celebrates Chicanos, women's studies celebrates women, and white studies attacks white people as evil," Horowitz said.
And:
Jya Plavin, a 20-year-old sophomore who is white, said the course "was really, really hard . . . both personally and as a white person, because you really want to take the focus off you and your whiteness."
Other students are identified by race.
The article asks the questions about how the Irish became "white," while asians and hispanics aren't. First, the Irish had about a hundred year head start on the process. For that matter, the teacher - a Ms. Avakian - has an ethnicity with a story that proves my point. Armenians came to Fresno in the early Twentieth Century. It was quite common for restrictions in deed to forbid sales of property to individuals "belonging to peoples who were subjects of the Ottoman Empire" until the 1950s. One local story goes that because Armenians were excluded from certain country clubs, they formed there own and excluded the Jews. Second, the question assumes an incorrect premise. Who says that Asians and Hispanics aren't "white," whatever that means. My high school buddy and post-college roommate tells the story that when he was dating a women of German ethnicity, who eventually became his wife, they went to a dim sum place in San Francisco. After a time, the woman looked around and whispered to my friend, "Rick, we're the only white people in here." Rick - a Chinese-American - whispered back "look again."
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