Dear Social Justice Warriors of Yale...

[WaylanderToo]

Now all they need to do is not treat every black youth as a potential criminal.

Do they though?

 

[Brian G Turner]

Do they though?

Racial Profiling - the process of being subjected to a stop and search on a routine basis, for being young and black.

I don't know about anyone else, but I've never been pulled over by the police just for being a white person driving a car.

I have far less in common with Coleridge (or Hardy, or Milton) than I do with an ethnically Asian woman who grew up in Canada in the 20th century.

Culturally, perhaps, but perhaps not socially. Do other Canadians routinely ask if you're really Canadian? 21 Questions Asian People Are Sick Of Answering

raceclassandgender

I know your intention is to refer to the more extreme liberal views, but by using that term there is a danger of being misinterpreted as denigrating anything relating to race, class, or gender. Just FYI.

I advocate not an exclusive focus on the literary canon, but certainly an emphasis on it, in English studies, particularly on the undergraduate level.

That sounds like a very common-sense approach. I presume literature studies is one area where a good tutor can tailor the course to any perceived interests and needs of their students.

 

[galanx]

Really, how can these people question an institution which admitted its first black student 142 years after its founding, and banned women for the first 86% of its history? Though marginally better for African-Americans than Harvard (1636-1870), or Princeton (blacks 1746 to...1951; Princeton, women 1969).

Yes, students studying English literature should be exposed to the great works of the past, which were by white males, because it was a (blue-veined, pasty) white patriarchal culture. They should also have to take a compulsory course of equal depth on "everybody else": Commonwealth countries, world Englishes, women, minorites in English-speaking countries.

 

[galanx]

"...to deliberately include literatures relating to gender, race, sexuality, ableism, and ethnicity”.

Actually between The Merchant of Venice, Othello, The Taming of the Shrew, Twelfth Night, The Tempest, Richard III, and the fair youth of the Sonnets, you could meet all their demands just doing Shakespeare.

 

[MWagner]

Culturally, perhaps, but perhaps not socially. Do other Canadians routinely ask if you're really Canadian? 21 Questions Asian People Are Sick Of Answering

I'd get the same questions asked about me in China, no doubt. But I don't see what either situation has to do with literature and culture. Do people want to see ignorance and resentment depicted in classical literature? Why?

 

[Extollager]

Do they though?

What are we talking about here? If we are talking about cops in black neighborhoods stopping young men, well, yes, it's likely that the young men will be black. A lot of the cops will be too. I don't suppose I would like being stopped and questioned. On the other hand I would like seeing violent crime reduced in my neighborhood.

The Nationwide Crime Wave Is Building

 

[tinkerdan]

You need to find links that don't require subscriptions, especially if you're trying to make a point.

What are we talking about here? If we are talking about cops in black neighborhoods stopping young men, well, yes, it's likely that the young men will be black. A lot of the cops will be too. I don't suppose I would like being stopped and questioned. On the other hand I would like seeing violent crime reduced in my neighborhood.

The Nationwide Crime Wave Is Building

Unless the point is that we all need to subscribe to the WSJ

Nationwide Crime Wave Confirms The Ferguson Effect

Anyway; does anyone else get the feeling this thread keeps slanting toward world affairs and less literary fiction?
I'm just askin'.

 

[Cathbad]

I don't suppose I would like being stopped and questioned. On the other hand I would like seeing violent crime reduced in my neighborhood.

If you're white, it's unlikely you would be stopped, searched and questioned. And since you would be the one out of place (assuming a black majority neighborhood), don't you find that strange?

 

[tinkerdan]

I am white, and when I was 17 in 1969 I made a wrong exit on a highway in Detroit, Michigan and ended up in a predominantly black neighborhood. I think I would have enjoyed stopping ,searching, and questioning so I could find my way out.

If you're white, it's unlikely you would be stopped, searched and questioned. And since you would be the one out of place (assuming a black majority neighborhood), don't you find that strange?

As it was a nice black gentleman notice that I was out of place and he came and questioned me with searching eyes if that counts. He helped me find my way out.

More recently a similar thing happened when visiting Minneapolis Minnesota. Come to think of it those must have been two angels.

Anyway it reminds me of something in Dumas' Three Musketeers.
'Oh, does it?'
No not really but we need to get back to literature somehow.
'Oh, I didn't see Dumas in that list.'
We should ask someone then, 'Is Dumas in that list?'

Why do I feel like I'm talking to myself.

 

[Extollager]

If you're white, it's unlikely you would be stopped, searched and questioned. And since you would be the one out of place (assuming a black majority neighborhood), don't you find that strange?

You may be right, but I'm not able to take your word for it -- no offense.

 

[Extollager]

Anyway; does anyone else get the feeling this thread keeps slanting toward world affairs and less literary fiction?
I'm just askin'.

You're right. Sorry. I'll back off on the extraliterary overtures, though I might respond to some if any more are made here.

 

[Aetius]

Well considering you can get a law degree from Oxford without studying criminal law, due to "triggering", avoiding Milton is the least of the current university generations problems.

Oh course exactly how a law firm will treat a degree that involves no criminal law will be...interesting.

 

[WaylanderToo]

Well considering you can get a law degree from Oxford without studying criminal law, due to "triggering", avoiding Milton is the least of the current university generations problems.

Oh course exactly how a law firm will treat a degree that involves no criminal law will be...interesting.

that is too pathetic for words, come on - you have to be joking there. Please tell me you're joking.

 

[svalbard]

Just back from seeing a one man play about George Bernard Shaw. He was a bit of a SJW in his day.

 

[svalbard]

As was Oscar Wilde come to think of it.

 

[Brian G Turner]

Well considering you can get a law degree from Oxford without studying criminal law, due to "triggering"

that is too pathetic for words, come on - you have to be joking there. Please tell me you're joking.

This was the coverage in the Daily Mail:
Oxford law students too ‘fragile’ to hear of violent crime

I had a friend who, at 16, did her school "work experience" at a local solicitors. One of their cases happened to be the torture and mutilation of a local prostitute. My friend wasn't too happy about being regularly shown explicit post mortem photographs of the case.

If that's the sort of thing covered in the lectures in question, I could fully understand the usefulness of trigger warnings. The subject of law covers a whole range of areas to specialise in.

 

[WaylanderToo]

This was the coverage in the Daily Mail:
Oxford law students too ‘fragile’ to hear of violent crime

I had a friend who, at 16, did her school "work experience" at a local solicitors. One of their cases happened to be the torture and mutilation of a local prostitute. My friend wasn't too happy about being regularly shown explicit post mortem photographs of the case.

If that's the sort of thing covered in the lectures in question, I could fully understand the usefulness of trigger warnings. The subject of law covers a whole range of areas to specialise in.

Sorry chap I can't agree with you here. I do honestly feel for your friend (since I'd be exactly the same as her) but if you find certain things unpleasant then may that is not the career path for you. I'd love to have earned the money of a premiership footballer, played rugby for England - I didn't/couldn't because (quite frankly) I was more than a little crap (compared to that standard) & lazy. The sooner people realise that there are things that they can't do or are not cut out to do the better off we'll all be

 

[Nick B]

I don't know about anyone else, but I've never been pulled over by the police just for being a white person driving a car.

.

I have. 3 times in fact. Ive been pulled over 3 times in my life, twice had to take all my driving documents to the police station, and once having to argue (after being breathalised) that yes, the police officer would in fact probably need to accelerate to 55mph to catch up with me in a 30mph zone, since she was stopped, and I was travelling at 30mph. Possibly physics wasn't her strong point.

My brother was followed, at walking pace, by a police car down the street where he lives. Maybe it was suspicious because to walk along a quiet street after 11pm. He does look like a hard bas***d, but I don't think that is illegal yet. They even sat outside his house for 10 minutes when he went in.

Though, maybe it was social profiling after all. We are ginger. And have beards.

 

[galanx]

I was more disturbed by this

One undergraduate studying English was given a warning about Robert Lowell’s poem For The Union Dead, because it contains a racial epithet.

She said: ‘We were warned that the poem contained a racial slur and that we could leave the room before it was read out or cover it up on the page.’

The poem is about the monument to Robert Shaw and the 54th Massachusetts Infantry, the African-American regiment depicted in the movie "Glory" .

The monument shows the black soldiers marching to war; the words on it are:

The White Officers taking life and honor in their hands cast in their lot with men of a despised race unproven in war and risked death as inciters of servile insurrection if taken prisoners besides encountering all the common perils of camp march and battle. The Black rank and file volunteered when disaster clouded the Union Cause. Served without pay for eighteen months till given that of white troops. Faced threatened enslavement if captured. Were brave in action. Patient under heavy and dangerous labors. And cheerful amid hardships and privations. Together they gave to the Nation and the World undying proof that Americans of African descent possess the pride, courage and devotion of the patriot soldier. One hundred and eighty thousand such Americans enlisted under the Union Flag in MDCCCLXIII-MDCCCLXV.

The 'racial slur' is an attack on the people who denigrated these heroes

Shaw's father wanted no monument
except the ditch,
where his son's body was thrown
and lost with his "niggers."

Later, the poem- written in 1960- references the Civil Rights struggle ongoing at the time, making the link between the past and what still remained/remains to be done

When I crouch to my television set,
the drained faces of Negro school-children rise like balloons.

To say (presumably) black students should be excused from reading this because it contains the word 'nigger' is like saying they shouldn't learn about the NAACP because the CP stands for 'colored people'. Crazy.

For the Union Dead | Academy of American Poets

 

[WaylanderToo]

I have. 3 times in fact. Ive been pulled over 3 times in my life, twice had to take all my driving documents to the police station, and once having to argue (after being breathalised) that yes, the police officer would in fact probably need to accelerate to 55mph to catch up with me in a 30mph zone, since she was stopped, and I was travelling at 30mph. Possibly physics wasn't her strong point.

[O/T] the amount of times I've read things like this ^^ "the p/o had to accelerate up to 120mph to catch you..." well yes if I'm going down a dual carriage-way at 70ish to catch me up from a stationary position you'd have to go quite fast to overtake/catch me up. Baffles me why this is even repo.... ahhhh it's an emotional call to try and infer that the person being chased (notice not caught up to!) was breaking the law [/O/T]


Back on topic @galanx I do believe that people seem to want to only read nice things in history (or things that conform to what they believe that history should be, slavery being an excellent case in point. Telling people that slavery was practiced by other than Caucasians seems to make people break out in a sweat - telling them that various tribes in Africa colluded in this vile trade gets the full on panic attack and accusation of micro-aggressions or whatever BS is current flavour of the day)