race matters
thusspakezuska | May 1, 2007The Chronicle Review this week is essentially devoted to analysis of and commentary on the Virginia Tech massacre. The Chronicle asked a number of individuals what they would say if they were asked to speak to the Virginia Tech graduating class at commencement this year. Edward J. W. Park's contribution deserves special attention from everyone, I think. (no subscription needed)
Park's message to the graduating seniors - and to all of is - is about how racial and ethnic labels function in our society and in particular in the case of shooting incidents. It is about his hope that education…
thusspakezuska | April 25, 2007From the Chronicle of Higher Education daily update yesterday:
The strongest source of white opposition to affirmative action today is neither racism nor a sincere conviction that any favoritism, even if compensatory, is wrong, but rather a "desire to protect fellow whites," three scholars argue in a paper released last week by the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center. That finding, the authors contend, offers a new window into white opposition to affirmative-action programs.
The Chronicle article needs a subscription but the paper it refers to, Why White Americans Oppose Affirmative Action…
thusspakezuska | February 8, 2007What is diversity?
People talk about it all the time. We say we want to increase diversity. We want to have more diversity on our faculty or in our workforce. We want to manage diversity for success. We have diversity programs and diversity training and diversity workshops. So we must know what diversity is, right?
Isn't diversity what those Other people have?
You know, sort of like a disease. Everybody but white males has Diversity, and if we get more of those Others, we can catch some Diversity. (Though we may have to Lower Our Standards to get the Diversity.)
I have never been…
thusspakezuska | February 6, 2007I like to scan the New Scholarly Books section of the Chronicle of Higher Education; every so often, something interesting in History of Science or Women's Studies pops up. Recently I saw a little blurb under history of science that read
Science in Latin America: A History, edited by Juan José Saldaña...Translation of writings by Latin American historians on the role of science in the region's societies since the colonial era.
That piqued my interest so I poked around on the web. You can order the book on Amazon. The summary below is from this site, where you'll also find the table of…
thusspakezuska | November 21, 2006Jokerine wrote in respone to Let Her Eat the Oppressor's Cake:
had a discussion in my group today about affirmative action. One of the guys comented that if we promoted women in male fields soon all groups on the fringes of society would ask for prefferential treatment. I couldn't figure out what was bothering me for a while, but wait a minute since when are women a fringe group. And this from a man that considers himself liberal and progressive. Poor Rachel, one day her eyes will open and she will see how much worse she is off as a woman. I'll be there for her to come crying to.
No indeedy,…
thusspakezuska | November 8, 2006Since I brought up the X-Gals, I've been thinking of another model of group support in academe, the Mujeres Universitiarias Asociadas at Central Florida. They were featured in an article in a recent Chronicle of Higher Education special issue on diversity.
The Mujeres (pronounced moo-HAIR-ays) typically gather over lunch each month. They share tips on such issues as which campus administrator to approach with a problem and which to avoid. They have coached one another on compiling tenure portfolios and offered pointers on applying for the university's $5,000 teaching award. They have…
thusspakezuska | October 31, 2006So I'm at a conference where the majority of attendees are white males. Well, after all, it is an engineering conference. Anyway, given the demographics, do you expect to walk into any particular parallel session and find that there are only two, three, maybe five white males, and the remaining 25 to 30 session attendees are comprised of ten or 12 white females and the rest minority women and men?
Where have all the white men gone? Long time passing.
The easiest way to clean all the white males out of your parallel session is to title it "Diversity" and to schedule talks on:
The…
thusspakezuska | October 20, 2006I have lots of nice blogs in my blogroll to the left. Nearly all of them deal with gender and science or gender and engineering or gender and science & engineering. In some of the blogs you'll find discussions of race issues as well as gender. But I don't think race is a central topic in any of those blogs.
Where are the women blogging on science & gender & race? Where are the men blogging on science & gender & race? (men have gender too, you know) Does anybody know of any good blogs that deal with these topics? Please, please, please let me know if you do.