We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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Samizdata quote of the day Bouattia argues that a ‘Eurocentric’ curriculum is problematic because BME students ‘don’t see themselves in what they’re studying, and can’t relate to it’. According to her, any body of knowledge produced solely by white people is inaccessible to BME students. Presumably, this includes the plays of Shakespeare; the ancient literature of Suetonius, Tacitus and Plutarch; the political economy of Adam Smith and Karl Marx; and the science of Pythagoras, Archimedes, Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein.
BME students cannot relate to these classical authors, she says. But there would be no point in BME students going to university if they refused to learn anything that didn’t relate to their immediate lived experience. If it were applied, Bouattia’s approach to education would limit the potential aspirations of BME students, leaving them without access to the necessary historical, philosophical and intellectual grounding they need to develop as thinkers.
– Courtney Hamilton
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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Now this is racism.
Are we to treat black and ethnic minorities as we treated Indians (sub-continent rather than North American First Nations), effectively “protecting” them by treating them as little more than children.
I can’t think of a more patronising and dispiriting attitude.
Ah yes, the old oppression of lowered expectations.
Had to look up who this Bouattia is and also BME.
It raises the fundamental question of “Why choose to reside in a Eurocentric country if you do not wish to make the most of the long development of the philosophy that brought the advantages she now seeks?” Then one could be quite uncharitable and ask her why she is “culturally appropriating” the benefits of the culture she is living in – but that would be unkind wouldn’t it.
The sort of rubbish she is espousing becomes somewhat tiring.
When in Rome, do as the Romans do.
When in Rome, be (an expletive) Roman! 😎
“When in Rome, do as the Romans do.”
Origin: Popular satiric bumper sticker seen on Visigoth chariots in 411 a.d.
I could put it more simply: perhaps BME students struggle to “relate” to the likes of Isaac Newton* but they’d better bloody learn to if they hope to get anywhere in life.
*As if the skin colour of Newton, Tesla, Watt, Faraday, etc. makes a blind bit of difference to how one understands the principles behind their work. This is just an excuse, and a poor one at that.
I’ve looked up the original article which is interesting in that Bouattia does not use the term BME. Although she still comes across as an utter nutcase.
Love this bit from the intro: “So why does Decca Aitkenhead end up shouting at her in frustration?”
So, as a white man living in 21st century middle Tennessee, I can relate to Shakespeare, Pythagoras, Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein? No one needs to “relate” to Isaac Newton, as it doesn’t matter what he felt or believed, (he was secretly superstitious and an avid alchemist), rather what does matter is his contributions to the physical sciences.
Isn’t England supposed to be Eurocentric, in fact Anglocentric? Does anyone go to Saudi and say, “you’re too brown”?
Tennessee represent!
bobby b, October 8, 2016 at 3:52 am ” ‘When in Rome, do as the Romans do.’ Origin: Popular satiric bumper sticker seen on Visigoth chariots in 411 a.d.”
The Visigoths were cavalrymen, not charioteers. More than 4 centuries earlier, chariots had become quite pass̩ in armies on the continent, and while the old-fashioned British were still using them they were getting pretty discouraged with them Рwhen Caesar visited Kent he was shadowed by 5000 chariots but not much impeded by them.
So I suggest, “Origin: Popular satiric bumper sticker seen on Visigoth saddlebows in 411 A.D.” It will keep the nitpickers off. 🙂
It will keep the nitpickers off.
I think it already failed. 🙄
What, after they finished sacking Rome, they just left all of those cool antique chariots parked where they found them? I don’t think so.
(Point was, you only worry about doing as the Romans do if you’re interested in joining them. If you’re looking to sack Rome, or England, assimilation hardly matters.)
Not as inoculation 😛
The waste that Marxism is in brain CPU cycles …without it where we would be, imagining a billions of Chineses, Russians, European putting thier brains trying to improve their lives by tech instead of the pair jealousy/shaming in the last 80 years.
I guess no one should study classical history or literature whose ancestors weren’t Greeks and Romans.
That would include me. Although my ancestors (or their cousins who left home) had a great impact on classical civilization: they burned down most of it. (I’m Scandinavian-heritage – where the Goths and Vandals came from.)
In fact Ms. Bouattia has a much closer connection to the classics than I do; North Africa was an integral part of the Roman Empire, and her home town was a Roman military base. Someone who literally grew up in the shadow of Rome ought to be interested in the classics.
Her real reason for antagonism is that the classics have been incorporated in Western civilization, and posing as an adversary of the West is highly profitable.
Damn Romans culturally appropriated the Greeks before spreading their ideas around with their Empire. What about the Galli, the Helvetii, their take on philosophy, geometry, road building?
One wonders how these whiteys coped given how much difficulty they must have had integrating (no pun intended) those alien cultural concepts of the number 0 and that al-jabr stuff.
You can’t expect these people to learn. After all, they’re students.
Standard Progressive denial of Objective Reality.
The amusing thing is that the people who pushed the denial of objective laws of reason (not dependent on “race”, “class” or “historical period”) were German racialists in the 19th century.
They would not have considered these students human beings.
That is the source this historicism and relativism comes from.
Paul (October 11, 2016 at 7:46 am): “That is the source this historicism and relativism comes from.”
It’s the same thing but not necessarily an actual source. Folly reinvents itself generation after generation. Wisdom benefits a lot from building on the discoveries of the past. Folly can do without. It’s so easy to rediscover.
One of the most peculiar things about this very peculiar way of thinking is the notion that a white person in 21st century Britain has some kind of connection to Plutarch, say, that a black person living in 21st century Britain lacks. The two contemporaries have vastly more in common with one another and Plutarch’s life would be utterly alien to both, pretty much equally.
So, the history and opinions of Africans have no relevance to me as a European.
OK.
The two contemporaries have vastly more in common with one another and Plutarch’s life would be utterly alien to both, pretty much equally.
But to Bouattia their race is the most important thing about them. There used to be a word for that.