The Shameful Secret of Schools
In response to “The
Ivory Tower Paradox” by Stockdill and Danico
Look, I
have some bad news. Despite what everyone says, we still live in a racist
society. The worse news is that racism no longer operates openly in mainstream
society. Instead it has taken to hiding in the shadows.
One of its
favorite places to hide is in the American education system. Stockdill talks
about how most people see learning institutions as these utopian paradises,
free of racism, discrimination and bias. Honestly that’s what I’ve always seen
them as.
How could universities, places where you go to
write dozens of papers on equality, be filled with so much racism and
inequality? I’m not even talking about students bashing on each others, like
this woman…
I’m talking about the structure of these institutions. The discrimination
against colored, female, LGBTQ and other minorities; the lack of diversity in
the faculty; the continued privilege of hetero-normative, white men; lack of
ethnic study resources and classes. All of these factors keep us imprisoned in
Ali Shariati’s third prison, the prison of social and class structure.
According
to Shariati, the only way for us to escape this prison is through revolutionary
ideology. The Berkeley Free Speech Movement, Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King
Jr., Grace Boggs and thousands of other activists have sacrificed so much to
give us the right to start a revolution. Yet all we do is sit on our butts.
With the failure of Affirmative Action Programs, how can universities hire a more diverse faculty?
Linda Wei
Section A01
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