5 ms·

You don't need to fix it. There's nothing wrong with being white, male and straight, even though society might tell you otherwise.

by wsc981 5y ago

smt88 5y ago
I don't know why we care what this anonymous person says or does. They're not an authority on anything. I flagged this as off-topic for HN. That said, I think you're (intentionally?) misrepresenting the argument and that you only read the headline. Forgive me if that's untrue. From the article: > To play it safe, I taught the texts I had been taught at university and ended up with precisely the kind of curriculum that I had always wanted to avoid: a white, straight sausage-fest of a reading list. The author isn't saying there's anything wrong with being white, male, and/or straight, only that they prefer to teach a curriculum that isn't the majority by white/male/straight authors. That makes sense -- fewer than 50% of authors in history were from that demographic, so why should a representative, well-rounded curriculum be majority composed by them?
- coldtea 5y ago
  >That makes sense -- fewer than 50% of authors in history were from that demographic In which culture? In Asia or Africa sure, less that 1% where "white" (not so sure if less or equal than 50% were male). In the US, however, I'd expect most authors to be white for most of its history, and most male, up into early 20th century at least. Now, for systemic reasons women/blacks/etc were discouraged from being authors, which is an injustice. But it also means most good books up and into the 20th century where written by white males in the USA (let's include Jewish people here). Not because they're better or have some unique perspective, but because they were the majority doing the writing and being published. So, if one has to pick e.g. the best american writers of all time, they'll predominantly pick their works, just because they were the majority of those writing and being published. There's nothing wrong with that picking from what's available and finding out you've mostly picked white males - the injustice was that they were being the majority at their time, not in the after-the-fact picking of the best. It's like with science: it's a disgrace that more women weren't encouraged to do science in the past, but it's not some prejudice to say that most major scientists in the 19th century were male (that was because of an injustice, but it's a historical injustice. It can't be retroactively corrected by picking more 19th century women scientists, if there weren't many to begin with then). Of course, after some time point, e.g. the 1970s, curators can pick more equally women, blacks, asian, latinos Americans writers, simple because more of them were writing and publishing.
  - smt88 5y ago
    > In which culture? In Asia or Africa sure, less that 1% where "white" (not so sure if less or equal than 50% were male). I didn't say a culture. I was referring to all writers in history. The author of the article is a professor of English literature, but they don't specify a specific course that they're teaching. Even if they're only teaching literature written in English by native speakers, they would still have a wide variety of female, non-straight, and non-white people to choose from. > There's nothing wrong with that picking from what's available and finding out you've mostly picked white males - the injustice was that they were being the majority at their time, not in the after-the-fact picking of the best. This is exactly the point that the writer of this article is making -- that their mostly white/straight/male selection of authors is not due to malice or bias, but rather due to history.
    - coldtea 5y ago
      >Even if they're only teaching literature written in English by native speakers, they would still have a wide variety of female, non-straight, and non-white people to choose from. Not historically though. As they go back, most authors in English by native speakers were white and male (if not for anything else, by virtue of British and American society being majority white in those centuries, and especially the elites, universities, etc., where most of the production comes from). The big non-white immigration in the US came from the mid-late 19th century and on (and even this includes millions of Italians, Greeks, Bulgarians, Polish, Irish etc, originally also considered "non white"). And if they restrict to the latest 4-5 decades, while there's more diversity, quality wise they have not been exactly the best for literature (for reasons unrelated to the increased diversity - everybody, including white male production have arguably not been at any historical best).
  - serenitylater 5y ago
    I think it may depend on what you consider 'quality' and the purposes of the course. Is the typical 'literary canon' type of books 'the best' reading from 1600? Is the best reading list for a historical reading course all about reading similar stories from similar perspectives because they sold the most or have been popular with academics for the last couple hundred years? Or would you possibly get more value out of reading perspectives from lesser known authors who aren't white or whatever and thus were never as popular. I know, in a lot of cases, I'd be more interested to read some niche tail written in the 1870s by a relatively unknown black or woman author than another version of huckleberry finn. Especially at a college level, you want to learn new and varied things you haven't been exposed to before, and more books by Charles Dickens aren't going to open a lot of new ideas and perspectives. Sorry for my early morning rambles.

You don't need to fix it. There's nothing wrong with being white, male and straight, even though society might tell you otherwise.

by wsc981 5y ago

You don't need to fix it. There's nothing wrong with being white, male and straight, even though society might tell you otherwise.

smt88 5y ago

I don't know why we care what this anonymous person says or does. They're not an authority on anything. I flagged this as off-topic for HN. That said, I think you're (intentionally?) misrepresenting the argument and that you only read the headline. Forgive me if that's untrue. From the article: > To play it safe, I taught the texts I had been taught at university and ended up with precisely the kind of curriculum that I had always wanted to avoid: a white, straight sausage-fest of a reading list. The author isn't saying there's anything wrong with being white, male, and/or straight, only that they prefer to teach a curriculum that isn't the majority by white/male/straight authors. That makes sense -- fewer than 50% of authors in history were from that demographic, so why should a representative, well-rounded curriculum be majority composed by them?

coldtea 5y ago
>That makes sense -- fewer than 50% of authors in history were from that demographic In which culture? In Asia or Africa sure, less that 1% where "white" (not so sure if less or equal than 50% were male). In the US, however, I'd expect most authors to be white for most of its history, and most male, up into early 20th century at least. Now, for systemic reasons women/blacks/etc were discouraged from being authors, which is an injustice. But it also means most good books up and into the 20th century where written by white males in the USA (let's include Jewish people here). Not because they're better or have some unique perspective, but because they were the majority doing the writing and being published. So, if one has to pick e.g. the best american writers of all time, they'll predominantly pick their works, just because they were the majority of those writing and being published. There's nothing wrong with that picking from what's available and finding out you've mostly picked white males - the injustice was that they were being the majority at their time, not in the after-the-fact picking of the best. It's like with science: it's a disgrace that more women weren't encouraged to do science in the past, but it's not some prejudice to say that most major scientists in the 19th century were male (that was because of an injustice, but it's a historical injustice. It can't be retroactively corrected by picking more 19th century women scientists, if there weren't many to begin with then). Of course, after some time point, e.g. the 1970s, curators can pick more equally women, blacks, asian, latinos Americans writers, simple because more of them were writing and publishing.
- smt88 5y ago
  > In which culture? In Asia or Africa sure, less that 1% where "white" (not so sure if less or equal than 50% were male). I didn't say a culture. I was referring to all writers in history. The author of the article is a professor of English literature, but they don't specify a specific course that they're teaching. Even if they're only teaching literature written in English by native speakers, they would still have a wide variety of female, non-straight, and non-white people to choose from. > There's nothing wrong with that picking from what's available and finding out you've mostly picked white males - the injustice was that they were being the majority at their time, not in the after-the-fact picking of the best. This is exactly the point that the writer of this article is making -- that their mostly white/straight/male selection of authors is not due to malice or bias, but rather due to history.
  - coldtea 5y ago
    >Even if they're only teaching literature written in English by native speakers, they would still have a wide variety of female, non-straight, and non-white people to choose from. Not historically though. As they go back, most authors in English by native speakers were white and male (if not for anything else, by virtue of British and American society being majority white in those centuries, and especially the elites, universities, etc., where most of the production comes from). The big non-white immigration in the US came from the mid-late 19th century and on (and even this includes millions of Italians, Greeks, Bulgarians, Polish, Irish etc, originally also considered "non white"). And if they restrict to the latest 4-5 decades, while there's more diversity, quality wise they have not been exactly the best for literature (for reasons unrelated to the increased diversity - everybody, including white male production have arguably not been at any historical best).
- serenitylater 5y ago
  I think it may depend on what you consider 'quality' and the purposes of the course. Is the typical 'literary canon' type of books 'the best' reading from 1600? Is the best reading list for a historical reading course all about reading similar stories from similar perspectives because they sold the most or have been popular with academics for the last couple hundred years? Or would you possibly get more value out of reading perspectives from lesser known authors who aren't white or whatever and thus were never as popular. I know, in a lot of cases, I'd be more interested to read some niche tail written in the 1870s by a relatively unknown black or woman author than another version of huckleberry finn. Especially at a college level, you want to learn new and varied things you haven't been exposed to before, and more books by Charles Dickens aren't going to open a lot of new ideas and perspectives. Sorry for my early morning rambles.