Dancers, tomb of Antefoker, Thebes, 1950 BC(http://www.tulane.edu/lester/images/Ancient.World/Egypt/A61.gif)
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Dancers, tomb of Antefoker, Thebes, 1950 BC
(http://www.tulane.edu/lester/images/Ancient.World/Egypt/A61.gif)
Date: Fri, 3 May 1996 19:45:01 -0400 (EDT)
From: Emiliano Zapata
To: Jlof@aol.com
cc: athena-discuss@info.harpercollins.com
Subject: Re: Christianity/Slavery
In-Reply-To: <960503192003_389898052@emout08.mail.aol.com>
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Senor Lofton:
Perhaps your broad brush treatment of abolition white washes with myth
what is still glaringly allowed by THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES
OF AMERIKKKA in the Fourteenth Ammendment. And, furthermore, what do your
history books tell you concerning which *enslaved Africans* were
emancipated by Ol' Rail Splitter (hint: only the ones in the secessionist
states).
Rationalizing Amerikkkan slavery and genocide based on generalities about
what has existed in other civilizations and cultures throughout time is
racist; and, sadly enough to say, so are the white folks who must expend
their neuron counts engaging in such perverse intellectual trapeze artistry.
What does the slavery discussion have to do with Bernal and
Obergruppenfuerher Lefkowitz? Do tell!
eZ
----------------
From: Emiliano Zapata
To: Scott MacEachern
cc: paul manansala ,
athena-discuss@info.harpercollins.com
Subject: Re: KKKKKKKK
In-Reply-To: <9605091735.AA05278@polar.bowdoin.edu>
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SM Says:
"In the real world, Mr. Zapata could come
to northern Cameroon and perhaps be a white American -- while my
nickname there is 'Bruce Lee', because I have short, straight, black
hair and kind-of-olive-yellow skin and because people there used to
watch a lot of kung fu movies."
*********
eZ: Stop frothing about how real your world is Scott. It only makes you
look like some sort of sheltered man from Bowdoin. And if you choose to
allow folks who have been colonized mentally to perpetuate their own
menticide by the seemingly harmless re-naming of you using an Asian
stereotype that is your own internalized oppression playing out. Do you
not know them enough to explain what that is about and the other context
that you have experienced about asian stereotypes? Is it the hair and
skin or is it your eyes? And how does this affect their perceptions of
what you *do*? Don't you wonder? Or is it assumed that you already know?
They might see me as a white amerikkkan until we took a walk together
and built a sweatlodge, or prayed the way I pray. And it would probably
take my bleached hide all of three days to turn brick brown *red* to
boot.
I will continue to sort out what you are lobbing up here as thought
because it presents an opportunity to begin with some folks on this list
to break down some of the ways that the EuroAmerikkkan intelligentsia
foments racist thinking with the best of intentions.
Ciao!
----------------
Date: Tue, 14 May 1996 13:50:48 -0400 (EDT)
From: Emiliano Zapata
To: athena-discuss@info.harpercollins.com
Subject: Re: Affirmative Evidence
In-Reply-To: <9605141325.AA27451@polar.bowdoin.edu>
A familiar statement made recently on the athena-discuss list:
"On the other hand, acceptance of Mr. Zapata's stance implies that
Euroamerican academics are probably the last people who should be thinking
about racism anywhere, so we might as well all pick up our toys and
go home."
*********
eZ: Let me clarify...Euroamerikkkan academics should be thinking about
starting at the beginning. Perhaps you might stay, wherever it is that
you think you are, and use your toys to develop answers to the question:
"What does it mean to be white?"
Why do you *think* that question might have some bearing on the Nike
philosophers out there ("Just do it") who are screaming for "answers" or
"solutions"? Why do you *think* that question might provide each white
person who is interested in the "problem" with a unique avenue for
exploring the issues in a different way?
At least one Amerikkkan historian, Dan Roediger, used his disciplinary
skills to ascertain answers about white working class Amerikkkans, in
_Wages of Whiteness_ (Verso, 1994). He articulates very clearly how white
working class Amerikkkans have been made throughout history. Therefore,
there is more meaning available to us all about what it means to be white.
Roediger did not go looking for racism. He merely began searching for
answers to why white workers seemed to have their own brand of race
prejudice which he noticed had been institutionalized within unions. How
did these folks learn that they were not "those people over there." This
phenomenon was an outgrowth of culture, racialized culture. And, since he
focused on AMerikkka, the farther back he went the closer he got to
Europe. What research in the classics could be done to establish connections?
Motives, intentions, and other such abstractions are not what is
important here. The central issue is *impact of human behavior* across
racial lines.
My opinion is that question holds great potential for unlocking some of
the energy that racism consumes by the unconscious, and honestly
unbigoted, tendencies among whites to conserve and maintain whiteness as
a socio-political construct, as though the designation *white* needs to
be preserved in the first place.
To be white means something different than to be a person of color in
Amerikkka. Shall we engage that question?
I think that it would be helpful if we could agree to stick to what I say
versus loading up the discussion agenda with "inferences" for me to
deflect. If people want to "know" what can be done, then I am saying
clearly to you now that the first step is thoughtful discussion of this
question.
If you need adequate motivation for doing so, then let me offer a
practical one. There is a growing movement in undergraduate student
populations to raise awareness of what it means to be white. So, if the
professoriate wants to stay current, as this movement continues to
develop leadership and respectability (even though you have not "heard"
of it from the Mountaintop yet), it would do well to get busy.
------------------
Organization: New York Online
Subject: Re(2): KKKKKKKKKKK
To: zapata@together.net, Athena-discuss@info.harpercollins.com
Zapata writes:
Now I am not going to sit here and waste time saying that is "evil" and
try to bombastically persuade intelligent people that it is due to some
biological flaw in white peoples' gene tape. But I am going to present
critical views of the intelligent peoples' *reflexes* to scream foul and
jump up and down, and accuse me of "hating" everybody, while they try to
convince me and other conscious human beings that they really know what
*truth* is and how to find it. And that the search for truth can only be
done in the way that pays their salaries and publishes their books.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Very well put Zapata. Please keep it up. Your voice is crucial to this debate
and cuts through to the heart of these issues. I can't tell you the number of
times I've been accused of "hate" or "prejudice" by White folks for simply
asking questions based on their own philosophy. Half the time I don't even
need to posit a counter philosophy, or position, instead I just ask them
questions about theirs and it comes unravelled all by itself. It is vital for
us to remember that in this debate about history we are really adressing
contemporary issues concerning power and control.
Dalton
----------------
Date: Thu, 23 May 96 15:39:15 EST
From: tpowers@uscsumter.uscsu.sc.edu (Tom Powers)
Message-Id: <9604238328.AA832891155@USCSUMTER.USCSU.SCAROLINA.EDU>
To: "Steven J. Willett" [steven@u-shizuoka-ken.ac.jp],
athena-discuss@info.harpercollins.com
Subject: Re[2]: The identity fetishists view of pedagogy
Sender: owner-athena-discuss@info.harpercollins.com
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"""""""""""""""""""""Steven J. Willett wrote""""""""""""""""""""""""""
3. Every country has a primary duty to teach its cultural heritage.
That's what every country I know about does in fact. This duty
should not be subverted to teach identity or selfesteem. Selfesteem
really comes from mastering the hard, basic knowledge and techniques
with which one can actually do something creative. There are no
shortcuts. The idea that selfesteem can be injected into the student
with an infusion of imagery, distorted history, encouraging hype and
promissary redemption from the "white power structure" is about as
bankrupt as they come.
"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""end quote"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
The history of history in the United States has been, until the
twentieth century (and even for most of that) little BUT feel-good,
self-esteem, identity politics for white Euro-American males. Why
suddenly is it illegitimate to use cultural heritage studies as a
means of injecting self esteem? The entire purpose of teaching a
cultural heritage, as it has been applied in the U.S. at least, is to
inject self-esteem and build a sense of identity, or, to use a more
politically correct phrase, "to instill pride in being a citizen of
this country." The very criticisms of the National History Standards
vented on the floor of the US Senate (and in an infinite number of
other speeches and publications) is that they were insufficiently
identity-oriented -- that is, oriented toward the traditional white
male identity which identifies the American Cultural heritage with
white Euro-American males and little other -- and that they tended to
portray Our Country in an insufficiently favorable light. Too few
heroes! Trashing our Myths! Too much on the KKK and not enough on
Thomas Edison! How can you observe this, and then make the above
argument with a straight face? Imagery, distorted history, and
identity politics have been the primary means of the transmission
of the American cultural heritage!
There has been, until the past few controversial years, little attempt
to teach the cultural heritage of this country. There has been every
attempt to teach one segment of one of the cultural heritages of this
country: that segment which, in good Homeric fashion, honors heroes
who lead armies or conceive Great Ideas, and which, partly as a
consequence, has found little to admire beyond the White Male model.
A frequent criticism of those who accomplished something beyond that
paradigm was "what did they ever accomplish? No Negro ever [led an
American army, built a multibillion dollar business, whatever] and no
woman ever [again, whatever the Homeric Pattern said was admirable.]"
No matter that the statements themselves were not always accurate.
By restricting the definition of "accomplishment" to those things
consistent with the Homeric Heroic image, the vast majority of human
experience and accomplishment was dismissed. No matter that the
pattern was preserved by allowing exceptions. Even when a woman or a
black was permitted into the pantheon, it was one who followed the
same pattern: Joan of Arc was worth remembering because she acted like
a general; Molly Pitcher because she fought like a man; Martin Luther
King because he led an army of another kind. And I have already
pointed out how the images of Booker T. Washington and George
Washington Carver were used for that same purpose. Why is it that
myths and heroes are so important to our national cultural heritage
that National History Standards must be castigated for omitting them;
but myths and heroes are inappropriate as part of our national
cultural heritage when they don't fit the White Euro-American Male
model?
Steven, I'm afraid the facts prove exactly the point you're trying to
deny.
Your point on self esteem also misses a point. Self esteem sometimes
comes from identity. Even if you have nothing else of which to be
proud, at last you can say you're an American, and America is the
greatest nation on earth! (Or whatever other country or club or
baseball team or leader or religious movement you wish to identify
with.) You can draw self-esteem, not from your own hard work, but from
your identification with a family, a tradition, a country, a faith.
That's why you might find yourself willing to die for them, and why
the honor of your country or family or school is so important. Merle
Haggard is far from the only person to feel personally affronted when
a symbol of his personal and group identity, a national flag, is
trashed. This country has even seen a movement to amend our
Constitution to ban the burning of an American Flag, because it's a
symbol of who and what WE are, and of our pride, and because so many
Americans took it as a PERSONAL attack on themselves when anyone
trashed the flag. Identity is very much a part of self-esteem. Burn
the flag of my country, and "you're walking on the fighting side of
me."
I concur that self esteem can also be also drawn purely from
individual accomplishment -- and indeed, that kind of self esteem is,
in my view, far the most healthy kind, needing the approval of no
other group or person. But it is not the only kind, and there are
many people in the world today for whom such "master of my fate,
captain of my soul" self reliance and self creation is but a
meaningless and bitter mockery. That is exactly why identity politics
is such an important issue in the controversy over cultural heritage.
That is also exactly why so many conservative forces, inside and
outside the academy, insist on defending the intellectual paradigm
which validates their own identity politics, while attacking those
which might validate others and perhaps cast doubt upon the
superiority of their own.
Much is predicated in your post, Steven, upon the presumption
that an individual is sufficient unto himself. That's the great ideal
of the Homeric Hero, and evidence of the enduring influence of that
part of Greek culture upon male Euro-American culture today. The
so-called mainstream of American esteem honors the man (almost always
a man) who is truly independent, and is saddled with no shackles or
responsibilities beyond those he freely chooses for himself.
Archilochus personified and reborn! John Wayne! Natty Bumpo. But most
of us live different lives. Most of us are born into families,
communities. Most of us owe much of what we are to parents, friends,
and role models. Most of us are anything BUT "sui generis." And
wasn't it that great Greek philosopher Aristotle who declared that he
who could live alone without a community might be a god or a beast,
but surely could not be a man?
I would argue that self-esteem has many roots. It can also come from
service to others. It can come simply from the assurance that one is
loved by an esteemed other. It can indeed come from individual
accomplishment. And it can come from identity with something greater
than oneself. Steven, your perspective strikes me as far too narrow;
and your view of history, as historically presented in this country,
as simply the transmittal of "our cultural heritage" (while
alternative versions are "alternatives" or worse) strikes me as
disingenuous or naive.
Tom Powers
Professor of History
The University of South Carolina at Sumter
TPOWERS@USCSUMTER.USCSU.SCAROLINA.EDU
--------------
Date: Sun, 02 Jun 1996 15:05:57 -0700
To: athena-discuss@info.harpercollins.com
From: "Charles A. Grimes"
Subject: die neue Einsatzgruppen
Sender: owner-athena-discuss@info.harpercollins.com
Precedence: bulk
Steve Willett on Chavez:
Since Chavez continues to use "Obergruppenfuerher" as a kind of=20
hatespeech, I challenge him to show us what he means by it and how=20
precisely he applies it to ML (with all the citations from NOA that=20
provide the evidence). If it isn't the most scurrilous hatespeech,=20
let him prove it a factually true and appropriate epithet. We really=20
do need an end to this sort of comic book viciousness.
Later from Daniel Tompkins and then Fisher Gordon :
>b) The assault on the academy--and I say the academy not just "leftists=20
>in the academy" or some such because I really believe the aim is to=20
>discredit us as a group--comes not only from Olin but from the Bradley=20
>Foundation, the Heritage Foundation, and from the National Endowment for=20
>the Humanities when Lynne Cheney was running it (see her miserable=20
>pamphlet, "Telling the Truth," which embarrassed even Dinesh D'Souza);=20
>also from the Wall St. Journal editorial page. it is very much in the=20
>interest of this list to attend to and deal with this ongoing assault.
Actually, the attack is broader-based than that --- it's coming from
various powerful corporations as well, either directly or through
influence on state legislatures and other agencies, etc. A group
of us at my university having been fighting a battle to preserve
some of the better aspects of academia for a couple of years now,
and it's a tough battle. We've been through one court case claiming
breach of contract by university administrators, which we lost.
We're now going through another case initiated by student officers
of our Honor Council, involving improper actions by our administration
in cancelling judgments made by the Honor Council. We've discovered
in the course of our work that many universities in the USA are
having experiences similar to ours.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------
Steve Willett:
EZ was fleshing out in high comedy, my post on Olin to K. Bush who ask,
=91what does Olin have to do with the American Enterprise Institute?=92 I
thought eZ=92=92s response was funny. Die Obergruppenfuerher, Lefkowitz,
she-wolf of the nuclear corporate Right. I still think it=92s funny. What
isn=92t so funny is that you don=92t seem to realize what is going on=
underneath
this whole debate. I=92ll spell it out on the assumption that it is news.=20
Brigadefuhrers, Pat Buchannan, Jack Kemp, William Bennett of die neue
Einsatzgruppen, and other pseudo-intellectuals (read Ray Winbush=92s posting
on Olin for more detail) have decided to combat the rising tide of
multiculturalism in this country by appropriating any academic field they
can to make their case that the =91true=92 america is monolithic white=
english
speaking, republican, protestant. The Brigadefuhrers have an agenda they
have pushed into political science, economics, education, sociology,
psychology, social welfare, english, american history, public policy, and a
dozen other academic departments. What you are reading when you read NOA is
the classics department self-help guide to cleansing the cannon of
multicultural interpretations. If ML didn=92t realize what she was buying
into when she took Olin funding, then she is either na=EFve or lives in a
vacuum. At the very best, she has given over her credentials to a very ugly
and still maturing ideological movement. At worst she is the classics=92
she-wolf, Obergruppenfuerher, Lefkowitz. Although, I think Obergruppen, is a
bit over done. Perhaps Obersturmbann or Hauptsturmfuhrer is more
appropriate, don=92t you think?=20
Okay. Now the classics are, next to the bible, the holy of holies for the
Brigadefuhrers. They believe they are defending freedom, truth, justice and
the american way against the onslaught of dark barbarian hordes. They have a
strong hankering for cultural since they have almost none of their own, so
they are borrowing the high class, snotty English version i.e. the books in
the classics department. I am sure they are spouting on about Plato,
Aristotle, and Herodotus to unwitting academics at expensive dinners to
enlist their support for getting back to =91basics.=92 I am sure their=
academic
consultant teams, the Untersturmfuhrers were briefing the congressional
oversight committee on how to manage the National Endowment for the
Humanities should that agency survive. Believe or not, there was a mild
scare in the National Science Foundation (that hotbed of mealy mouth
apologists for the left) since it has programs to promote education and
career development for more hooded hordes of non-american-looking folks in
the sciences, engineering, and mathematics. Obviously a waste of money. The
National Institute of Health is in more serious condition since it funds
sympathetic studies on all kinds of non-american issues like poverty,
disease, malnutrition, infant mortality, and so forth. (By the way, the
internal NSF Education Division, peer proposal review committees did battle
over exactly the issues mention by Fisher Gordon, i.e. real or ersatz
curriculum development/ corporate links or no? There were also arguments in
NASA in their Education RFP reviews on the same issue.)
In my post I joked about a right wing conspiracy because it was so
plausible. It was satire with an edge. David Meadows seriously seemed to
think that Olin provided a necessary balance to the left dominated skewing
of NEH. Think about this for a minute. Right, Left? What in the hell does
that have to do with Plato and the Pyramids?=20
You are in the middle of an escalating Kultur war. This description is due
to Brigadefuhrer Buchannan.
Why do you think almost every African and African American on this list
(judging from names only) has pitted themselves against a very white
sounding academic and supposedly reasoned discourse? It is because they
smell a rat, they can taste it in the words, and they hate it. I won=92t put
words in their mouth. I smell a rat, something evil and ugly, and I can
taste it in the air. To mock these people with nazi bureaucratic titles is
heavy handed satire. It is nothing compared to what the Einstazgruppen has
done to clear debate about reasonable reforms to everyday problems. For more
than fifteen years the Untersturmfuhrers have been on the nightly news to
spin ordinary problems in education, social policy, and government into some
kind of twisted imitation of reason. Now to watch them twist up the guts of
higher education just makes sick to my stomach. It really was a last hold
out. And it is gone. Now come along the sincere scholars of academia, who
have stumbled into this pit bull arena and wonder, what on earth is this
about? We are used to citations, footnotes, credits, and obscure well
intentioned foundations. What does all this smoke and blood mean? Where am
I, what am I doing here?
So now you know. It is down to choosing sides. It is true that for those who
are really devoted to scholarship and teaching, it is a difficult choice
because there is plenty of propaganda to go around. But you have to know who
is in power, who is waiting in the wings, and what their aims are. The
Brigadefuhrers are not interested in scholarship or truth. They are
interested in power and they use ersatzscholarship as a weapon. From
Lefkowitz to Fukuyama (ancient to modern), they have created die neue
Kulturwissenschaft. They richly deserve every single nazi epitaph.=20
If you would like to read about how all this worked once in Germany, you can
read the opening chapters of a biography of Hannah Arendt by Young-Buehl.
Arendt fell in love with Martin Heidegger in graduate school in the 1920=92s=
.
Their intellectual, social, academic, and personal relationship, paints in
detail exactly how one of the giants of continental philosophy became a
lackey for the nazi Kulturwissenschaft and how an american political and
social philosopher came to her senses. Ironically, they were both deeply
influenced by their studies in the classics and continued to use Greek and
Roman sources in their later writings on politics, philosophy and culture.
Arendt woke up early because she was jewish and had to. Martin Heidegger
never did.=20
Chuck Grimes=20
----------------
Date: Fri, 3 May 96 09:49 EDT
From: "Mary Lanser"
Subject: Re: One posting at a time
To: dmeadows@inforamp.net
Cc: errolhen@polisci.ufl.edu, athena-discuss@INFO.HARPERCOLLINS.COM
In-Reply-To: dmeadows AT inforamp.net -- Fri, 3 May 1996 09:11:32 -0400 (EDT)
Sender: owner-athena-discuss
Precedence: bulk
dmeadows--I have no intention of stealing Henderson's thunder and I look
forward to his reply, but there is in the intellectual history and
historiography of African Americans an idea that can generally be
called 'the African connection.' It has also generally not been given much
credence by the bastions of knowledge, truth and beauty in the U. S. and it
has found resources and venues for expression in newspapers, periodical
literature, libraries and collections and sometimes in colleges and
universities established by and for black people. That heritage of
scholarship, replete with evidence, orthodoxy and heresy, is virtually
unknow to the dominant white culture in the United States and thus this
superficial witch hunt that is exemplified by the conversation on this list
and in the media to root out those ignorant 'afrocentrist' types is a
mockery. There are many on this list who are much more patient that you
can even imagine.
The idea is for Africans in America to learn and tell the global African
experience in their own voices from their own perspectives. That is what
Lefkowitz and you and others are so damned uncomfortable about. My God, just
look at the rise of the modern university and the history of intellectual
thought that had so few black voices that they are relegated to the status
of curiosities--the evidence, the orthodoxy, the heresy. Afrocentrists are
in no way any kind of unique threat to truth in the academy. Remember Pogo!!
To say that 'Afrocentrists' represent all of black intellectual production
concerning the ancient or the modern world and Africa is ignorant. To say
that they are any more dangerous than any other players in the history of
ideas is stupid and can become criminal when a society decides on a course of
'elimination'for the offending ideas or purveyers of those ideas.
Now if you want to hide behind some idealistic humanism then all of the above
is lost to you as is much that is real around you. The ignorance on both
sides can be abysmal, on one hand; one the other, there are times when the
evidence is out and only the argument itself can prevail but there is no way
to sort that out as long as egos are unleashed or political pressure is
exerted to silence and exclude a competing ideology.
You are an intellegent fellow, who can type like a son-of-a-gun, but you are
locked into a mantra that in the end is meaningless for the 'living' and is
also closed to the "truth" which is a combination of the unknown as well as
the known. be well --mary lanser
----------------
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