Emphasis on Scientific Method
- Objective, rational, linear thinking
- Cause and effect relationships
- Quantitative emphasis
Now this is where this infographic gets really insulting. Do you mean to suggest that people of color are somehow incapable of thinking in an objective, rational, and linear manner? That they are incapable of quantitative analysis? That math and science are basically beyond their ken? Such an assertion would surprise every successful black and brown student I've ever tutored in those subjects! (My student who went to Harvard to study biology was a midnight-black immigrant from Ghana. Is she somehow a traitor to her race?)
Or are you questioning the utility of this epistemological frame for people of color? Because if that's your aim, you're still wrong. Objective, rational, linear thinking and quantitative analysis are what has brought all of us advanced medicine, the internet, refrigerators, fast transportation, air conditioning -- basically everything that makes our lives more comfortable and more safe than they have been in any other time in history. Moreover - and this is key - the scientific method is also what has allowed us to discard the racist pseudoscience that declared people of color somehow inferior to the white race!
Granted, the authority of "science" has sometimes been misused. Granted, the benefits of modern science have not been equally distributed (and we can certainly discuss how to improve that state of affairs). But in the US at least, everyone has gotten at least something from the cornucopia that is Western modernity. And there is absolutely no evidence that any other "way of knowing" has - or could - accomplish the same phenomenal improvements in our overall standard of living. Indigenous mysticism or shamanism or whatever the hell you've decided is a preferable means of engaging with the world has never actually flown a plane or repaired an injured heart.
History
- Based on Northern European immigrants' experience in the United States
- Heavy focus on the British Empire
- The primacy of Western (Greek, Roman) and Judeo-Christian tradition
Once again, I think this was written by someone who's stuck in the 1950's. When I took history twenty-five years ago, I was required to read Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Martin Luther King's Letter from a Birmingham Jail, and Richard Wright's Native Son (among other things). And my brother, who went to an entirely different high school in a different county, was exposed to much of the same material. This, of course, is anecdotal evidence, but I think if you quiz any well-educated member of Generation X (my generation), you'll discover that none of our history classes neglected the black American - or the Native American, for that matter - experience. And kids today? Their curricula are even more diversified! Where I teach, students are expected to learn not only the basics of European history, but also the basics of Asian, African, and Mesoamerican history. Trust me: in American schools, history classes haven't focused exclusively on whites for decades.
Now, it is true that most schools still spend a great deal of time on Greece, Rome, and Europe. But there's a reason for that: the institutions of our government were based primarily on those streams of thought. I'm sorry, but that's just the fact of the matter. The Founders didn't get liberal constitutionalism from the kingdoms of Africa. They got it primarily from Great Britain. The Founders didn't get their traditional conceptions of small-r republican virtue from the cultures of southern or eastern Asia. They got those from studying histories written in Latin and Greek. Bottom line, to understand what John Adams, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, et. al. were thinking when they established the US, you must be well-versed in the history so shat upon above. Period. You can't escape that reality -- and you shouldn't try. Trashing something without fully comprehending it is the pinnacle of folly and arrogance.
And finally, I simply must ask: would you take a Chinese school to task for focusing primarily on Chinese history? Would you take an Indian school to task for focusing primarily on Indian history? Of course not. So why is the US held to a completely different standard?
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