When I run into a challenging conversation on Twitter about oppression, my default assumption is that people haven’t done their work. I see this as a charitable assumption in that I’ve often found myself ignorant, say, about how sociologists define racism, and have needed to do work to get past the individualistic dictionary definition of ‘judging people by their skin’ to understand how racism works as a system of oppression. In other words, I tend to hope we are all out to converse and grow, and I have the privilege of making this assumption because it’s unlikely that someone will look at my profile picture or name and launch a racist attack on me. It’s not safe for everyone to make such charitable assumptions about other people’s intentions on Twitter when talking about race.
In a discussion about so-called ‘knowledge-rich’ curriculums, Kay Sidebottom raised the issue of ‘whose knowledge?’ is privileged from the perspective of the movement to decolonize the curriculum.
Yes - but we don’t often question ‘whose knowledge’ and why some aspects are privileged over others. Campaigns like @nusBSC ‘Why is my curriculum white?’ should be reflected on #debatED
— Kay Sidebottom 🌿🕷 (@KaySocLearn) May 15, 2018
Rather quickly, the discussion turned to the suggestion that a similar kind of privilege applies to the history of ideas in the case where we study or remember Charles Darwin but not Alfred Russel Wallace. So, when we ask ‘whose knowledge?’, are we also suggesting that Darwin is privileged - like the voices of colonizers are privileged - and that Wallace has been excluded - like the colonized have been oppressed? What about Wallace?
So let’s go back to Darwin - not many know about Alfred Russel Wallace’s contributions to theory of evolution- are you suggesting Darwin is privileged and Wallace excluded?
— Martin Robinson (@Trivium21c) May 16, 2018
I went to my default assumption that Robinson hadn’t done his work by watching the video and thus didn’t pick up on the difference between the systemic oppression inflicted by white supremacy and the historical quirk where Darwin got the credit. He assures me that I’m mistaken, he had watched the video and understood the issues at stake in asking ‘whose knowledge?’, but wanted to ‘extend‘ the debate by wondering if ‘some white guys too missed out‘. So, what about Wallace? Indeed.
In his book Trivium, Robinson takes this stance on curriculum:
“When we teach our children manners, and tell them off for bad behaviour, are we making cultural judgements? We value certain types of behaviour, knowledge, and ideals, which make us who we are and who we want our children to be. We do this to ensure that our children conform to moral codes and cultural practices that we assume will stand them in good stead for their future. We want to civilize our children to share in the culture and society of which we are a part. And we civilize them with our memes, which are, by definition, historical.
Yet, it is through understanding our civilization that we decide which disciplines we value and, therefore, teach. We select the relevant foundational knowledge and unifying ideas that we feel are important. … It is fundamental in all cultures and civilizations to present an ideal through which we can aspire to be the best that we can be and learn the best that there is to learn. Education (and parenting) might be forms of cultural imperialism, but they are stronger and more important because this authority gives structure to the young, through which they can find themselves.
When I challenged Robinson on his use of ‘we’ in this passage, he assured me it was the socialist ‘we’, but I don’t think so. In the context of decolonizing the curriculum and cultural imperialism, that we that has made decisions and the we that has been represented is precisely the issue because it has been exclusionary. Nor do I think cultural imperialism can be dismissed so out of hand when education and the production of knowledge have been intimately tied with colonialism and imperialism. As Kehinde Andrews says in The Guardian,
“Universities produce racism,” … “It’s only since the 1960s there have been any black or Asian people – or women – at all.” In the intervening decades, little has happened to challenge ingrained attitudes and approaches, he said. “Are universities producing knowledge that challenges racism? I would argue that they are not.”
I have been public about what these discussions about education mean to me, about what the consequences have been of how First Nations people have been absent from the curriculum, or only presented through narrow colonial lenses.
My Emerging Future: The Stories I Live as First Nations Abroad
And I have been public about when I’ve been wrong and missed important parts of the conversation about oppression.
I write all of this only to say that these conversations take energy, and they take a lot more out of some of us than they do others. In no way do I bear the brunt, and I speak up precisely because I know that it costs me a lot less that it will cost other people. However, I do feel a pressure to play to a certain stylized ‘rational’ discourse and rules of engagement, a politeness based on not naming the glaring lack of knowledge that people think they can bring to conversations about oppression that they wouldn’t dare to bring to conversations about science or philosophy.
So, what about Wallace? So what? about Wallace.