Professor Worries that Science Spreads "Whiteness Ideology"

You really can’t get something less biased with regards to those involved than science. If things are done properly, testing is done the same way across the board and then results are peer-reviewed. It really doesn’t matter if the scientist is of a particular race, religion, sexual identity- anything. The results are the results. Well, some academics can’t really accept that.

Advertisement

Campus Reform report that a new essay by University of Colorado at Denver scholars Cheryl E. Matias and Paul T. Le, entitled “Towards a truer multicultural science education: how whiteness impacts science education,” argues that its time to “have the field consider the theoretical frames of whiteness and how it might influence how we engage in science education such that our hope for diversity never fully materializes.”

The essay says:

“Whiteness embraces White ideology, and because Whites are at the apex of the racial hierarchy, whiteness becomes normalized and is invisible to those who benefit the most from it,” they write. “This is particularly troubling because the normality of whiteness means that Whites do not believe that they are actively investing in White supremacy or racism, which keeps oppression intact.”

Think science is unbiased? That’s oppressive or something.

“the [science] culture attempts to be unbiased through peer reviewing and consistent methods and methodologies,” this interpretation “falsely makes us believe that science is an objective enterprise and transcends culture.”

“For many scientists, we are convinced that objectivity prevents an oppressive culture because discoveries are independent of identity,” they say. “Consequently, we unknowingly spread whiteness ideology.”

Advertisement

What? It continues:

“European colonization and conquest influenced contemporary attitudes of valid knowledge, and much of the way western nations teach science erases the values and culture of indigenous people,” they continue. “Therefore, our science is out of touch with the experiences of our students of Color and, instead, represent post-colonial discourses of White power and control over people of Color via forcing the internalization of Western science knowledge.

“This way of knowing science in the absence of other ways of knowing only furthers whiteness and White supremacy through power and control of science knowledge,” they maintain. “As a result, our students of Color are victims of deculturization, and their own worldviews are invalidated.”

This is such a bizarre argument that it seems like it was made up to allow people to feel like victims. Academia in a nutshell.

Recommended

Join the conversation as a VIP Member

Trending on RedState Videos