Читать книгу Understanding Racism - Hephzibah Strmic-Pawl - Страница 51

White privilege also shapes what is considered knowledge or even epistemology. In an analysis of the major disciplines, such as history, philosophy, and science, the curriculum is Eurocentric, in that it focuses on the contributions and knowledge production of Whites. For example, Rothenberg had the following realization when she began teaching philosophy:

Implicit in my syllabus was the notion that wisdom was the special attribute of one race, one sex, and one class, and thus one particular way of thinking about the world and framing questions was the only model for intelligence and rationality. That this way of defining knowledge and framing questions made the experience and wisdom of most of the world’s people either invisible or irrelevant never occurred to me.¹⁶

She eventually came to realize that “we have privileged the distorted perspective of an infinitesimal fraction of the world’s population.”¹⁷ Amico, too, as a professor of philosophy, came to realize that philosophy was primarily a White discipline that ignored the contributions of others and saw “the blind spots in [his] education that favor whiteness.”¹⁸ And McIntosh notes, “I can be sure that my children will be given curricular materials that testify to the existence of their race.”¹⁹ The White ethnocentric curriculum shows how Whites are taught from day one that White culture and knowledge are not only most significant but also correct.