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OpEdNews Op Eds    H3'ed 11/12/20

Abolishing White Supremacist Thinking

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Message Dr. Lenore Daniels

She will be informed (is she hasn't come to realize her own weariness) that there just isn't enough time for any serious thinking beyond absorbing with all her heart and soul the "bullshit" knowledge intended to lead students up the ladder of success. Be efficient! Be like Big Brother! Everything has been thought out by those qualified to do the thinking.

In turn, my friend is too busy being busy, play her role as one clog among many in the process of making money for the "investors" she never interacts with, let alone challenge. She is too busy to write essays or to work on a book-length manuscript. An ally to the cause for racial justice, she's being sidelined that is, handed teaching assignments that save the campus from losing money but not its heart, it's conscious, if it ever had either.

It's not just a matter of sprinkling a little diversity here and there, in a course there and in a conference here. It's just about having students read Toni Morrison, Danticat, or Rushdie, or even spending an entire semester studying women's works from around the world. I remember taking part in campaigns asking for this kind of inclusion and receiving it back in high school and college fifty-one and fifty-three years ago, respectively.

The question that most people of color ask in America must be asked at the college level: How to does America work to address institutionalize racism in the present without at least possessing solid and honest knowledge about its participation in the violence of conquest, genocide, enslavement, torture, terrorism, and imperialism? How many Americans know that this nation has 800 military bases around the world?

Under the current regime of "education" in America, vice presidents, deans, chairs, the managerial staff, have the interests of the investors to honor, and any challenge to the authority of those investors or trustees will call for the initiation of gaslighting campaigns, targeting the uncooperative, labeling them "radicals" and "socialists." The investors interest isn't to empower the poor, the working class, Black, Indigenous, migrant families from Haiti, El Salvador, LGBTQ, disabled veterans, women's rights, housing, and health care advocates, protesters against injustice" Think of what institutions of higher educate would look like if its population of faculty, students, and managers reflected our day-to-day reality.

Unfortunately, this isn't the look that appeals to college managers in pursuit of the big bucks. Besides, an authoritarian system prefers it's population to know as little as possible: it's easier to control and "assign" projects deemed suitable for the classroom.

Trump isn't the first American to weaponize words in defense of corporate capitalist interests. Strategic use of violent rhetoric to cut down a perceived enemy is as old as that American apple pie. The "busyness" of a managerial approach at the college and university works hand-in-hand with smear campaigns to deflect attention away from the naysayers, designated "radicals," "leftists," "crazies," and establishes a managerial mentality that assumes "the trappings of established professions such as doctors and lawyers." The shift from the faculty to a "professional" class of managers, wearing dress suits, ties, heels, carrying clipboards, and cup mugs, is an impressive sight for students entering the college campus for the first time, carrying only hopes of being as "successful" as the managers.

And the managerial staff will see to it: Where better to reproduce "apprentices" for the global distribution of managerial mentality?

Think positive thoughts!

For faculty, particularly contingent faculty, to ask impertinent questions is frowned upon just as it should be in the classroom if a student exposes what has been distorted in a discussion, say, on women's rights or how the media's (mis) characterization of Black trans caters to violence against to that segment of the American population! So goes corporate thinking!

It's not much different at a tradition public or private nonprofit campus, where the corporation's battleground is the new student recreation center, featuring a room of pool tables and cafeterias serving brand name pizzas, coffee, chicken. A new bookstore solved the flaw with the old structure. This new store sells brand-named paraphernalia: sweatshirts and jackets with the logos of NFL teams as well as merchandise with the campuses own mascot! The managers supervising the merchandise are sure family and friends back home would love to own a cup, a cap, a T-shirt with the university's logo.

Don't ask about the cost of textbooks.

This battleground comes with a hefty prize and it's not visible on the menu boards! The corporations have co-opted the revolution galvanized the masses to die for what they offer!

The corporations enjoy a 360 Â degrees view of the world. They familiarized the American youth in particular with a vision of Horatio Alger, marketing rags-to-riches tales sells in exchange for a negotiated program of study just right for the taker. A student needs only to know what is generally accepted for "getting ahead" in America, and it is this: This is the land of opportunity. For all!

Believe it and be saved!

The invisible hand of the corporation illuminates the pathway to hope. Citizens need only to relinquish their right to think for themselves. It's the most cost effective way of maintaining the agency of the corporation!

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Activist, writer, American Modern Literature, Cultural Theory, PhD.

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