Poor Little White Boy – A Personal Reflection

This is sort of a frivolous post, it is not my intention to cry ‘racism!’ at such trivialities. But I do hope to explore a little the idea of hegemony and education culture.

So, it was this year, this semester, this faculty. The Jewish high holidays came up, Yom Kippur the day of atonement, fasting and Jewish guilt and Rosh Hashanah the (major) Jewish new year, days of feasting, honey, cake, gluttony and awkward conversations with your friend’s grandmother over the table.

As they often do these holidays fell in semester time. Try as I might I could not get out of classes for the day. Since classes were compulsory and since I had an in class assessment due I took a hit to the academic record on one day but had to break the holiday on another. This isn’t intentional racism, but it is a little irritating. Mainstream Christians/post Christians do not have these issues because the university’s/society’s calendar is based on their calendar. This is perhaps for the best, since it seems to keep most people happy, but for those of us for whom it does not work it is annoying and puts us at a slight academic disadvantage, at the very least more leniency would be appreciated, and perhaps also an end to Saturday exams. Perhaps for a multicultural society to function it needs to trample over minorities. Is this really multiculturalism? Can institutions exist free from cultural bias? Would this leave everyone unhappy and is it, in fact best to at least placate a few?

I think this speaks to course readings on micro aggression and racist institutions. Lentin and Titley talk of the current system and how it recreated hegemonic (in this case Anglo structures)¹. It also talks of the way the Jewish microrepublic is trampled to keep the dominant republic functioning². In this way the institution creates micro agressions and micro imperialisms, perhaps unavoidably in the current system.

My own opinion is that this kind of thing is unavoidable. I would like Anglos to be more aware that their culture is not a blank culture and that it leaves footprints. While things like academic leniency would be nice I can’t ultimately see a university that doesn’t trample the calendar of the minority, to keep the majority happy. It has to happen when calendars conflict.

Disclaimer: this is a really trivial petty post, it is not my intention to trample on the actual racism that others may have experienced, rather…the blogs are due in an hour, this came to mind, it’s an interesting micro view, please don’t think I’m crying ‘oppression’.

 

1.       1. A. Lentin and G. Titley, The Crisis of Multiculturalism: Racism in a Neoliberal Age (London: Zed Books, 2011).

2.       C. Ho, “Respecting the Presence of Others: School Microrepublics and Everyday Multiculturalism,” Journal of Intercultural Studies, 32(6) (2011): 603-619.