Against the Condescending Attitude in Academic Approaches

Personal accounts and experiences are a valuable addition to the serious, complex and complicated academic researches in human sciences. I deeply valuate both of them because it balances the mind and offer information that creates a full picture of a specific situation or mentality pattern. One without the other guarantee in most cases a misrepresetantion.

I am thinking right now to the recent academic and media takes on racism and white privilege in general. My area of study has to do mostly with ethnic minorities but the research tools used in the case of ethnic minorities can be sometimes used as well for the research in other sub-domains, such as gender and race approaches. 

I will talk less right now about race or my ethnic minorities studies. I want to share only some experiences regarding a certain condescending attitude that I´ve noticed myself among white, privileged, educated intellectuals - some of them academics, in a completely different context.

As a child, I grew up in a relatively privileged family. Although not always enjoying a top political appreciation, I belonged to a family that counted for at least three generation people with high-education, a high profesional mobility and urban background. High-education, that was intensively encouraged to acquire and was, actually, since now, a normal pathway for me and my siblings, was a guarantee against the ever changing political occurences. No matter what happens, you have a profesional qualification that will guarantee employment. Bonus: if you really want to be beyond good and evil, you gather as many qualifications as possible therefore your intelligence will be always praised, no matter what happens outside, in the world of decision makers. A theory that was at a great extent proved by my family members personal and professional journey. No matter how hard the dictatorship was at work in my country of origin, my uncles and mother were always needed for involvement in different scientific projects. No matter the country we landed for a long or short term, the knowledge of multiple languages, academic achievements and scholarhips always guaranteed a place among other intellectual peers.

On the other side, in relationship with the other professional and social groups, we knew our place so well that although some of my family members where genuinely sharing a very socialist/communist political belief, the ways in which those beliefs were put into practice ended up in a very condescending, kitsch-eque way. For instance, of course, we acknowledged the existence of illiterate members of the society, and we are keen to help on a voluntary basis to upgrade their level of knowledge, even teaching them an extra foreign language once their literacy was improving. But those people will always be those whom we helped to get out of illiteracy. Those people, no matter how far they will get, they will always remember based on their social class. Which was very unfair because, if communism did a lot of bad things the fact that it offered free education to everyone was one of the most important successes. 

In fact, we never mixed with those proletarians. They were our ´bon sauvages´ that we cultivate, but we don´t share bread with. The experience acquired through the contact with the masses was purely experimental and exhibitionists. We were curious to have a look at the way in which those people live and think, but at the end of the day we are happy to be home in our educated homes. 

I had later the same experience when I was doing some research about Roma minorities in the Balkans. NGOs and institutions provided with a generous budget were inviting journalists and academics active in the field of ethnic minorities to visit the villages of Roma. They were taking pictures, cautiously entering the mud huts where those people were living, were rolling their eyes looking at the children playing in the dirt together with various domestic animals. After one or two days or just a couple of hours spent in the midst of those people they were back to their clean offices, writing an academic report or some news and think nostalgically about those poor Roma and their poor destiny. 

Practically speaking, no matter the attitude of the actors, the fact that people wrote sympathetically about those poor Roma or the illiterate people were taught to read and write were obvious gains. However, on the long term, the class/caste system was strengthned and further reproduced. Some of my relatives genuinely believed that a fair social system is needed and an equal access to education no matter the social background is normal, but they also accepted to hire other people to do for them the manual work and housework that was considered low level for people with an education or refused to accept as full members of the family people from a lower educational status. 

Returning to the current state of the art in race and gender studies, I see some similarities. There is an open discussion right now about the white feminism and the fact that does not properly include and consider the needs of the POC women. In terms of racism studies, often the system is regulated by white researches that although are well intended it might not take into consideration the genuine list of priorities and problems that affect POC on a daily basis. 

From the academic perspective, inclusion of more POC and people with a background relevant for the problem is very important for a balanced, realistic perspective. In a perfect academic world, the gender, social background and race are irrelevant, as what matters for academic progress is the quality of the studies and complex approach of a specific topic. Academic diversity in human sciences is very important as for now, because it adds to the theoretical background personal approaches and testimonies that might lead to the a critical take of the privileges. One cannot change his or her family but a progressive critical approach can help to acknowledge that you are not alone and not special or that you have a mission to avoid taking your privileges for granted. The permanent critical and self-critical analysis helps to avoid perpetrating this attitude. 

On the Current War on Statues and Other Demons

I belong to a culture that discourages the visual representations of human body based on the belief that it represent an act of idolatry. You have to respect the other fellow humans, but their image in stone or other is an act of worshiping which does not suit the dynamics of the everyday relationship with God. Most of the synagogues do not have images or paintings and you will only find exquisite, colourful decorations in the Oriental-Moorish-style places of worship. No matter my current degree of religious observation, I am still reluctant towards the invasive presence of human representations but as a historian of mentalities I am always very curious to check the ways in which certain personalities are represented as well as the addenda associated with it.

The Western culture in its entirety is, on the other hand, organised and based on a complex system of visual representation, which originates from the Christian symbolism. Saints and their visual representations are intercessors to the God, according to the Christian belief, therefore churches and later, public spaces, are frequent spaces which host elaborated human images. 

The same frequent representation of images with a religious symbolism characterizes the Asian realm as well, with Indian and Japanese or Thai gods, among others, being worshipped intensively in and outside the temples, often by bringing offers and decorating their statues with clothes or flower guirlands.

The laicization of the public space in Europe led to a replacement of the originary religious meaning associated to the statues to a code aimed to reproduce the values of nationalism. The same system but read in a different key. The decision towards having a certain personality represented in the public space become a matter of political decision, as part of a symbolic repertoire that has to do with strengthening the sense of belonging and the national narrative in general. Having displayed a statue in a public space involves an array of administrative measures, with a symbolic weight, from the decision of the location, until the choice of the representation of the statue, usually a pitch during which various artists present their view on the specific personality and the funding of the work as such.

The extreme case of the Soviet-inspired visual propaganda is an illustration of the pressure towards creating a unified perspective which starts with the education of children in school, mostly the texts from the ´classical´ writers of the accepted dogma, and the further cultural productions - exhibitions, movie production, media focus. Once the communism was over, the masses out on the streets to celebrate the beginning of the reign of freedom attacked the statues of the communist idols - among others the ones in the memory of the ´Soviet soldier freedom fighters´ or the Lenin/Marx/Engels statues. Soon after, those were replaced by the new national heroes many of them controversial as well because they are representing values that are in open conflict with the democratic system the post-communist countries were supposed to embrace. The statues of the racist Admiral Horthy in Hungary or Marschal Antonescu in Romania are just some examples of such historical turn-outs.

In Western Europe and USA, the public spaces are shared with personalities whose inclusion within the national narrative are rarely contested. It is generally assumed that by the very fact of including them into the gallery of national heroes they were on the ´good´ democratic side as the countries themselves are associated with democracy and rule of law. 

The current war on statues that started in the American cities following the murdering of a black citizen, George Floyd, proves that when it comes to statues too, things are rarely just black and white. The removal of confederate monuments and personalities with a strong racist, white-supremacy message is a process that started at the beginning of the 2000s but it seems it is far from being properly underwent the middle of the process. On the other side of the pond, the well known racist writings of Cecil Rhodes haven´t discouraged his display at Oxford and even naming him for a prestigious scholarship operated since 1902. True is that in such wars, there are, as usual collateral victims, as the case of the statue of the Spanish writer Miguel de Cervantes whose statue was recently defaced in San Francisco. Was he took for the colonialist Columbus or someone was really disgusted by the war against windmills that his main character, Quixote, fiercely leads ?

Academically speaking, dealing with statues is far more complicated than dealing with controversial texts. In the case of the texts, one can use a critical apparatus in order to create the context and offer a different perspective as well as to reject the problematic affirmations. A statue is an inert piece of stone in the middle of a square and adding a critical text does not guarantee that someone will ever read it. Plus, removal of the statue means political AND administrative decisions which are not easily and wholeheartedly taken.

Should those statue stay there? The role of the academics is to lead the intellectual debate about those controversial figures and their role in the national(istic) representation. Historians of mentalities have the role of exposing, where necessary, the controverses and the inappropriate content for a democratic society. They have to assume a public role, as intellectuals, especially through articles in the main media outlets, that can create a debate at a different level and pressure the decision makers towards a decision for removing those statues. Such a background will lead possibly to a more peaceful and conflict-free approach of the issue and will also avoid confusions and a general outrage against innocent statues, as in the case of the poor creator of Quixote.

Talking about Race in 2020...

As I am a firm believer that street protests aren´t for me, I think that the discussion about race, on both sides - from minority to majority, no matter the color - is more than necessary. I am talking from the position of a priviledged white person. I cannot change my skin colour and my family, and I cannot put myself into other people´s skin, including fellow white peers. 

My everyday personal, professional and academic experience offered me the opportunity to critically assess various concepts including those applied on my own cultural bias.

A discussion about race is so necessary nowadays, especially in the media and academic circles because this is where the representations and mentalities are actually built. Based on those representations systems of power are created that will eventually reproduce the categories projected.

Everything should start, in my opinion, with a historical approach. Understanding how a certain idea originated and how affected the everyday life of a specific category is the most important gateway to countering its eventual effects. 

In Why I´m Not Longing Talking to White People about Race, Reni Eddo-Lodge prefers to abandon the self-explanatory discourse for a white audience. Instead, she is sharing her experiences and the researches into the deep roots of racism within the British society. A historical account of race, including the slavery episodes put the problem into context. The journalistic research reveals the race-biased institutional pattern, the pro-Brexit politicians replicated at a great extent.

Reni Eddo-Lodge is going beyond the everyday discourse and complains about race in relation with institutions, but reveals the persistence of ´whiteness´ in areas assigned intellectually as space of free exchange of ideas, no matter the colour. In fact, she rejects with few clear examples, the ´whiteness´ of feminism, self-centered and irrelevant for many of the minorities living in Britain and elsewhere.

Only those few points and it is enough to give a full list of topics to research and discuss about...The current political turmoil in America is a good opportunity to continue the conversation, but at a level that encompasses race approaches in general. Europe does not do it better, from all the wrong points of view.

Time for academics to take more seriously the challenge of accepting the voice of minority intellectuals as part of the dialogue as it offers not only a historical perspective, but an everyday experience that should be the basis of any further theoretical evaluations, especially when it comes to intellectual constructions about race.

Rating: 4 stars

German Women on the Home Front

The title of this book is largely misleading as the women whose testimonies are featured are wives yet are part- or full-time employed. They are working in small shops, bakeries and employed in secretarial work that once the manpower is short, do adapt for working on production lines.

Besides the testimonies and some basic historic research the author is using no archives and other published works on the topic. Therefore, from an academic perspective, the testimonies do have a limited impact.

However, after a well-deserved filter of too much irrelevant information for the topic - including about the everyday marital interactions - the book can be used as part of a wider research about the role and social function of women during the 1939-1945 Nazi Germany. It starts from the membership into various girls´ organisations whose membership was based, among others, on the proof of ancestry, and the highly political/propaganda whose educational chore was to project an ideal of womanhood which was ´fit, healthy and beautiful´. The young women were supposed to help the ´survival of the nation´ through childbearing and intensive homecare activities. 

Interestingly, the testimonies are offering insights not only into the daily lives of women, but equally proves the rift between the generations and the slow wearing away of the social fabric during the last years of Nazi regime. 

It is an informative read but should be understood within the limits of the choice of testimonies themselves.

Rating: 3 stars

Disclaimer: Book offered by the publisher in exchange for an honest review