Yeah, yeah, I'm really trying to stay away from politics, but the latest dispatch from the cancel culture wars has me rolling my eyes so far I can see the inside of my forehead. Some goofballs at Oxford have decided that sheet music is inherently racist.
Huh?
Well, it is predominantly white and sprinkled with little black dots. And as an untalented, very amateurish musician, I used to avoid pieces of music that had too high a proportion of black dots... What? That's not what they mean?
It's not, I gather, about the physical appearance of the page. Rather, there are some inchoate word salads - they don't rise to the level of 'argument' - about how dead white males like Beethoven used sheet music, and therefore... oh, whatever.
The same article mentioned that Middle English and Old English literature are also being tipped into the racist dumpster.
And for quite some time now I've been seeing the "Math is racist" cry.
So, just asking: why is it always the hard stuff that gets labeled racist and canceled?
An uncharitable sort just might begin to suspect that "It's racist!" is the excuse du jour for people who don't want to turn their brains on.
Any activity that allows an individual to perform at a higher level than another is suddenly becoming racist. Rather than encouraging people to discover those things they do best and enjoy the most, we are now supposed to discourage them from showing any capability better than anyone else.
ReplyDeleteWhat used to be a childish behavior among school kids (teacher's pet, brown noser, etc. being names given to any kids who earned any praise from a teacher for anything) now appears to be a behavior being taught by the teachers.
What's worse is that this counterproductive teaching (it turns out those who are afraid to think for themselves) is funded by our tax dollars. I pay a big chunk inproperty taxes in my state, most of which goes to funding schools. I didn't use to mind so much as having educated and thinking people is usually a good thing. Now, I see my tax dollars producing uneducated bigots.
I don't know how to fix this. And that is very depressing.
There seem to be an awful lot of people who are unable to think of *anything*...art, music, technology, romantic relationships...through any lens other than *power*. I had thought this malign phenomenon was pretty much something limited to academia, and even wrote a post titled Professors and the Pornography of Power...but it now seems to be much broader.
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