While the world was basking in the afterglow of "the speech" delivered by former President Bill Clinton, I happened across a book review on the Opinion page of The Wall Street Journal. (Don't ask.) Anyway, the book is called "The Victim's Revolution, The Rise of Identity Studies and the Closing of the Liberal Mind". (Mostly I hate secondary titles. They attempt to encapsulate 400 pages into one sentence.)
The book deals with examining recently fashioned academic disciplines such as Women's Studies, Chicano Studies, Gay and Lesbian Studies and, on the fringe, Fat Studies. (Fat Studies is actually a field of study available at Oregon State University.) It's easy to dismiss these academic pursuits as fad programs or "easy A" courses akin to Film Study and Geology. (No offense to Film and Geology Majors.) However, the greater point is that, from a learning prospective these courses and majors provide a monolithic prism from which to view the world and, in fact, all of the world's knowledge.
The danger of Women's Studies (and I'm not picking on Women's Studies) is not the objective correction of history written mostly by men but acceptence of the idea that all presented facts are suspect because of their origin. At that point the courses become less about knowledge and more about affirmation. Education is not supposed to be 'us vs them'. Learning should never be therapy. It is proper for students to question accepted wisdom but not exclusively because of its origin. The facts of an issue don't change for lesbian students merely because they are taught in a Lesbian Studies discipline. Academic prisms are destructive because they are not selective. If a black student is taught that every issue in his life must be examined through the prism of his race, he has no hope of ever viewing the wider world with any sort of objectivity. There are no black bakers. Cakes are created the same way for all races.
The reason for addressing this topic here is that I have continually taken the Right to task for creating the Victim Society among groups who had, heretofore, never considered themselves victims. "There's a War on Christmas" Christians are told even as they marvel at how fast the Santa Claus's appear after Halloween. "White People are getting screwed" screams right-wing radio although few white people would trade places with even the richest black man. "All media has a liberal bias" says those TV stations and radio who pander to the Right. "Latins are taking over American culture" scream people with names like O'Reilly (Irish), Hannity (also Irish) Charles Kruthhammer (German) and Van Susteren (Irish, Dutch, Icelandic, French and German). Not a Native-American in the bunch. If you see yourself as a victim, facts notwithstanding, then it's easier to condone true victimization of others. If the diversity practices of a university causes harm to a white applicant, whites are the victims. Forget that the policy only exists because of the centuries' old practice of excluding minorities of all stripes.
So what have we learned? That fairness is 1) an illusion? 2) a goal? or 3) a saleable commodity like church indulgences? Perhaps we discover that for as warm and comforting as victimhood feels, aside from fact-based situations (the Jews in Europe, the Armenians in 1915) we are only really victims if we choose to be. So, university students, by all means take courses that glorify your culture and social circumstance. Just beware of the sirens of excuses who want to convert you to the culture of victimhood. Besides, if you get a D in Chicano studies, you can't complain that you were cheated because you were born in Venezuela.
