Racism in Academia

Posted by Gabriella Beckles Nov 28, 2006

But I must clarify. I do not mean a debate about racism on a personal and social level, which are typically the way such arguments are framed, for obvious reasons. I am talking about academia’s contribution to upholding racist ideologies precisely because it refuses to discuss its own interest in race and how that has contributed to the racist systems we are currently trying to understand.

As I have now come to realize, every intellectual figure from the 18th-19th centuries that academia considers important, has written on race. Indeed, a great number of academic disciplines were developed during this period specifically to explore questions pertaining to race: ethnology, anthropology, sociology, natural history, paleontology, archeology, etc. People such as Darwin, Kant, Spencer, Voltaire, Nietzsche the list goes on, had much to say on the topic. Thus, the failure to include the racial part of their discourse is misleading and distorts our perception of these issues overall.

There is an unspoken assumption that White people do not think about race at all, and that if they do it is because some oppressed group has lobbied long and hard enough for them to listen. That classes about race will be attended or even included only to satisfy some minority demand or quota. That it’s the parents of minorities who must harass their school board, on behalf of their children, to include a more diverse and inclusive agenda. Many a black professor has lost their job, or been otherwise redirected, when they tried to address race from academia’s lofty platform; Cornel West and Derrick Bell to name a few.

Who would know that race was the central concern of intellectuals of all disciplines in the modern era. It was of paramount importance because the key questions of the time were:

• How can we account for the chronology of the Bible story without it conflicting with newly discovered information about the history of man?
• How do we explain the rise and fall of civilizations?
• What is the natural history of the human race and how do we explain for the differences in it.
• How can we classify humans and all other animate life on Earth?

It is the attempts to answer these questions that has laid the foundation for our current perspectives on race, the history of each race, and their contributions to this planet. We would all benefit it academia lifted the veil of secrecy on its long and colorful history of race.