Yeah; I don't know that I'd personally go to a whole school based on the organizing principle of a race, but I can see the logic behind making that an organizing principle. I took an African Art History course in college, taught by a Real Live Black Lady. It would've been better if there hadn't been an anxious undercurrent of "see, see, the Africans are totally smart and accomplished like Whitey, if you just look...;" it could've relaxed into its skin a bit (so to speak). But it was worthwhile to attempt to take a viewpoint centered in another culture.
When you say that, though, it also becomes apparent that there's a bit of racism in the phrase "Euro" centric; as if the European continent is a cultural monolith. The French could not be more different from the Germans, for example. And in Asia, there's no love lost between the Vietnamese and the Chinese, just to name one. And there was a very interesting article in SWINDLE awhile ago about the rise and fall of Pan-Africanism. Apparently those daishiki-wearing motherland-lovers from the US who returned to Africa expecting to be received with open arms got a rude awakening when they were viewed as total foreigners. Cultural differences are bound more tightly to race in North America than in those races' continents of origin, is all I'm sayin'.
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Date: 2008-01-31 07:53 pm (UTC)When you say that, though, it also becomes apparent that there's a bit of racism in the phrase "Euro" centric; as if the European continent is a cultural monolith. The French could not be more different from the Germans, for example. And in Asia, there's no love lost between the Vietnamese and the Chinese, just to name one. And there was a very interesting article in SWINDLE awhile ago about the rise and fall of Pan-Africanism. Apparently those daishiki-wearing motherland-lovers from the US who returned to Africa expecting to be received with open arms got a rude awakening when they were viewed as total foreigners. Cultural differences are bound more tightly to race in North America than in those races' continents of origin, is all I'm sayin'.