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Very chinteresting piece on the prevailing biases & narratives in academia (shoutout to white guilt)
dnc
Member Posts: 56,614
Long but fascinating tale of a left-leaning moderate finding out he's not nearly liberal enough for the academic world.
This essay is about my experience with the application process—specifically how I was repeatedly encouraged to alter my applications to conform with far-Left political ideology. These alterations would ostensibly bolster my chances of being accepted to and receiving funds for graduate programs.snip
Early drafts of my personal statements looked more or less like what you’ve just read. When I would show these drafts to my writing fellows or scholarship advisors, the first question they would ask, almost unanimously, was but why do you care about extreme poverty?snip
Well, because there’s no single problem on earth responsible for more suffering or needless waste of human life, I would respond.
Yes, but why do you care about extreme poverty?
What on earth did they mean? A number of them followed up by asking if I had witnessed anyone living in extreme poverty. No, I hadn’t. Had I or anyone I know ever contracted malaria or a neglected tropical disease? No. Did I feel I had a responsibility to the developing world as a beneficiary of colonialism? Not particularly. How did my privilege and my identity as a White Westerner contribute to my decision to focus on extreme poverty? It didn’t.
I would have these exchanges over and over again throughout my application process. My essays would state that extreme poverty was the greatest problem in the world and I wanted to help solve it. They would ask why I wanted to help solve it. Because it’s the greatest problem in the world, I would say. And my interlocutor would respond with utter bafflement.
But the thing I don’t understand is why do you care? This was the final question of my Rhodes nomination interview. I can’t properly express the frustration I feel whenever this question is put to me. Every time I try to explain the importance of extreme poverty, and every time my answer isn’t good enough.Link - well worth the read.
It was all I could do at that moment to keep my composure. What do you want me to say? I felt like asking. There are 900 million people living on less than $2 a day. That’s why I care. That’s the reason. There is nothing else. It doesn’t matter that I’m White, it doesn’t matter who my ancestors were, it doesn’t matter what country I’m from. All that matters is that people are suffering and I can help them. What more reason do I need?
Throughout my application process, the question of why I care came up so frequently that I decided to make it the main focus of my personal statement. In the precious 1000 words allotted to me, I spent the first 350 talking not about my views on global poverty or my ambitions to reform macroeconomic policy-making or my experience conducting randomized evaluations in India, but simply trying to convince the review committee that I as a White Westerner am psychologically capable of caring about people in developing nations. Whether or not my application was accepted seemed to be predicated almost entirely on my ability to successfully convince the review committee of this fact.
I quickly learned that a more effective way to explain why a White Westerner would be concerned about global poverty was by appealing to a sense of justice rather than a sense of caring, specifically by invoking postcolonial White guilt. If I couldn’t explain that I care about people in developing nations for their own sake, at least I could explain that I as a White Westerner felt a sense of responsibility to formerly colonized regions of the world.
Comments
What his advisors are trying to point out, and what he and millions of other liberals and moderates are missing is that "solving" poverty in the conventional sense just means throwing money at the "problem" a la the Gates Foundation, and that the "problem" can usually be simplified to a history of stunted development from colonialism, or imperialism. That could mean Russian or Chinese imperialism just as much as it could mean American or Anglo-European imperialism.
He'll go into his field, learn how to give out aid, or design clean stoves, or micro loans or some other bullshit, and it won't do a lick of good for the root causes of poverty and inequality.
You'd think at some point we'll reach crush depth and then, maybe, these types of higher academia will start pulling themselves out of the marble jaws of oblivion and resemble sanity.
edit: or maybe I'm an optimist.
I feel really guilty about the sexual objectification and suffering of the red people.
I'm willing to give her the Throbber non-missionary style to make amends.
If I can take a nap first, I could probably feel guilty about slavery too and submit to this wronged Nubian lass.
I can't help that I'm a giver.
Die
Appeal to your audience.