Critical reflection about The Race for Theory
I genuinely could connect with everything Christian’s “The Race for Theory” article talked about. Upon taking a political philosophy class at Temple, which is required for political science majors, I realized I was having difficulty understanding and more so connecting with the topics covered in class daily in general. It was lacking something and I didn’t exactly know what that something was. Every reading that was chosen by the professor of course was written by white men, who are deemed the fathers of philosophy. When taking African American courses and learning about Black history prior to enslavement under white people, learning that the first philosophers, libraries and schools, government …show more content…
Some being assimilation, silence, identity crisis, consciousness/self-awareness, freedom, exclusion and the importance of language. Without ever mentioning the word assimilation, Christian tackles the western academic world literature obsession with excluding literature/work done oppressed people, from white women to black and brown men and women etc. Christian passionately argues that “the race for theory, with its linguistic jargon, its emphasis on quoting its prophets, its tendency towards “Biblical” exegesis…. its gross generalizations about culture, has silenced many of us to the extent that some of us feel we can no longer discuss our own literature, while others have developed intense writing blocks and are puzzled by the incomprehensibility of the language set adrift in literary circles” (53). Focusing largely on women, Black women especially, the theme of how Western society silences work done by nonwhite male ‘others’ causes some writers to step back from their Black identity so their work may be noticed if it fits into what Western academia labels as the norm/good work. Assimilating into white spaces is nothing new for Black folks wanting to survive, but today with more Black women writing in America than ever before, this identity crisis Black academics are going through, will lead them back
I genuinely could connect with everything Christian’s “The Race for Theory” article talked about. Upon taking a political philosophy class at Temple, which is required for political science majors, I realized I was having difficulty understanding and more so connecting with the topics covered in class daily in general. It was lacking something and I didn’t exactly know what that something was. Every reading that was chosen by the professor of course was written by white men, who are deemed the fathers of philosophy. When taking African American courses and learning about Black history prior to enslavement under white people, learning that the first philosophers, libraries and schools, government …show more content…
Some being assimilation, silence, identity crisis, consciousness/self-awareness, freedom, exclusion and the importance of language. Without ever mentioning the word assimilation, Christian tackles the western academic world literature obsession with excluding literature/work done oppressed people, from white women to black and brown men and women etc. Christian passionately argues that “the race for theory, with its linguistic jargon, its emphasis on quoting its prophets, its tendency towards “Biblical” exegesis…. its gross generalizations about culture, has silenced many of us to the extent that some of us feel we can no longer discuss our own literature, while others have developed intense writing blocks and are puzzled by the incomprehensibility of the language set adrift in literary circles” (53). Focusing largely on women, Black women especially, the theme of how Western society silences work done by nonwhite male ‘others’ causes some writers to step back from their Black identity so their work may be noticed if it fits into what Western academia labels as the norm/good work. Assimilating into white spaces is nothing new for Black folks wanting to survive, but today with more Black women writing in America than ever before, this identity crisis Black academics are going through, will lead them back