[Xmca-l] Re: Shut Down STEM/Academia?

[Anthony Barra]

Proud American white male of Italian decent.

Since I've been asked, I am happy to call attention to one small point: not
one Hispanic individual in my extended family, my wife most notably, likes
or uses the term "Latinx," and most actively mock it. Around here, it is
considered contrived, offensive, politically-motivated, and/or outright
goofy.

That said, everyone should feel free to offend; after all, "in order to be
able to Think, one must risk being offensive." And, without question, few
things are more precious than our precious tools for thinking.

I love diversity, especially diversity of the mind and diversity of
perspectives.

Thanks,

Anthony

P.S. I'm curious to hear various opinions about your questions re: the
current call for papers. Thanks for asking.




On Thursday, August 20, 2020, David Kellogg <dkellogg60@gmail.com> wrote:

> (Anthony--are you sure you are really a white male? You seem rather Latinx
> to me.)
>
> I am curious about the call for papers currently up on MCA. Here's what it
> says:
>
> "The recent global pandemic lays bare the ongoing disparities in health
> and economic well-being amongst racialized communities in North America
> (Poteat et al., 2020). Amplified by the murders of George Floyd, Breonna
> Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery, the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter
> movement brought to global awareness and provoked dialogue about ongoing
> antiblack racism in the United States and global colonial and
> settler-colonial contexts. In academia the hashtags #ShutDownSTEM and
> #ShutDownAcademia brought similar attention to racisms within academic and
> scientific communities. This movement corresponds to recent emphasis on the
> sociopolitical nature of teaching and learning in fields broadly construed
> as STEM, which continuously construct (sic) racialized assumptions based on
> deficit views about learners from nondominant communities (Adams, in
> press). Racialized and deficit-based discourses have been detrimental to
> Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour (BIPOC) communities whose potential
> for flourishing has been stifled by the imposition of “solutions” from
> “experts” who claim to know what is “best” for them (Kayumova et al.,
> 2019).  Studies rooted in deficit discourses determines (sic) the
> orientation a researcher may take towards communities of learners from
> BIPOC backgrounds which often fails to show the richness, variation, and
> ingenuities inherent in diverse communities."
>
>
> Here are my questions:
>
>
> a) What are the grammatical subjects of the verb "construct" and the verb
> "determines" (marked [sic] above)?
>
>
> b) Was the resurgence of Black Lives Matter "amplified" by police murders?
> How did that happen?
>
>
> c) Is the USA a settler-colonial context or not? If so, why single it out?
> If not, when and how did it stop being one?
>
>
> d) Is support for affirmative action, for hiring quotas, for busing and
> integration of schools, academia and STEM a "deficit" view? Isn't
> displaying the richness, variation, and ingenuity of racialized groups in
> an undiluted form what Jim Crow, Plessy vs. Ferguson, and the Bakke
> Decision of 1975 purported to do?
>
>
> (By the way, the Vygotsky presentation in Russian that Anthony is
> directing our attention to has some important points to make about systemic
> racism in the USA, written by a prominent intellectual from a viciously
> oppressed minority group whose access to STEM/academia was directly enabled
> by the revolutionary integrationism of the early Soviet Union. Vygotsky
> often uses American events to comment on developments that are closer to
> home....)
>
>
> David Kellogg
> Sangmyung University
>
> New article in Mind, Culture, and Activity:
> Realizations: non-causal but real relationships in and between Halliday,
> Hasan, and Vygotsky
>
> Some free e-prints today available at:
> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/Y8YHS3SRW42VXPTVY2Z6/__;!!Mih3wA!Xf_5TfkoXWfB6VY1tuyRuoU_Z-LUAH-XtI_0m4IGdbcSnRAVME3kK5g_BB3hvTivI8vdyA$ 
> full?target=10.1080/10749039.2020.1806329
> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/Y8YHS3SRW42VXPTVY2Z6/full?target=10.1080*10749039.2020.1806329__;Lw!!Mih3wA!VmhEdjjecAAspGG0cG_d-vMQShzhAxHh7KGJEMIC5XSxcNudrMHTOmObxW9PD8x0D-Bwqg$>
>
> New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works
> Volume One: Foundations of Pedology"
> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!Xf_5TfkoXWfB6VY1tuyRuoU_Z-LUAH-XtI_0m4IGdbcSnRAVME3kK5g_BB3hvThhW4wf0A$ 
> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!VmhEdjjecAAspGG0cG_d-vMQShzhAxHh7KGJEMIC5XSxcNudrMHTOmObxW9PD8zkYMJYOQ$>
>
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