< PREVIOUS ] [ 1994 Index ] [ Ed Quillen HOME ] [ SEARCH ] [ NEXT >
It was surprising to read yesterday that the University of Correctness in Boulder had just decided to organize an ethnic studies department. I had just assumed that the University Office of Academic Trend Imitation had installed such a department years ago.
These departments are a good employment program. First you go on a hunger strike to get a major in Turko-Chilean cultural studies.
Now it may appear that such a degree is about as valuable, for job-seeking purposes, as a bad discharge from the Army. However, there are all these other colleges with new Turko-Chilean cultural studies programs resulting from student demands, and these programs desperately need faculty. You can pretty well write your own ticket, and enjoy a lifetime of steady paychecks. Should anyone question your job performance, or even whether your job is necessary, the critic is a racist.
This is a tough world, and you can't really blame people for pressuring universities to create jobs that only they are qualified to fill.
One disadvantage, though, is that good material might
get hidden inside these professor-of-color employment
programs. For instance, I was exposed to a wonderful book,
One Hundred Years of Solitude
by Gabriel Garcia
Marquez, in a regular college English class. These days, it
would probably be found only in Hispanic Literary Tradition
401, and students outside the ethnic studies department
would never see it or many other great works.
Such narrow disciplines also tend to increase
segregation on campus, and that's another loss. In 1970,
Martha and I were the only white tenants in a Greeley
apartment house known as the White House of the Black
Student Union.
They turned me on to Langston Hughes and
Malcolm X; I turned them on to Lenny Bruce and H.L.
Mencken.
It seemed as though college was doing what it was
supposed to do -- broaden one's horizons -- and the current
trend appears to go the other way. Multi-culturalism
means Study my own culture, and no others.
After all, if universities were serious about studying all cultures, especially significant American cultures, there would be departments of White Trash Studies.
Students would have to answer test questions:
What are the two favorite White Trash outdoor
sports?
Poaching and urination.
Who are the leading manufacturers of White Trash yard
sculptures?
Ford, General Motors and Chrysler.
The manifold contributions of White Trash to American
life, from Davey Crockett to Tonya Harding, would be
explored. There's the Bubba factor
so important in
presidential elections since George Wallace developed it;
there are also presidential brothers like Billy Carter and
Roger Clinton. Historically, White Trash have done most of
the fighting and dying in American wars. There are
important White Trash literary archetypes, like Pap Finn
and Flem Snopes.
If CU really wants to be in the vanguard of ethnic studies, we'll see a major in White Trash. But don't hold your breath.
< PREVIOUS ] [ 1994 Index ] [ Ed Quillen HOME ] [ SEARCH ] [ NEXT >