Identity politics has corrupted academic disciplines and produced bad, politically warped forms of knowledge, says Alka Sehgal Cuthbert in Spiked, and even the hard sciences are no longer immune. Here’s an excerpt.
Witness the introduction of ‘Afrochemistry’, a new module in Rice University’s undergraduate chemistry degree. Students who choose this module will “apply chemical tools and analysis to understand black life in the U.S.” and “implement African-American sensibilities [eh? How do you “implement” a “sensibility”?] to analyse chemistry”, according to Rice’s website. “No prior knowledge of chemistry or African-American studies is required for engagement in this course,” it assures prospective students.
How, precisely, does “black life” affect chemistry – an objective, scientific discipline? And what exactly are these “African-American sensibilities”? Do Rice academics believe they have stumbled upon the ‘essence’ of being a black American, as if black Americans are a homogenous cultural bloc? And even so, what does all this have to do with chemistry? This is all hokum, bunkum, superstitious and retrograde. Such mythical thinking might have a place in artistic practice, but not in the study of the hard sciences.
Terms like “black life” and “African-American sensibilities” may have some delimited use within certain disciplines, such as sociology, anthropology and politics. But they are not generalisable concepts of knowledge. Furthermore, these buzzwords gesture to a racialised belief system, political discourse and social practice – the sort of things you’d find in DEI policies. They have nothing to do with the pursuit of scientific truth.
“We are at risk of undermining the very foundations of academia,” Alka says.
Worth reading in full.
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“Afrochemistry.”
This will definitely be the shortest course in academic history.
I once watched a YouTube video about the Sentinelese people who tend to kill visitors to their islands. They are isolated and live as they have been for millennia, as far as anyone knows. At some point a ship ran aground which they ransacked for stuff. The commentator claimed that this meant they had “entered the Iron Age”. I pointed out that the Iron Age consisted not of finding some iron tools or whatever but of working out that iron was in the ground, working out that it was useful, how to get it out of the ground, how to shape it, what to shape it into etc. Someone in the comments took issue with this, which I found quite sad.
The Indian government stop people from going there now, which seems like the best solution for all concerned.
Maybe the Stoneage came to an end because they were running out of stones.
Lol
We long ago lost understanding of the pigmentation of the anthropos. The nothern european had the browness drained out of their eyes by the harshness of the situation. All of the mystery schools say that the next centres of our culture will be Russia and Brazil. If you can start to see human beings as they truly are then it rids you of all this political manipulation.
They cooked up some good potions baby just like we did. Some fine magic brews.Lets all have a drink baby and forget about the bones of contention.
If you can do for chakras what chiropractors can do for spinal realignment I shall be well chuffed.
I have black people living next door to me. They aren’t obnoxious at all they are orthodox Christians. Sometimes they are a bit confused and you have to tell them what to do but their intentions are pure for sure. I treat black people that way anyway and it seems to work.
Where I live, in a small village, I am surrounded by Europeans. My immediate neighbours are French, Irish, Dutch and Portugese, and a bloke from Frodsham.
All have eschewed the delights of the EU for a permanent life in Blighty.
The problems occur when you have a disagreement with people different to you and out can often come the race card and the victim status. The people living next to you may well be the salt of the earth, but this idea that we must all keep our mouths shut and admit our privilege is vomit inducing.
Steve Sailer posted about this two weeks ago: Afrochemistry at Rice U., by Steve Sailer – The Unz Review
He was at Rice way back when
His columns are always worth a look though he was poor on covid. The comments are a fair bit saltier than most of ours here as the site owner Ron Unz is something of a free speech absolutist and anyway they are in the US so more protected than we are. Unz is rich.
Look especially at 8 mins in when von da liying states (not word for word)” Ve are reeally pleased to announce that negotiations with Ukraine to join the EU have begun”
That one sentence struck fear into my heart!
The one red flag, the one line in the sand that Putin will not accept, ever!!!
Membership of the EU mean automatic membership of the UN!
Conventional weapons will no longer matter!
Putin will not lose!
If I can’t win, no one will!
https://youtu.be/OkL3N-b6h5M?si=FFU_o_Dtv763F3SS
The next question will be over why the West has not paid reparations to Africa for appropriating African wormwood, which has been used for treating coughs, colds, influenza and malaria. And covid. Meanwhile, sharp-eyed entrepreneurs will set up a chain of Traditional African Herbal Medicine shops in every High Street and cash in on the anti-vax craze, like they did with the anti-meat craze.
PS: Funny how there isn’t a Just Stop Vax movement, funded by BigHerb, gluing itself to the doors of pharmaceutical companies? It’s almost as though we live with controlled opposition, which opposes only carefully selected policies.
Afrochemisty invented what? When? Ever?
Top-notch weed?
Oh yes..yes they did do that!
African inventions:
..erm debatable!
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Please feel free to fill in the blanks
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When your ready?
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Arrows? Yes there was that!
Spears? Well yes, there was that too!
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Stone axe
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Bow and arrow? Many claims!
South America?
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Tumbleweed!
According to current scientific dna evidence, all human life began in africa and spread around the world, it walked, boated and sled out of africa!
So africa had an 800000 years of head start on the rest of humanity!
Then why are they not the rulers of the world?
I can’t for the moment think of any famous people from Chad.
For no other reason! Nigh night all
Cracklin’ Rosie https://g.co/kgs/2vxcm9t
Cracklin’ Rosie https://g.co/kgs/2vxcm9t
Rambling rose, nat king cole!
https://youtu.be/OdGphk-XTh8?si=P5CXYadPsLL9oLsu
Now that’s Afrochemisty!
This lady has just been appointed as President of Wolfson. Proper hard science, not what the panderers at Rice are pushing or the Harvard shenanigans.
https://www.wolfson.cam.ac.uk/news/wolfson-elects-professor-ijeoma-uchegbu-colleges-7th-president?utm_campaign=alumni&utm_medium=email&utm_source=1596371_M22318 %2F M22319 January 2024 alumni e-newsletter&dm_i=6DCH,Y7RN,1XUS7Q,4922L,1
This sort of nonsense is just the latest manifestation of the complete corruption of genuine empirical science in the late 19th Century by eg Charles Darwin, Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud who sought to deny spirituality / free will / morality and claim instead that human beings were pre-determined robots dominated by selfish and violent impulses.
Afrochemistry might pair well with SWGS 201 – Introduction to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender studies.
The course introduces the concept of engaged research and the public service component of LGBT activity.
This has to be understood as what it is: US universities are professional service providers and not educational institutions and the service they provide is university degree acquirment for paying customers. A sizable amount of these paying customers apparently black and well-to-do and have been blessed with rather thick offspring. And courses like this which require no prior knowledge of anything and which thus, necessarily, teach only the very basics of the involved anythings if anything at all are a means to accomplish that.
There’s a market for non-science courses enabling stupid children of black people to get university degrees. And Rice is one of the hopeful providers of such a service.
I really wish they would go the whole way and establish a black only college, funded and run by black only people with only black students and see how they get on. I can imagine the arguments then would be over how black you need to be to qualify.