Deny yourself

I really see nothing wrong with this. It is an exercise in seeing the world without the glasses of your upbringing in order to fully understand how others see us and see the world around them. Looking at other points of view and embracing them on their face rather than deriding them because you have been programmed a certain way by your environment.

Sounds very worth while.

OK - five comments which had little or nothing to do with the blog topic and needed to be deleted.

By the way, janetluvshorses/Achieve1/Nathan - you are done. You are no longer welcome here due to your apparent inability to follow the Discussion Guidelines. I'm sure you'll be back under a new moniker, but over time it's easy to pick out those who have been given the boot who try to sneak back on. :)

WFB and Sharpaxe: Please stay on topic and you will be OK. No need to react to janetluvshorses usual taunts and personal attacks.

Let's try starting over...

All the professor is asking is to leave your pre conceived notions at the door, when attending his class.

If one was secure in their manhood, they'd have no problem setting it asside to see something from a genderless view..
If one was secure in their race, they'd have no problem setting it asside to see something from a colorless view..
If one was truly patriotic, they'd have no problem setting it asside to see something from a global view..
etc, etc.

What garbage, jman99. What is happening in the classroom at Butler is nothing more than picking on white heterosexual American males simply because they are white, heterosexual American males. The African American female professor is not making other students in the class who do not fit that definition do anything differently. Isn't that rather "racist" or "bigoted" of her? All in the desire for "social justice." Sounds more like punishing the white heterosexual American males in front of the rest of the class. Trying to "reprogram" them as the article suggests. I think something is seriously wrong with the professor, but something is also seriously wrong with you, jman99, to think there is nothing wrong here.
Imagine for one moment if a white male professor at Butler, under the guise of "social justice" singled out black heterosexual American males and made them speak and write (and think) in a different way than they were accustomed to. Want to know what would happen (after the ACLU and NAACP got done suing the professor and university?)? That professor would lose his job -for being racist. For being a bigot. He would be run out of town by every leftie group imaginable.
Again, "social justice" is only "good" when liberals do it. Then they get nodding bobbleheads from the likes of jmann99. Disgusting.

MGarber: Obviously you did not read the article very closely, otherwise you would have read the following:

"The syllabus of the class, called Political Science 201: Research and Analysis, goes on to ask students “to write and speak in a way that does not assume American-ness, maleness, whiteness, heterosexuality, middle-class status, etc. to be the norm.” It is taught by a black, female professor."

The professor is a "she" not a "he" as you comment.

As for your comment in general - much like jman99 - its garbage. The "touchy-feely" liberal garbage that the left is so fond of - only when THEY are the ones doing it. All in the name of "social justice." Gag me.

Read my past comment and try to deny what I point out - if a white, male professor had made black, heterosexual males speak, write (and think) a different way than they normally did, he would be fired in addition to facing a multitude of lawsuits from the ACLU and NAACP, etc. Try denying that one.

"As for your comment in general - much like jman99 - its garbage. The "touchy-feely" liberal garbage that the left is so fond of - only when THEY are the ones doing it. All in the name of "social justice." Gag me."

See, that's the kind of thing they are asking to be left at the door. If you walked into that classroom with those notions, you would not learn a thing.

" I think something is seriously wrong with the professor, but something is also seriously wrong with you, jman99, to think there is nothing wrong here. "

Nope nothing wrong.

It is a political science class.

What the heck do you thing they discuss and research in a political science class?

Go back to school Hemmer, you might learn something.

jman99: If what the political science professor was doing was incorporating "discussion" and "research" - why did the professor only target white, heterosexual American males? Because SHE deemed them to have "inherent prejudices." SHE wanted to "negate" them. The other students in the class were AOK - they weren't targeted because they supposedly didn't suffer from prejudices in the eyes of this professor! Isn't that rather prejudiced in itself? Bigoted? Racist?

And I notice you avoided commenting on my following statement that exposes this whole concept for what it is - a bigoted approach to "reprogramming" a certain type of person that liberals such as this nutty professor deem unfit:

"Imagine for one moment if a white male professor at Butler, under the guise of "social justice" singled out black heterosexual American males and made them speak and write (and think) in a different way than they were accustomed to. Want to know what would happen (after the ACLU and NAACP got done suing the professor and university?)? That professor would lose his job -for being racist. For being a bigot. He would be run out of town by every leftie group imaginable.
Again, "social justice" is only "good" when liberals do it. Then they get nodding bobbleheads from the likes of jmann99. Disgusting."

Hemmer is right how dare Butler University challenge its students to think outside
their comfort zone. Or even having them challenge their personal beliefs. What do
these teachers think, that the students are there to learn how to think for
themselves?

How dare this teacher attempt to instill empathy for another person when they
should be instilling indifference and intolerance toward those outside their social
circle.

Yes Hemmer white middle class people have inherent prejudice (especially white males) and they are homophobic. They see the world through their eyes which are the eyes of the white middle class. They can help it as this is the world most of them have been brought up in. Is it wrong? No, that's just they way they are because of their environment and social standing.

As they are the largest part of who's going to college, having them think outside of their comfort zone is something I highly recommend. Not to belittle them, but to allow them to see further than they have ever seen. How can you possible see a problem or a challenge from the perspective of another if you don't at least try to walk a mile in their shoes?

What this prof wants to do is to have blindfolded students describe the elephant by touch when they don't know it's an elephant.

In research and analysis you must always put your prejudice outside the work, or the work is worthless because it is tainted by the way you perceive the facts. You must gather the facts first and let the data stand on its own. doing anything else is useless, because you get the answer you want rather than the real answer which can be totally different from what you want.

Jman and Ex, whatever you do, don't judge! Anything goes! I have to laugh at this
nitwit professor, or whatever she is. This is why politics and journalism is such a
mess. No critical analysis. Just lazy, blame whitey, and be done. This why sports,
entertainment and political journalism is all tabloid all the time. Never is their a
discussion of ideas. Just walk in the room, declare that everybody is racist and you
are neutered before the discussion gets started

If there is a God in heaven, please help us out of this sewer!

Well Jman, how about talking about the benefits of incest? I mean you have the
convenience of having it under one roof, with a caring adult...blah, blah blah.
Kinda sick, huh? So is your dyke rant against white men. You even try to put that
blindfold on a gay women at a Liberal Arts school and they will scream bloody
murder against the white guy. I've seen it happen at Madison.

The problem is they all need someone to blame. Too often it's the guy. We can all
play the blame game but then we wouldn't get to far would we?

Yert: It has nothing to do with blame, it is a critical thinking exercise.

Leave everything at the door and walk in with a totally open mind, free of you're parent's worst nightmares and greatest hopes. Start from a position of being not yourself and look at the problem critically from that standpoint.

Very difficult to do, well worth the effort.

jman99 claims this bigoted activity was a "critical thinking exercise."

One of the students in the bigoted professor's class thinks otherwise:

"As a student at an institution predominantly focused on the liberal arts, I expected to hear professors express opinions different from my own. I did not expect to be judged before I ever walked through the door, and did not think I would be forced to agree with my teachers’ worldviews or suffer the consequences.
Being judged and forced to act a certain way is antithetical to how any institution of higher education should conduct itself.
As a journalism major, I will now strive to avoid the liberal arts college as much as possible, not because the college fails to provide its students with any practical knowledge, but because the college seeks to indoctrinate its students with a hostile paradigm that views people like me—an American, white, heterosexual male from a middle-class background—as evil; whitey-righty need not attend." - Ryan Lovelace

Exactly. However, I think Mr. Lovelace's words make too much sense to be understood by the likes of libs like jman99 or MGarber...

That is a great point . When will we see a class that tells all the gay people to write
as heteralsexual ? How about the minorities only to write as if they are caucasions ?
lol... Is it not stupid to singole out only one group ? Yep it is .

"Mr lovelace's words make to much sense to be understood by the likes of libs
like..."

What an absurd statement.

It is obvious that Mr Lovelace wrote the article out of spite.

It seems to me that there is more missing from the story than what has been
presented. For instance I would presume that not everyone in the class is a straight
white male from an American middle-class family. What instructions were the
persons who don't fit that demographic given? Did this teacher (which isn't
mentioned by name but described) tell the females in the class to forget their
maleness? Or foreign students to forget their comfort"American-ness"??

Arrg...strike the word comfort which appears just before American-ness.

I see one student uncomfortable with a teachers directions. He makes no
mention of others sharing his point of view. I don't consider one class to be some
type of indoctrination of our youth.

The first paragraph in the article states that students should disregard their maleness, American-ness, etc. The fourth paragraph writes that they should write as if those aren't assumed to be the norm. Is the author's interpretation of that syllabus what he's taking issue with? Were white men further attacked in the discussions in class? We don't hear anything about that, which I infer means they weren't. The author of the article would certainly tell us.

Are we to understand that not being the norm is inherently bad? Were the students instructed to assume that the norm of discussion is black women? Perhaps I'm not as enlightened as some, but my experience in the media has been that if not employed full-time by the news station, a black commenter is assumed to speak from a black perspective. A woman brings women's issues. A white man is bringing a broader perspective. The language we've been given from the syllabus simply says we should assume the white man is bringing a man's perspective. Not that this is undesirable... only that it should be understood.

The point here is this: the norms of discussion in American society assume a white, heterosexual, middle-class American. It's what most people at Butler bring to the table. The maleness is less of a slam dunk for assumed norms, but clearly femaleness is not assumed. So the professor hasn't explicitly asked them to recognize that identities which are commonly understood not to be the assumed norm are not necessarily the norm. Oh, no. Provide evidence (even an out-of-context quote from the professor's lectures) that these identities are being demonized or I won't assume it's any worse than the syllabus.

To make the point about being a white American man as the norm clear, would the author of the article have mentioned the gender of the professor if she weren't a woman? Would he mention her race if she were white? We only occasionally make mention that someone is heterosexual, and that only to point out that they're not gay. That demonstrates the norms we assume, while this professor has said the students shouldn't automatically assume that.