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37 Section 2 Response to a “White Discourse on White Racism” W. B. Allen I would prefer not to respond to the “White Discourse on White Racism,” but I am constrained to do so. I do not wish to address the question because Scheurich’s essay con¤rms my opinion that America does not need a discourse on race. Rather, America needs to transcend the discourse on race. Nevertheless, I am constrained by a circumstance that imposes on my conscience. For the (or at least an) apparent source of the re¶ections in this essay is a statement that originated with me. As a member of the U. S. Commission on Civil Rights from 1987 through 1992, I initiated and ultimately participated in authoring the statement from which the epigraph to Scheurich ’s essay was drawn. Insofar as the author takes that epigraph to announce the theme of the essay, he largely, if not completely, misunderstood the point. “Focusing attention” on rising tensions ought to eventuate in a renewed resolve to remove race and ethnicity as points of moral reference in our society. Many, however, believe that race/ethnicity constitutes the unique point of moral reference, even on the side of the “angels.” This has occurred, I believe, on account of profound and gradual reorientations in our understanding of education. The theme of this response, accordingly, is that every effort to root education in the con¤rmation or elaboration of fundamental racial or ethnic beginnings directly contradicts the true purpose and character of education. In a word, we have lost touch with the true etymological bearing of our usage, education, and tacitly substituted the etymological meaning of the French usage, formation. Where the former seeks a “leading forth” toward thoughts unthought, the latter treats the soul as ¤lled with blank place holders waiting to receive constructivist projects (the model of which remains Rousseau’s Emile). The thought that education ought to liberate folk from their former prejudices does not spring newly to our minds. It is an old conception, pre¤gured in Socrates ’ notion of the periagoge or “conversion” that real learning brings. The foundation of this conception arises precisely from the understanding that education is not the ¤lling up of an emptiness but the correcting of systemic errors or prejudices imbibed effortlessly and on faith. Thus, our “upbringing” is the precondition of our education. As we begin to discover the shortcomings of our upbringing , in the light of genuine or natural human possibility, we turn toward those efforts that are designed to supply a more accurate foundation for judging courses 38 W. B. Allen of action and relationship. We arrive in this manner to the insight of the Declaration of Independence, for example—namely, that no one is by nature the ruler/ master of another, no one by nature superior or inferior—and we consequently abandon all such prejudices derived from our upbringing. I believe that this healthy approach to education was heedlessly abandoned under the pressure of a cultural relativism that gained its greatest accession of strength in the context of a multiculturalism movement that seeks to attribute human potential , and therefore value, to social groups in direct contradistinction to individuals. On the theory that groups “have something to say to us,” we ¤nd ourselves evaluating individualsinlightof the “message”thatwe expectgroupstodeliver.Thus,American blacks speak to us not as humans but as American blacks or, still more perversely currently , as African-Americans. Whatever they may say must be heard through this lens (which the term political correctness seems all too mild to describe). Because the message of any individual American black is framed thus, so too is the auditor’s hearing framed; that is, the auditor does not need to think himself or herself addressed in his or her humanity by another human being. Rather, the auditor receives the message of any given American black as testimony about African-Americanism, testimony that may have nothing to do with the auditor’s human potential to the precise extent the auditor is not himself or herself an African-American. Putting aside this awkward and rather stupid usage, let us come to the point. The idea of a “white discourse on white racism” is just another version of a “white discourse on white superiority.” For it matters little what the speci¤c claim of racial purity/difference is. The claimant ultimately seeks to privilege his or her individual concerns through group identity. In that light, the understanding he or she offers...

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