Wokeness as a proxy for class struggle

[marshwiggle]

In higher ed, the pronouncements of administrators and the initiatives they make rarely seem like more than posturing. Indeed, some of the policies seem counterproductive, if anything. Indeed, right now I can't think of one action by any university I know of that has made an impressive improvement in the educational experience of Black students.

Here's a question: What action could be taken that would make an "impressive improvement in the educational experience of Black students" that would not be good for students in general?

In other words, given the emphasis for decades on the importance of universal design, with the idea that everyone benefits from features that make things easier for people with specific challenges, why shouldn't the measures that will be most helpful be those that are not specifically directed to certain groups, but which will potentially benefit lots of struggling students?

TL;DR Why isn't it likely to be more effective to address these as issues of class than of race?

[downer]

As I said at the start, I'm very sympathetic to the idea that class is more fundamentally important than race and ethnicity for identifying ways to improve higher ed. But I'm ready to consider evidence pointing in other directions.

[dismalist]

The word "class" suffers from precisely those characteristics that are attributed to "wokeness".

"Class" means something very specific to original Marxists. A class is a group of people with the same interests.  History has shown that individuals have sufficiently diverse interests to make the concept of class quite useless.  Thus, neo-marxists, recognizing this, have largely abandoned the concept of class  and substituted individual differences [in everything]. Hence, "inequality" [in everything] is all the rage.

BLM recognizes all this. The people who have lots in common are blacks, according to them. The black aristocracy is what they are thinking of, according to me.

No amount of consciousness raising can put the toothpaste back into the tube.

[downer]

Social analysis is a blunt tool at the best of times. No division of groups will be very accurate -- people defy discrete classificaiton. Some are more promising than others as ways to find improvements to make.

Looking at the past, I was thinking about how higher ed was improved by the feminist movement in the 60s-80s. Old fashioned sexism was largely quashed. There was some curriculum reform that made things better. Maybe there are still problems with campus life for women -- issues with safety and sexual assault persist -- but still the changes made have worked. I'm far less confident that similar reforms aimed at other student populations will make much difference.

[mahagonny]

Social analysis is a blunt tool at the best of times. No division of groups will be very accurate -- people defy discrete classificaiton. Some are more promising than others as ways to find improvements to make.

Looking at the past, I was thinking about how higher ed was improved by the feminist movement in the 60s-80s. Old fashioned sexism was largely quashed. There was some curriculum reform that made things better. Maybe there are still problems with campus life for women -- issues with safety and sexual assault persist -- but still the changes made have worked. I'm far less confident that similar reforms aimed at other student populations will make much difference.

Sounds kind of optimistic to me. Since that time we've had a splintering of the workforce. More than half of us are now temp workers. The term for us is itself a boldface lie; 'adjunct' meaning something added to the main thing but not part of it. More than half of adjuncts are women, and rather than overhaul the system it continues, with occasional flareups of finger pointing, but for the most part, silence.