http://www.counterprotester.com/articles/e...eurocentric.htm
"Hey hey! Ho ho! Western Civ has got to go...!" So goes the famous battle cry of "activists" and "progressives" within America's college campuses and public school systems as they protest for and demand the reform of history curriculum that teaches the past through "dirty, eurocentric lenses." The protesters demand an end to the study of history apologetic to or ignorant of white Europe and America's brutal escapades. "Why don't we spend more time detailing the slaughter of the Indians, colonialism's devastating legacy in Africa or the racist tendencies of our nation's founders?" they ask. "Why do we treat the Jewish (European) Holocaust like it was such a terrible thing but do not spend so much time mourning the trans-Atlantic African slave trade, a holocaust in its own right?" "Why must we study all these dead white men and their white problems?" Regardless of the fact that the United States is a Western nation founded on Western principles, this is injustice, and, of course, damaging to "children of color" who feel left out.
I agree. Something has to change. Eurocentric education is damaging and unfair. Now...before you go thinking I've jumped ship, hear me out. You see, when history is taught in public schools and colleges these days, it is often either an account from a traditional non-politicized European-American/white perspective, or one of a thousand "alternative" perspectives that usually focus on some "oppressed" people as they are faced with their righteous struggle against white oppression and discrimination. This is not enough. In this particular case, I say we give the far-left what they want- a clear and accurate portrayal of the REST of the world's brutal history in order to show, once and for all, that murder, conquest, racism, and empire are not sins peculiar to Europeans and Americans.
It's somewhat easy to understand why there is so much attention paid to the sins of the Western world. We're at a certain point in history where Europeans (and thus, "whites") are and were the dominant powers in the world for the past couple hundred years. They've built empires, conquered the globe, exploited the land and people, and pushed their culture and religion to the far reaches of the earth. This sort of thing is nothing new however, and has been going on since the dawn of time. The English, the Chinese, the Mongols, the Aryans, the Zulus, Mali, Rome, the Arabs, and the Aztecs to name a few...all were nasty, oppressive empires, all dominated and subjugated and murdered their conquered peoples. The only difference between these older imperialists and Western imperialists is that the modern Europeans had the advantage of better and bigger weapons than their predecessors (and smallpox of course).
It's an impossible dream, I know, to demand that history be taught accurately and fairly at the liberal university....but imagine the consequences! When talking about the transatlantic slave trade for example, professors would describe in more detail the very important African role in a system of human trafficking that was a vibrant industry hundreds and hundreds of years before a European ever even thought about bringing an African to the new world. Furthermore, they might be more keen to discuss how a few thousand free blacks even owned slaves themselves in the south (envision the implications for reparations suits and other liberal "pet projects")! On a similar line, when talking about the "genocide" of the Native Americans, professors wouldn't "conveniently" forget that Indian tribes from the Inca to the Iroquois had been building empires and exterminating and enslaving each other for generations before colonists arrived, or that many of the tribes even formed alliances with white men to destroy rival tribes. Native Americans were war-like and genocidal too...the European was just better at it. Needless to say, this doesn't mean that what the white man did was good, or even justified really, but the blatant lies and glossing over of the rest of the world's oppressive history does nothing but exacerbate stereotypes and the culture of victimization and demonization that breeds unchecked at the university.
Learning about other cultures will also help remove many misconceptions American students have about the rest of the world, in particular many of the European countries that are often propped up as "superior alternatives" to the United States. In one recent interview on television a "whiteness studies" professor praised the Scandinavian countries as being much less racist and more tolerant than the United States, which, she insists, was founded on "genocide of Native Americans and slavery." Of course the Scandinavian countries have racial harmony...they are 99.5+% homogenous! Cultures clash whenever they mix in large numbers. One only has to look at France and see the increase in violence between native French and Danish citizens and their respective growing Muslim immigrant populations to see how even the most "progressive" nations have problems of prejudice and ethnic disharmony.
It is up to the students and American people to see that changes are implemented in the way history is taught at our schools (this is an issue that begins at the elementary level). Students should be prepared to offer their fellow classmates and instructors "lessons" in non-Eurocentric history whenever a leftist professor begins to tow the tired line of oppressive white history. Educate yourself, and look outside the university curriculum to find websites and books that offer a REAL glimpse into the history of other peoples. The information I provided in this article cannot be found in any "slave narrative" or doctoral thesis on race power-relations metaphors in early Disney movies. It takes some work, but it is very much worth it. Good luck!
