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SBSP is now racist and colonialist


EMAWesome

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9 hours ago, EMAWesome said:

It's way more than one professor.  There may only be one professor who believes this particular idiocy but there are hundreds, if not thousands, that believe in some other idiocy equally as idiotic and every single one of them would feel right at home with every single person who has neg repped me in this thread.

Okay, I don't believe I have ever negged your posts (if that is what the little red thingamabob is called) so let's discuss this idea. It won't change your mind, but let's discuss it. So, there are many professors that devote their research to something with which you disagree and think is stupid. That is fair enough. I'm sure I wouldn't have to go all that far to find examples of that myself. They may be different than your examples, but I'm sure I could find them.

But, this particular professor has most likely published her work in one of the many small journals in her field and in this case, it is The Contemporary Pacific: a journal of island affairs. Ms. Barker's field of study is sociocultural anthropology with a specific emphasis on the nuclear weapons testing in the Marshall Islands. She also advocates for Marshallese (sp?)who were affected by this testing.

Most people don't even give the people that live in this area a single thought. Ever. They don't seem to understand that this is an island chain and that the effects were felt in areas that did not have relocated people, or even that the residents had to relocate at all. If the government shows up in your subdivision and says, "hey! you have to move to Norman because we are going to bomb  the h*ll out of your property'" and moving to Norman couldn't get you far enough away from the fallout, you might have some lasting effects that are more than just physical. So studying these effects are what anthropologists do. And in Ms. Barker's case, how the rest of America and its government views and treats specific populations is what she researches.

Sponge Bob Squarepants is her vehicle for doing this, for showing interconnected relationships and policy and history. Her job at UWash, I'm sure, depends upon publication of her work and is probably counted.

You may think it is a waste of time and effort, but before their story and their lives are lost to us, she is cataloguing what the people who have lived through this have to say and their experiences and filtering them with her point of view. You may disagree with her point of view in which case you need to go back to school, get an advanced degree in anthropology (if you don't have one already), get hired at an institution of higher education, write an article refuting her work, submit it for publication, have it go out for peer review, get it accepted and then published. There are a ton of sh*tty journals in a lot of fields out there, and I have no expertise in her field so I don't know where this Contemporary Pacific one ranks.

 

None of this matters to you. I get it, but if you are going to reject something out of hand, you really ought to learn more about it so you don't waste your education. That is what the people at Campus Reform do. Instead of taking the opportunity to learn more about what happened, what is happening, and what might happen they simply read one sentence and jump up and down screaming, "she dissed Sponge Bob!".

 

Here is one article out of many that discusses the people of the Marshall Islands and the nuclear legacy: It's WaPo, so may be behind a paywall.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/national/2015/11/27/a-ground-zero-forgotten/?utm_term=.3d3f2959cdc8

 

Quote

 

It’s March 2 at an event marking Nuclear Victims Remembrance Day, and the boy in the shallows is now the foreign minister of the Marshall Islands, which has entered the 21st century as part trust-fund baby, part welfare state. Its elders have endured burns that reached to the bone, forced relocation, nightmarish birth defects, cancers in the short and long term. Its young people have inherited a world unmade, remade and then virtually forgotten by Washington, D.C.

The victims of the tests “have been taken from us before their time,” deBrum says, so that Americans could learn more about the “effects of such evil and unnecessary devices.”

From 1946 to 1958, the United States conducted 67 tests in the Marshall Islands. If their combined explosive power was parceled evenly over that 12-year period, it would equal 1.6 Hiroshima-size explosions per day.

This is not something one gets over quickly.

 

Vote however you vote, it's your privilege, but be informed.

It takes less time than you think to stop the knee-jerk reaction to the Campus Reform whistle and explore and inform yourself. It may not change your mind, but at least you can discern their agenda.

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I've received at least three times more neg reps in this single thread than I have given on this entire site for five years.(Shaggy + Surly=entire site)  I have rhinoceros hide for skin compared to all the drones that run rampant in the Cloak Room.
Going back and counting every single negative rep on this thread is totally what someone with thick skin would do.
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2 hours ago, Mrs Whiggins said:

Okay, I don't believe I have ever negged your posts (if that is what the little red thingamabob is called) so let's discuss this idea. It won't change your mind, but let's discuss it. So, there are many professors that devote their research to something with which you disagree and think is stupid. That is fair enough. I'm sure I wouldn't have to go all that far to find examples of that myself. They may be different than your examples, but I'm sure I could find them.

But, this particular professor has most likely published her work in one of the many small journals in her field and in this case, it is The Contemporary Pacific: a journal of island affairs. Ms. Barker's field of study is sociocultural anthropology with a specific emphasis on the nuclear weapons testing in the Marshall Islands. She also advocates for Marshallese (sp?)who were affected by this testing.

Most people don't even give the people that live in this area a single thought. Ever. They don't seem to understand that this is an island chain and that the effects were felt in areas that did not have relocated people, or even that the residents had to relocate at all. If the government shows up in your subdivision and says, "hey! you have to move to Norman because we are going to bomb  the h*ll out of your property'" and moving to Norman couldn't get you far enough away from the fallout, you might have some lasting effects that are more than just physical. So studying these effects are what anthropologists do. And in Ms. Barker's case, how the rest of America and its government views and treats specific populations is what she researches.

Sponge Bob Squarepants is her vehicle for doing this, for showing interconnected relationships and policy and history. Her job at UWash, I'm sure, depends upon publication of her work and is probably counted.

You may think it is a waste of time and effort, but before their story and their lives are lost to us, she is cataloguing what the people who have lived through this have to say and their experiences and filtering them with her point of view. You may disagree with her point of view in which case you need to go back to school, get an advanced degree in anthropology (if you don't have one already), get hired at an institution of higher education, write an article refuting her work, submit it for publication, have it go out for peer review, get it accepted and then published. There are a ton of sh*tty journals in a lot of fields out there, and I have no expertise in her field so I don't know where this Contemporary Pacific one ranks.

 

None of this matters to you. I get it, but if you are going to reject something out of hand, you really ought to learn more about it so you don't waste your education. That is what the people at Campus Reform do. Instead of taking the opportunity to learn more about what happened, what is happening, and what might happen they simply read one sentence and jump up and down screaming, "she dissed Sponge Bob!".

 

Here is one article out of many that discusses the people of the Marshall Islands and the nuclear legacy: It's WaPo, so may be behind a paywall.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/national/2015/11/27/a-ground-zero-forgotten/?utm_term=.3d3f2959cdc8

 

Vote however you vote, it's your privilege, but be informed.

It takes less time than you think to stop the knee-jerk reaction to the Campus Reform whistle and explore and inform yourself. It may not change your mind, but at least you can discern their agenda.

I don't disagree with you, but imo most (if not almost all) of the so called "ethnic studies" areas of discipline (black, queer, women's, island, whatever) are little more than post-modern academic bullshit programs promulgated by whiners. Is it fair that some groups have been systematically abused by the group(s) in power? Of course not. 

The area is bereft of academic rigor and discipline. Bloom had it right: they are the school of resentment.

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But, this particular professor has most likely published her work in one of the many small journals in her field....

 

That's not really saying much. 

In fact, it's not saying anything at all, assuming that being published in small academic journal is some kind of imprimatur of good research.

Alan Sokal is a good example.

Imo, the "ethnic studies" disciplines are not worthy of their own academic departments, are barely worthy of being in a university setting, and function largely to employ marginal Ph.D.'s to publish post-modern bullshit and to meet EEOC quotas.

Social science at its best is suspect. And this stuff is hardly social science at its best.

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You may think it is a waste of time and effort, but before their story and their lives are lost to us, she is cataloguing what the people who have lived through this have to say and their experiences and filtering them with her point of view. You may disagree with her point of view in which case you need to go back to school, get an advanced degree in anthropology (if you don't have one already), get hired at an institution of higher education, write an article refuting her work, submit it for publication, have it go out for peer review, get it accepted and then published. 

The bolded part above is just absolute bullshit.

Just. Absolute. Bullshit.

Just look at the (false) requirements you've put in place before anybody can validly disagree with that person:

1. Get an advanced degree in anthropology, AND

2. be hired at a college/university, AND

3. be published.

Jesus Christ Almighty, there is a place for the public intellectual in this country and America has a great history of that. Emerson, Posner, Sontag, et al.

It just gets my fur up when someone says that the only way to disagree with the author is to jump through those hoops. It's false. And stating that it is the only way, imo, is completely indicative of the shoddy, non-rigorous thinking that I'm claiming goes on in that field/discipline. One is not worthy of comment unless one is admitted to their priesthood.

Fuck that. 

Edited by Asithappens
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I agree with your point regarding certain disciplines having their own departments. I do believe they should be subsumed into larger departments, but I can understand historically why these 'studies,' have broken away. I don't have a background in any of those disciplines, but what was the likelihood they would have ever had much of a voice in the canon of literature had they not done so? (serious question as I don't know the answer to that).

Yes, often research is sloppy in the social sciences especially when I compare it to the hard sciences. The US produces a lot of PhD students and some go on to do great things, others not so much. Being published is not "some kind of imprimatur of good research," but it's better than Emaw condemning swaths of academics as the reason for casting his vote for Donald J. Trump. I figure being published is what they are doing to keep their job. From what I have learned, it is a triumvirate of research (incl publications and most definitely in the hard sciences bringing in funding), teaching, and service (committees etc) upon which faculty are judged so she is going to do what she can to contribute to her field and, in addition, stay employed. Beyond that, I don't know much about post-modern et al. Some of the other Surly members may be able to discuss that.

 

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