Full disclosure: I am melanin challenged, particularly evident after winter and sheltering in sunless rooms. In addition, I know little about being discriminated against on the bases of sexual orientation, gender, dominant language, socioeconomic status, weight or height.
However, I do know journalism. I have taught it on the college level for 24 years, worked full-time in the publishing industry for 11 years, and written several books and hundreds of published articles.
In sum, the complaints about Dr. Lecourt’s “shoddy” journalistic reporting I find mystifying. Lecourt sticks to evidential facts with the incident. She then points to likely future considerations for the AU provost. At no point could I detect “inept racial reporting”; rather, treatment toward all involved parties is even-handed. Moreover, at the conclusion of the article I found myself sympathizing more with the student than with the professor.
From many experiences at Andrews I do know that the campus has been riven for decades by racial tension. Countless AU people have worked long and diligently to bring about more loving unity in diversity. May their tribe–both melanin-challenged and melanin-gifted–increase as they work together in mutual appreciation.
I’ll go with you there. Certainly, not all white scholars are racists. However, it has been hard for some black theologians to find a place within historically white institutions (the latest exodus of five black scholars from Duke Divinity would be an example), and that is unfortunate. Should mainstream theology that emanates from a largely euro-centic frame be subject to scrutiny with regard to potential bias or blind spots? I would say so. Can this be done within the mainstream branches of historical, biblical and systematic theology? I would hope so. But too often, the critical and corrective (some would say over-corrective) work being done is from what some call “standpoint theologies” (black, womanist, feminist, mujerista, queer, post-colonial, etc.). What we need, in my view, is a way within the main branches of theology for scholars from diverse backgrounds to exercise some of these critical lenses without their work being relegated to sub-branches. IMHO, theology can be a very human enterprise, and I think it would be naive to think that issues like power, privilege and perspective would not find their way into the discipline. For instance, the hashtag #SeminaryWhileBlack is indicative of the fact that much of what is taught and assigned in historically white seminaries is not representative of the black experience. Something is going on there and has been brewing there for quite some time.
in reading helga’s twitter feed about this incident, in her own words, it is evident that this statement is incorrect…markovic’s concern with helga’s treatment of racial stereotyping was that she had resorted to its use herself…
and we can see this tendency for ourselves, when helga states, after an argument with one white male professor at AU: “I am mentally exhausted with the white male professors at AU.”
Unfortunately, in these kind of debates the focus is on the “in the moment” incident , and not the history of someone’s position on these issues.
For example, if you take an analog of someone like Brett Weinstein in the Evergreen U, he simply objected to a policy of “no white people allowed on campus during that day”, which he pointed out as in line with the racism ideology that existed in the past. He held a fairly liberal position, before he got caught up in the whirlwind of that situation that really spun out of control and he had to resign.
So, the outrage, even as pointed out by the student, doesn’t seem to be about the grade. It seemed to be about how that particular conversation progressed, including all of the tangents it moved into.
I wonder if you can provide an alternative POV in that respect… not in the details of the “soap opera”, but what the AU policy is in respect to responsibility students and professors?
Pastor Nixon wrote this on his blog and got a couple replies that challenged his assertions. And he seems to indicate that the problem as he sees it that situation was in lack of a conversation between equals as it should have been, but rather it was one person in a position of power bludgeoning another over disagreement. Obviously, his son came up in conversation… or perhaps got implied.
So, does AU have some policy which puts students and professors as “equals” when it comes to debating the legitimacy of grades or certain academic perspective on views that professors may choose to correct?
I’m curious as to which perspective would that be? Obviously it’s not the perspective of the Eastern Europeans.
You are mentioning “Anglo” perspective, but what does it have to do with this conversation?
It seems to be inconceivable for you that “white people” are not a homogenous blob, and there’s a divergent, and at times irreconcilable range of ethnic preferences that you would consider under “Anglo” umbrella.
Have you done any investigating as to which of these cultural perspectives someone may be discussing from here? Or do you think that just because someone writes in English, and one lacks melanin, therefore one is of the white “Anglo” ideology?
Have you considered that someone like yourself has far more adherence to “Anglo” perspective than someone like I?
What’s more I think is the use of this term which doesn’t make sense. The notion that any person whose skin happens to white is lumped into a category is problematic.
The professor in question is Serbian not Anglo Saxon. This would be the same as saying that Americans whose ancestors came from southern Indian or African continent are all black. It is illogical and completely unhelpful.
The problem of racism cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created it to begin with. Mr. Nixon is perpetuating stereotypes and misunderstandings, and embellished points in his comments. His blog for the most part just took the word of the student as a factual account and it appears he threw the Professor under the bus based solely on this.
We simply don’t know enough and based on analysis Mr. Nixon clearly doesn’t either.
I, melanin challenged as Blake is, spent about 8 years in Africa as med missionary. I did not know of the tribal situation there till I arrived, and actually several yrs after.
The world powers, when they drew maps of countries there did not take tribal borders into account, but rather water sheds, rivers etc. So tribes would be divided between countries etc, was in the middle east.
There was quite a bit of prejudice, one tribe toward another that the government worked to suppress, aiming to unify the counrity into a whole. It was a from of racism, or a sectional rivalry. Everyone has a weakness here, a us vs them.
the leading authority on race and racism at Andrews? What qualifies him for this generous declaration? I’m sure there are a people who have worked or attended Andrews, past or present, would debate this? Hence my question about what qualifies him for this honor.
what chapter, and in which book, did he write this?
Dr. Markovic is a professor and educator with a PhD in history and BA in history and theology with post-graduate courses in theology at the Theological Seminary of Andrews University. He has taught history for more than thirty years. During those thirty years, he has participated in many seminars and institutes on nationalism, antisemitism, and racism. Six of these seminars and institutes were sponsored by highly competitive and academically respected organizations, (three by National Endowment of Humanities, two by United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and one by National Science Foundation). In addition to his public presentations and conference papers, he has written one book chapter on antisemitism and one book chapter on racism and racialization of society, both of which are listed as follows:
John Jovan Markovic, “The Ecclesiastical Roots of the Holocaust: from the Adversus Judaeos Tradition to the Holocaust,” Thinking in the Shadow of Hell. The Impact of the Holocaust on Theology and Jewish-Christian Relations , ed. Jacques B. Doukhan (Berrien Springs, Michigan: Andrews University Press, 2002), 3-27.
John Jovan Markovic, “The Idea of Different Human Races, Racialization, and the Kingdom of God,” Church and Society: Missiological Challenges for the Seventh-day Adventist Church, ed. Rudy Maier, (Berrien Springs, Michigan: Department of World Mission, Andrews University, 2015), 397-426. The quotations cited in my earlier comment are from this text.
No one at Andrews University has given more lectures about racism, conducted more classroom discussions about racism, and participated in more one-on-one conversations with students about racism than Dr. Markovic. No one at Andrews University has devoted more thought and study to the problem of racism and how racism should be dealt with and discussed than Dr. Markovic. As one of the few historians at Andrews University, no one understands racism in all of its historical manifestations better than Dr. Markovic.
Appreciate the response, as this is an individual i have never heard of.
I will be purchasing the books he is documented in.
I wonder, if in addition to this being a convo between a superior (teacher) and an inferior (student), there the following is not also to be considered. Dr Markovic is white, the student is black. He has written and studied…she has lived.
It would be the same as if i were speaking to a woman about women’s issues. I could be the foremost womanist in all of Adventist, which is laudable, but i am still not a woman. How can i lecture or condescending to those who are experience what i have only studied.
The same could be said for classism. If i am the rich, i can understand all the dynamics of poverty, the socio-educational, political, the psychological, etc. and yet i have never lived poor. I could even visit the poor, and have poor friends, but at some level the poor, or as above, the woman, or as original the black, will still have more experiential authority on the given topics than myself, a white, and/or male, and/or middle to upperclass citizen.
The Bible seems to hint at this in Eph 3 where is says the following:
Eph 3:18 May be able to comprehend (katalambano) with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height;
Eph 3:19 And to know (ginosko)the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge (gnosis), that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God.
We are encouraged to possess the comprehendible and perceptible 4 dimensional love of God, and then to go further that comprehension and perception, to the greater “know” of experiencing this love, which surpasses all intellectual, theological, and scientific explanation.
As we can see the bible places the higher knowing on what is experienced, over what is studied.
I agree that experience is an important informant of one’s expertise. Dr. Markovic’s expertise is informed in part by experience. He, too, has “lived.” His experiential knowledge far exceeds the experiential knowledge of the student.
I am not nihilistic in my approach to hermeneutics. There are many manifestations of distance, such as differences in race, that impede understanding, so your point is well taken. But the function of hermeneutics is to bridge and overcome those manifestations of distance. To suggest that a white person is inherently incapable of understanding a black person or that a man is inherently incapable of understanding a woman bespeaks a nihilism that is foreign to biblical thinking and aspirations. Scripture teaches that we share many commonalities with each other. And in the words of Jesus, we are to "be one just as We are one.” John 17:22 NKJV.
@admins were the mass deletions in the other thread admin, or community action?
In any event, great shame on us all for each our failures to speak-our own truth,
and to hear the others.
And shame on us for hearing untruths-and running to gossip in the face god.
Might I suggest, like (heavenly) father, like son also applies to the earthly.
Thank you for responding
I don’t believe i said inherently. What i said a studied and perceived intellectual knowledge can never replace living it. Additionally, to you point on nihilism, with all hermeneutics accounted for, no man is a woman, and thus no man lives under sexism unless he chooses to, and even then such a choice is evidence of privilege, as the man will always be a man and away be abe to return to his male societal position.
no Mae gynecologist experiential knows what its like to give birth, not matter how much he has studied, and no matter how many births he had helped.
The same can be said it’s classim. And the same can most certainly be declared with racism.
My only point is that if the knowledge in this circumstance is intellection, and not a lived, without quotes, experience, intellection with all of it’s truth is separate from, subordinate to, and supportive of, experience.
In so far as the ones spoken of in the Bible, it is not synonymity rather is complementary and appreciative, even as the hand is not synonymous with the eye. Imaging the hand tell the eye, “i have studied and observed your tow for a while, so i will am the authority on the eye experience”. Or the ear telling the foot “because we are all one body, our experiences are the same, so eat me tell you about the foot experience. listen to me and i, the ear, will make you a better foot”. That is not the oneness of the Bible. The Bible teaches a mutual appreciate and complementary unity. I Cor 12 speaks to this.
I have not read the paper, but based on some other claims of she made, it would seem that the scope of that argument extended beyond individual experience. That’s what academic work is largely about, and that’s why students go to learn from professors that consolidate broader range of experience that’s not “their”, and allow for expanded perspective on subjects where perspective of individuals may be misleading when it comes to making global assumptions.
In the argument above you are reifying concepts that are not concrete. There isn’t “the man” and there isn’t “the societal position” in a scope of generalization that you are describing it.
Instead, there are a range of men, and there’s a range of positions.
I hope you understand why it is problematic.
Yet, there’s a reason why a woman would go to a gynecologist, who arguably understands the procedural perspective on birth and various potential implications and complications better than individual can from the narrow perspective of individual.
And I think this is really where your criticism falls short. The young woman was not writing a paper on personal experience of racism. She was writing a paper making global claims.
So, either you think that Academic rules for citing support, or making false generalizations don’t apply in the realm of personal experience, or you are setting a double-standard to make marginalized people feel better by giving them preferential treatment by allowing their personal experience override academic perspective.
Either way, it’s not a practice that helps marginalized minorities to form accurate perspective on broader implications of their personal experience.
I lived in former USSR, and my personal experience doesn’t make me an expert on all things USSR. There are undoubtedly hundreds, if not thousands of US historians and scholars who can contextualize my experience in broader scope of that setting than I ever could. And these scholars may never even been to that part of the world.
Again, you are switching the scope. There are different scope of experience. Individual perspective on experience can be short-sighted and plain wrong.
Individual perspective is simply too narrow to formulate global assumptions. And at the level of discussing experience of other people, both professor and young lady have to conduct research which is bound by methodological constraints to make it more viable. And at that level… claims of individual, like we say in marketing research, is a data point of one.
Again, that’s why we go to the institutions of higher learning in the first place. These allow us to gain broader perspective on some consolidated experience of humanity.
So, the question you have to ask is what scope of her experience or lack there of was the professor correcting and challenging? Was he challenging her experience? Or was he challenging her global assumptions for which she had no experience?
How do you defend your global assertion that "no one ever stops “Jewish Pride”?
Furthermore, what does that have to do with the discussion-given that “Jewish Pride” seems to have a different result? Despite historic marginalization-Jews have enjoyed amazing minority success despite many countries and religions OVERTLY waging one level or another war against them. Comparing the “recent” black experience in one country that spent an awful blood capital to fight racism to the global genocide from antiquity of the Jews is false.
Seems a more relevant question would be is why “Black Pride” (despite your false implication that it is “always stopped” when it in fact is celebrated-nationally, officially, intentionally, even by us melanin deficient persons) seemingly ineffective?
I sense if the goal is “pride” then hope is tragically myopic.
We’ve all been promised eye salve.
Pray for it. Don’t poke out my eyes.
To answer your question, there were a number of comments in the previous thread that violated our commenting policy, specifically our rules against personal attacks and libelous statements which were being made against the subjects of the article and one another in the comments section. As such, we deleted the offending comments. As mentioned in our policy, when an offensive comment is deleted, all replies to that comment are auto-deleted by the system (Discourse). This resulted in the “mass deletions” as you called them.
Typically, when a comment is made that violates our policy, we reach out to the individual commenter to let them know why their comment was deleted. Unfortunately, due to the sheer number of commenters involved in the policy violations, it seemed best to just delete the comments and close the thread, redirecting the conversation here.
So far, the comments here on this thread have proved much more productive and in line with healthy dialogue, and we greatly appreciate that.
Unfortunately, the issues of race may never stop being a subject driven by emotional narratives, and some scope of identity that people can’t help but to take personally when it comes to arguments and criticism.
The idea is to channel the conversation and attention towards the problems that oppressed minorities struggle through. But the methods inevitably result in double standards that tend to re-enforce stereotypes or reactions that don’t achieve the desirable results.
If one could seriously imply that unless one is a black minority then one couldn’t possibly understand the nuances associated with racism, then the flip side of that argument would imply that unless one is of white majority, then one can’t viably understand or comment on nuances of white privilege.
So, eventually, instead of some reconciliation, compromise, and understanding… it ends up being another round of “two can play that game”.