If you’re looking to get schooled on something unrelated to school, San Francisco State University’s got you covered.
Instead of sticking to classics such literature, science or law, SFSU has launched a revolutionary major: “Race and Resistance Studies.”
Some folks might find race to be an idiotic lens through which to view themselves or the world, but those relics are increasingly outnumbered due to messaging across academia and other public institutions. If you haven’t heard, skin shade is the new “content of their character.”
And San Fran State is keeping up with the times. Hence, the undergraduate study plan’s mission statement:
The mission of Race and Resistance Studies is to prepare students to think critically, nurture a social consciousness, actively engage with and respond to community needs, develop leadership skills, while deepening a foundation of knowledge related to the multiple histories and cultures of communities of color within and outside the United States. To do so, Race and Resistance Studies utilizes an approach that is comparative/relational, interdisciplinary, intersectional, and centered in a praxis of resistance.
Per SFSU.edu, the program is “committed to the study of race-related processes underlying many social problems and the forms of resistance and struggle aimed at social justice.”
Nonwhites are disadvantaged; in other words, whites force all others to be disadvantaged:
Our program explores these processes through a comparative and relational approach — examining how people of color and indigenous people face and resist social inequalities. We utilize a comparative framework, comparing and contrasting the distinct experiences of different racialized communities.
The program “provides students with a multi-faceted understanding of the forms of oppression and struggles for change.”
And intersectionality is at the forefront:
Our curriculum emphasizes intersectionality — the critical analysis of the ways in which existing knowledge structures such as race, class, gender, sexuality, nationality, and religion can work to erase, elide, and oppress subjects who occupy more than one position. … Race and Resistance Studies examines how social problems are fueled by racial and ethnic discrimination by drawing from these multiple methodologies.
What does the school hope graduates do with their newfound knowledge of Caucasian-caused oppression? A bit of this:
Our degree will produce cohorts of highly motivated, critical thinkers and socially engaged students who will use their analytic frameworks to build upon existing service and organizing work among disenfranchised communities of color in the U.S. and abroad. We seek to build a praxis that unites both theory/study and practice/organizing.
It’s certainly not the first time a college has formerly prepared activists:
Florida University Launches a Degree Program to Train ‘Social Justice’ Activists
State University Launches a Graduate Program in ‘Antiracism’
As reported by Campus Reform, San Francisco State University students will learn to fight the power via course RRS 520: “Race, Radicalism and Revolution.”
A few other offerings:
- RRS 350 Race, Labor, and Class
- RRS 290 Sounds of Resistance: Race, Rhythm, Rhyme, and Revolution
- RRS 380 Coloring Queer: Imagining Communities
- RRS 460 AIDS and People of Color in the U.S.
- RRS 480 Youth Culture, Race and Resistance
- RRS 490 Race, Art, and Social Justice
- RRS 473 Slavery and Antislavery in the United States
I’d guess that none of the above takes a “We Are the World” approach. But at least SFSU is promoting nonwhite gut health — bon appétit to those in RRS 304 Decolonize Your Diet: Food Justice and Gendered Labor in Communities of Color.
Gone are the days of old-school academics. So far as I can tell, the public education apparatus now serves primarily as a system for ideological instruction.
Perhaps in the eyes of Uncle Sam, it’s guiding young Americans to be good citizens. But I doubt it’s teaching them to view their fellow citizens as good.
-ALEX
See more content from me:
Home Depot Tells Its Staff They’re White-Privileged Oppressors and Marginalized Victims
UC Berkeley Professor Told Students Abolishing Whiteness Means Wiping out White People
Horny Hornets: Scientists Use Sex to Trap Venom-Spitting Murder Hornets
Find all my RedState work here.
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