Not sure which article(s) you read on this. I’ve seen several. Only read one.
It made some good points. The privilege is in the choice in who gets elevated in the educational system and in who that appeals to, or it’s supposed to appeal to. Discussions about privilege aren’t about a competition between suffering. As you do eloquently pointed out, there isn’t and can’t be a competition between suffering. It’s ridiculous.
But, why is the Diary of Anne Frank required reading for literature class when it’s not even a work of literature? It’s a diary. Why not Black Elk Speaks, a clearly more moving and profound piece of work as well as more literary? We spent 6 weeks or more on Anne Frank in school. John Ehle’s Trail of Tears was on a list of optional reading for the nerds. We spent 3 days on excerpts from Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. I’d never heard of Harriet Jacobs until somewhere around turning 30 and only because I was reading blogs from black writers. Same thing with Black Elk, but that was in college and was given to me by my friend Wahaya. It resonated with me far more than the kind of judgy ramblings in Anne Frank’s diary ever did. Most of her diary was picking apart the behavior of her neighbors who were in the same stressed situation she was in. Not at their best.
My English Lit teacher really had a reverence for Anne Frank in a weird sort of way. It was clear we were supposed to be in awe of her too. But you can’t force that connection. Doesn’t mean anyone is saying that her suffering was less important or just less or that she deserved to die. Or whatever....
It just means that now that I’m an adult and thinking about my own child’s future I’m questioning the wisdom of so much time being spent on Anne Frank, most likely because of her age, to the exclusion of so many other important stories.
I get why Europeans would think these conversations inane and insane. For y’all WWII was up close and personal. For us Americans, other than rationing for the war effort and pressing industry into making weapons and gear for war, it didn’t really affect daily life of citizens. We weren’t hiding out in bunkers and the underground while bombs dropped every night. We weren’t occupied like France, Poland, Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Greece, et al. We didn’t see our neighbors disappeared in the night.
There’s no doubt that the Holocaust was a horrific horrific genocide. But it’s not the only genocide. That one was REAL (as in up close and personal) to Europeans.
Doesn’t it seem odd to you that there are two genocides in the US alone and more in the Americas as a whole that are up close and personal to us that get no attention or only a brief mention in our education for favoring ones that happened in Europe and elsewhere? One of which is arguably still ongoing. "Arguably" equals denial by certain folks and y’all know who you are. It’s still ongoing. There’s no legit argument there.
Maybe if we had learned about Black Elk and Harriet Jacobs in school, then we wouldn’t have stuffed refugee children in cages and orphaned hundreds of them by separating them from their parents. That’s also an act of genocide according to the council on Human Rights. Maybe more of us would have recognized it for what it was if our only educational experience with genocide wasn’t the snobbery of a 13 year old girl locked in an attic.
Maybe we would have signed THAT treaty.
Maybe a lot of decisions involving Central American countries would have been different.
Maybe we wouldn’t be lodged in this political paralysis today.
It’s hard to say. But clearly being white doesn’t automatically make you relatable to white people. As you said. Thinking that would be the case though, in educational curriculum decisions is an act of privilege centering on whiteness.
Anyways, I agree these conversations are messy. I agree they tend to go off on weird tangents. I agree they can become emotional to the point of being unhinged.
I disagree that they’re completely useless and have no place. If this is the only way to move forward, I’m all for it no matter how messy it gets because literally nothing else has worked and we’re back sliding.
We either fulfill the promise or we fail.
Anyways, the article I read was by JW and like I said, she made some excellent points. I’d guess that for those turning the conversation into who suffers more, they’re just trying to get the genocides up close and personal to them recognized instead of denied or diminished. It might be a questionable way to go about it, but they’re not wrong to want/need that, recognize the incongruity, and try to address it.
I recognize that won’t apply to everyone everywhere and that not all the SJWs churning out content are Americans.
