When I published my novel Radio Transistor, a sort of detective tale on Puerto Rican gays and politics, the former white colleague -who had shamelessly sabotaged a conference I organized on languages and indigenous communitIes in the Americas (see a previous essay on this topic posted on this blog)- also published a book on multiculturalism. Guess who was invited to present the book at CCNY. “Who gets to be represented, invited where” is not to be overlooked. And why. White privileges and heterosexuality go hand in hand.
White supremacy’s roots lie on the counter-Enlightenment’s ideas of the late 18th century; in the concept of race: the “naive theories” that suggest that humans are divided into a number of essential groups, and that one’s group identity determines one’s moral and social place in the world, out of which ideas of white superiority emerged. Add to racism, homophobia -an older form of persecution and genocide-, and you have the perfect formula to discriminate. There is no question in my mind that both of those social and moral constructs led the CCNY faculty to decide who to invite, to present the books.
White supremacy’s roots lie on the counter-Enlightenment’s ideas of the late 18th century; in the concept of race: the “naive theories” that suggest that humans are divided into a number of essential groups, and that one’s group identity determines one’s moral and social place in the world, out of which ideas of white superiority emerged. Add to racism, homophobia -an older form of persecution and genocide-, and you have the perfect formula to discriminate. There is no question in my mind that both of those social and moral constructs led the CCNY faculty to decide who to invite, to present the books.
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