The
real political task in a society such as ours is to criticize the workings
of institutions which appear to be neutral and independent; to criticize
them in such a manner that the political violence which has always exercised
itself through them will be unmasked, so that one can fight them. --Michel
Foucault, "Human Nature: Justice vs. Power."
My project is the careful project of unlearning our privilege as our loss. Try to learn to speak in such a way that the masses (e.g., people outside the academy; unorganized peasant laborers) will not regard what you say as bullshit, and not dismiss you as yet another of those colonial missionaries.--Gayatri Chakravorti Spivak, "Criticism, Feminism, and Institutions."
I urge each one of us here to reach down into that deep place of knowledge inside herself and touch that terror and loathing of any difference that lives there. See whose form it wears. Then the personal as the political can begin to illuminate all our choices.--Audre Lorde, "The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House," Sister Outsider, 1984, 113.
They load the clip in omnicolor/They pack the 9, they fire it at prime
time/Sleeping gas, every
home was like Alcatraz/And mutha fuckas lost their minds//No escape from
the mass mind rape/Play it again jack and then rewind the tape/Play it
again and again and again/Until ya mind is locked in/Believin' all the
lies that they're tellin' ya/Buying all the products that they're selling'
ya/They say jump/Ya say how high/Ya brain dead/Ya gotta fuckin' bullet
in ya head//Just victims of the in-house drive-by/They say jump, you say
how high//Ya standin' in line/Believin' the lies/Ya bowin' down to the
flag/Ya gotta bullet in ya head.--Rage
Against the Machine, 1992.
Education has become inextricably linked with big business and big government. From 1957 a huge influx of public government money has made its way into "private" educational institutions, so that now private universities can have 40% or more of their research funded directly by the government. So we need to keep a sense of the deeper mission of education: to cultivate a critical sensibility. We need to see white supremacy and race at the center of modernism, science and technology, and nationalism. I believe in the role of discomfort in education. --Notes from Cornell West lecture, Claremont, 9-94.
The reality, the depth, and the persistence of the delusion of white supremacy in this country causes any real concept of education to be as remote, and as much to be feared, as change or freedom itself. --James Baldwin, The Price of the Ticket.
Every relationship of "hegemony" is an educational relationship. --Antonio Gramsci, Prison Notebooks.
I testified/My mama cried/Black people died/When the other man lied/See
the TV, listen to me double trouble/I overhaul and I'm comin'/From the
lower level/I'm takin' tabs/Sho nuff stuff to grab/Like shirts it hurts/Wit
a neck to wreck/Took a poll 'cause our soul/Took a toll/from the 
education/Of
a TV station/But look around/Hear go the sound of the wreckin' ball/Boom
and Pound/When I/Shut 'em down/123456789/What I use in the battle for the
mind/I hit it hard/Like it supposed/Pullin'no blows to the nose/Like uncle
L said I'm rippin' up shows/Then what it is/Only 5 percent of the biz/I'm
addin' woes/That's how da way it goes/Then U think I rank never drank,
point blank/I own loans/Suckers got me runnin' from the bank/Civil liberty…/Tape
cued/ Gettin me sued/Playin' games wit' my head/What the judge said put
me in the red/Got me thinkin' 'bout a trigger to the lead/No no/My educated
mind say/Suckers gonna pay/Anyway/There gonna be a day/'Cause the troop
they roll in/To posse up/Whole from the ground/Ready to go/Throw another
round/Sick of the ride/It's suicide/For the other side of town/When I find
a way to shut 'em down/Who count the money/In da neighborhood…/In a war
to the core/Ripppin'up the poor in da stores/Till they get a brother/Kickin'
down doors/Then I figure I kick it bigger/Look 'em dead in the eye/And
they wince/Defense is pressurized/They don't want it to be/Another racial
attack/In disguise so give some money back/I like Nike but wait a minute/The
neighborhood supports so put some/Money in it/Corporations owe/Dey gotta
give up the dough/To da town/Or else/We gotta shut 'em down --Public
Enemy, "Shut Em Down."
The sentimentality of the notion that we are all brothers and sisters "under the skin" disguises the historical facts, not just of cultural difference, but of domination and inequality…. Roland Barthes…objects to universalism’s claim that all human beings are really the same, because this claim is invariably made by a dominant culture. Claims to universality, in short, nearly always relate to some project of domination. –John Tomlinson, Cultural Imperialism, 53-4.
For further information on education, see www.inform.umd.edu/diversityweb