Showing posts with label privilege. Show all posts
Showing posts with label privilege. Show all posts

Tuesday, September 22, 2015

Selfish

Twilight: sky brighter than landscape,
which backs slowly into darkness.
Crows fly home, high for them. They
become wrinkled, animated black lines.

So much is wrong out there--
the city, the nation, the world.
One feels ashamed, obligated, compelled,
and weary. This evening I give in

greedily to privilege, sit outside with
headphones on, listening to Ellington
indigos, "Solitude," "Prelude to a Kiss,"
"Mood Indigo," a cover of "Autumn Leaves."

In my heaven, Duke is musical director.
September air, influenced by Puget Sound,
mixes with dimming light sublimely. Yes,
I said "sublimely." Insufferable.

I want for nothing except more commitment
to change some bad things.
How disgusting to write about oneself
at a time like this.


hans ostrom 2015





Wednesday, June 18, 2014

"First Class Boarding," by Hans Ostrom



At the airport,
the difference
between
the general-boarding area
and
the First Class one
consists of a rug
on which First Class
was stitched
by a machine.
Also a short blue nylon band
suggests a barrier
between
the two areas.
These things we do.
These distinctions we make.


hans ostrom 2014

Monday, April 8, 2013

The WSJ Is Unamused by Bowdoin College

The Wall Street Journal (April 6, 2013) has offered yet another critique of “liberal” colleges and their interest in diversity, among other things. Believe it or not, the complicated tale hinges on a golf-outing that the president of Bowdoin College experienced with “philanthropist and investor Thomas Klingenstein.”

During the outing, Klingenstein apparently told Mills, “I would never support Bowdoin—you are a ridiculous liberal school that brings all the wrong students to campus for all the wrong reasons” [and you have] “misplaced and misguided diversity efforts.” This is Mills’ version. Klingenstein later weighed in: “I explained my disapproval of ‘diversity’ as it generally has been implemented on college campuses: too much celebration of racial and ethnic difference,” coupled with “not enough celebration of our common American identity.” What that common American identity might be, he apparently did not say.

Klingenstein had also funded a study of Bowdoin by the National Association of Scholars. He apparently got what he paid for as the study discovered, at least according to the WSJ, that “[t]he school’s ideological pillars would likely be familiar to anyone who has paid attention to American higher education lately. There’s the obsession with race, class, gender and sexuality as the essential forces of history and markers of political identity. There’s the dedication to ‘sustainability,’ or saving the planet from its imminent destruction by the forces of capitalism. And there are the paeans to ‘global citizenship, or loving all countries except one’s own.”

What a lovely rhetorical moment has unfurled here. First, note the scene and the actors: A white male president of an exclusive college has his back-swing interrupted by a wealthy man who doesn’t like newfangled ideas. Hilarious. Nobody knows the trouble these two have seen. What next–a double-bogey on the 18th? One hopes the round of golf occurred at an exclusive country club because Klingenstein apparently complained that the school brings in “all the wrong students for all the wrong reasons.” Note that neither the WSJ nor the aggrieved wealthy golfer explain what makes “the wrong students” the wrong students. By the way, the online source Peterson’s [guide to colleges] says the student body at Bowdoin is 65% White or “Caucasian.”

Then, the WSJ plays the equivocation-game. The small liberal arts college has “ideological pillars.” It has courses that concern race, class, gender and sexuality; therefore, it is “obsessed” with these. Not that evidence matters, but if you look at the areas of study Bowdoin offers, you will find such subjects as math, physics, neuroscience, chemistry, biochemistry, music, philosophy, Classics, economics, art history, and a variety of “foreign” languages. Wow, what a radical bunch these Bowdoin folks must be!

The WSJ also claims that “[i]n the History Department, no course is devoted to American political, military, diplomatic or intellectual history—the only ones available are organized around some aspect of race, class, gender or sexuality.” But in the Spring term alone, you will find courses on “Colonial America and the Atlantic World, 1607–1763,” which surely includes military, diplomatic, and intellectual concerns, and a course on “Place in American History,” which “Investigates place as a set of physical and biological characteristics, as a product of the interaction between humans and the environment, and as a social and cultural construct. Also attends to the challenge of writing history with place as a central character” (Bowdoin online catalogue).

But the WSJ doesn’t like even a whiff of environmental issues: “There’s the dedication to ‘sustainability,’ or saving the planet from its imminent destruction by the forces of capitalism. And there are the paeans to ‘global citizenship,’ or loving all countries except one’s own.” Again with the equivocation. If you perceive the world to be highly connected—here we are, by the way, on the Internet—you don’t love your country. If you reasonably deduce that “we” are running out of water, facing the consequences of global warming, and encountering all sorts of problems with pollution, then of course you must be anti-capitalism—as opposed to being, you know, realistic and practical. And how dare Bowdoin offer opportunities for students to think about how to reverse the harm done to the planet.

The WSJ and the poor (read: wealthy), victimized Klingnstein have fielded an entire team of straw men in their arguments. Therefore, one must agree with them. Bowdoin should offer an old-fashioned course on rhetoric and invite them to take the course—online, in person, or on the golf course.

Monday, March 30, 2009

Privilege
















Privilege #238B.1


To wake up at 3:21 a.m. in a warm,
clean bed in a heated, electrified
house, go to an equipped kitchen,
eat a banana, drink clean water, listen
to a neighborhood's silence, return
to bed, read a book by good light,
open a notebook and scribble, turn
off the light, and go back to sleep.



Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Saturday, November 3, 2007

Speak For Yourself

Warning. Red alert. Or at least maybe a burnt-umber alert. (I need to find out what umber is and who first burned to make that color.) Preachy poem ahead. Detour advised.

Can’t Complain, Am Concerned

Life provides me with assistance,
which includes oxygen, sunshine,
water, memory, blueberries, garlic,
recordings of Dinah Washington,
Rubenstein, and Johnny Cash,
cardamom, bookstores, a bed,
birds, and affection. Such largesse.

I’m wealthier than royalty
of previous eras, travel more
comfortably than Vikings,
Marco Polo, and Eisenhower.
I don’t have very much power,

one might allege,
but the same one might cite
my extraordinary American
imperial privilege.

Mere me, ordinary I: I
am one of the most expensive
people in history. I’ve worked,
but who hasn’t? There are a few,
I know, but for many, just
living is the hardest job of all.

A question of society
persists, is more than a
question of propriety:
how shall those who have
behave toward themselves
with regard to those who have
not or much less? Shall we bless
ourselves by making the
blessings go further, as a frugal person does
with what a frugal person has?
Or shall we condemn ourselves
by doing no good with having it good?

“Speak for yourself.” A fair point.
What is it I should
be doing to do the best with doing well?

is a question worth my asking myself.
"Shut up." Consider it done.

Hans Ostrom