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Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri surprised even some allies when he recently devoted his entire speech at a high-profile national conference of conservatives to an extended analysis of why so many men appear stuck in a cycle of idleness and pornography and video games, as he put it.

Hawleys warnings against what he called liberals attack on men could open a new front in the culture wars that Republicans have used to consolidate their support among the voters most alienated by social and demographic change. Polls consistently show that a significant majority of Republican men, and even as many as half of Republican women, believe that amid the reassessment of gender relations sparked by the #MeToo movement, men are being unfairly punished and discriminated against.

Read: Josh Hawleys mission to remake the GOP

Republican politicians havent targeted those anxieties nearly as explicitly as they have the unease in their base about the nations growing racial diversitya concern that has infused the partys focus in the Donald Trump era on issues including undocumented immigration and the teaching of race in public schools. But Hawleys speech showed how resistance to shifting gender roles can be braided into a broader conservative message of defending traditional American values against accelerating change.

Apprehension about new dynamics in both race and gender are correlated, Erin Cassese, a University of Delaware political scientist who has studied gender and politics, told me in an email. Essentially its a preference for the status quo in all thingsgender relations, race relations, political and economic systems.

Elected to the Senate in 2018, Hawley quickly built a following on the right with speeches that sought to bridge traditional conservative beliefs and the economic and white-identity nationalism at the core of Trumps political appeal. In speeches accusing both parties of surrendering to a cosmopolitan consensus, Hawley portrayed himself as the champion of the GOP base in small-town, blue-collar, manufacturing-oriented America. The homespun clothes of a heartland populist always were something of an awkward fitHawley holds degrees from Stanford University and Yale Law Schoolbut he generated enough buzz on the right to fuel talk of a possible 2024 presidential bid; one writer in the conservative National Review even declared him possibly the most interesting thinker the U.S. Senate has seen since Daniel Patrick Moynihan.

Many people will remember Hawley instead from the instantly iconic photograph of him raising a clenched fist in encouragement toward Trump supporters not long before they stormed the Capitol on January 6. Hawley has defended his gesture by insisting that he was promoting only peaceful protest, but the image of him egging on the protestersin a tailored, buttoned suitseemed to crystallize the contradictions between his populist posturing and his elite reality. Hawley only compounded the backlash that evening when, along with Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, he vocally objected to certifying the Electoral College results on Trumps behalf.

Hawleys speech at the National Conservatism Conference in Orlando on November 1 can be seen as an attempt to restore his luster as a guide to the GOPs post-Trump future (whenever that might be). Which is why it struck some as so unexpected that Hawley focused his remarks not on any of the rights immediate discontent over Joe Bidens presidency or critical race theory but on what he called the lefts attack on men. I was surprised, Henry Olsen, a senior fellow at the conservative Ethics and Public Policy Center who attended the speech, told me. I would have thought he would have chosen a more overtly nationalistic speech, either economic nationalism or patriotism, with the brand he is developing.

Hawleys speech intertwined two ideas. The first was that the masculine virtues or manly virtuespersonal characteristics such as courage and independence and assertiveness, as he explainedwere indispensable for self-government and political liberty.

The second assertion, which filled the bulk of his speech, was that the principal reason so many American men have dropped out of the labor force, failed to marry, or tumbled into depression and drug abuse is because the lefta diffuse constellation in which he placed Democrats, colleges and universities, Hollywood, the news media, psychologists, and even corporate advertisersis engaged in an ongoing culture war against them.

The left want to define traditional masculinity as toxic. They want to define the traditional masculine virtues as a danger to society, Hawley claimed. Can we be surprised that after years of being told they are the problem, that their manhood is the problem, more and more men are withdrawing into the enclave of idleness and pornography and video games?

Read: The problem with the fight against toxic masculinity

Olsen, though generally a fan of Hawley, thought his ideas collided. Although many conservatives might accept Hawleys depiction of the culture as hostile to traditional conceptions of manliness, Olsen said he found in conversations after the remarks that the senators exaltation of the virtues he ascribed uniquely to men grated on some right-leaning women in the audience. And although Hawley insisted that he was not absolving men of personal responsibility for their choices, his stress on the role of popular culture in explaining why so many young men were stuck in their parents basement sounded to many listeners like an apology for men, Olsen said. If thats the way women at a national conservative conference are viewing it, he added, you know how more moderate women in the suburbs or the hinterlands are taking it.

Penny Young Nance, the president and CEO of Concerned Women for America, one of the most prominent organizations of culturally conservative women, didnt attend the speech, but she was more positive when she read a transcript of it. I do think that we have a very confused generation of young men, and they live in a swipe-left and swipe-right world, and all of the choices they are given are often not good for them, she told me, nodding to the prevalence of dating apps. I speak for a whole group of women who feel like saying Put down the mocha latte whip, put down the game console, put on a real pair of pants, and get a job.

Nance wasnt ready to endorse Hawleys emphasis on cultural messages as the reason for mens drift (I think its a little more complicated than that, she said), but she didnt interpret the speech as an excuse for mens bad behavior. I think he was calling them to their better angels, and I think we all need to do that, she said.

Nances generally favorable reaction is a reminder that both strands of Hawleys argument have deep roots in conservative thinking, and potentially a substantial audience in the modern GOP coalition. Cassese noted that Hawleys description of manly virtues as indispensable to public life, and his assertion that women have distinct virtues, extends across decades of conservative thinking, particularly among the white evangelical Christians who now comprise the partys most loyal supporters, about the value of preserving separate spheres of life for men and women.

Hawleys arguments, Cassese argued, are a continuation of culture wars politics sparked by the mobilization of evangelical Christians that traces back to the 1970s. Deana Rohlinger, a sociology professor at Florida State University, sees Hawleys praise of manly virtues in government echoing not only the conservative case in the 70s against the Equal Rights Amendment but arguments dating back to the early 20th century against providing women the right to vote. In the long-term historical context in the U.S., he is really making the same arguments Women are nurturing and they are suited for raising children, and men are assertive and they should be out in public life in politics, she told me.

Read: The Republican women Donald Trump alienated

One powerful measure of that belief comes in results Cassese analyzed from the University of Michigans National Election Studies on the 2020 election. She said the data showed that nearly half of not only the white men but also the white women who voted for Trump agreed that families were better served when men worked outside the home and the woman takes care of the home and family. Only about one in seven white Biden voters (men and women alike) agreed.

The sense that men are being unfairly punished in the #MeToo era is even more widespread on the right. The nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute, in its 2020 annual survey of American values, found that 70 percent of Republican men and almost exactly half of Republican women agreed that these days society seems to punish men just for acting like men. (Only about three in 10 Democratic men and two in 10 Democratic women agreed.)

Tresa Undem, a Democratic pollster who specializes in attitudes toward gender and racial dynamics, obtained almost the exact same results among Trump voters in a large post-election survey. (Among white evangelical Christians who voted for Trump, 69 percent agreed that men are punished for acting like men.) Even more striking, in that survey 65 percent of men who voted for Trump, as well as 54 percent of female Trump supporters, agreed with the statement White men are the most attacked group in the country right now.

Agreement with that assertion, Undem told me, was one of the top predictors of voting for Trump. There was also, she said, a powerful correlation between the Trump supporters most likely to say that men in general, or white men specifically, were under attack and those who expressed unease about the impact of immigration on American society or who asserted that bias against white people is now as big a problem as discrimination against minority groups. In fact, Undem says, an index of attitudes about perceived threats to the social and political dominance of white men that she constructed from the poll questions predicted support for Biden and Trump almost perfectly. It was this direct linear relationship between where you landed on this scale and your likelihood of having voted for Trump, she said. Polls have also consistently found that a large majority of Trump voters believe that discrimination against women is no longer a problem in American society (just as a large majority says the same about minority groups.) As in studies of the 2016 election, views about the economy proved far less predictive of the vote than these attitudes toward changing racial and gender dynamics, she found.

Undem believes the claim that men, particularly white men, are the group facing the gravest threats in American society today will strike most Democratic and even independent women as kind of ridiculous. But given the breadth of those feelings within the GOP coalition, Undem said shes less surprised that Hawley has anointed himself the champion of embattled American men than that no other Republican had moved sooner to plant that flag. It wasnt a surprise; it was a surprise that it took this long, she said.

Hawley, for his part, is following the tracks laid by another prominent Republican: Trump. The former president signaled boundless disdain for any renegotiation of gender relations through his frequent mocking of female politicians, often with overtly sexist language; his belligerent dismissal of multiple charges of sexual harassment (dating back to the Access Hollywoodtape scandal during the 2016 campaign); and his argument that Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh was the real victim when he faced an accusation of sexual assault during his confirmation hearings. Its a very scary time for young men in America, Trump insisted at the time.

Hawley wasnt nearly as belligerent in his speech, and notably steered clear of attributing the troubles of men to personal or political demands by women (who after all, account for a majority of voters nationwide, even if men usually provide a majority of Republican votes). Instead Hawley pointed the finger primarily at cultural institutions controlled by the left, a target that more unites the right, while also nodding toward the decline of American manufacturing in a globalized economy as a contributing cause.

Scholars studying the genuine problems Hawley alluded todeclining labor-force participation and social instability among men, especially those without college degreesfind his diagnosis for those difficulties largely beside the point. They attribute factors such as the decline in good-paying blue-collar jobs and a fraying of social support networks, whether labor unions or close friendships, especially among men without advanced education.

Blaming cultural messages for mens struggles is an effective political tactic but I dont think the challenges confronting working-class men are because they are viewed as lesser or persona non grata in elite circles, or they are mistreated by the media, Daniel Cox, a senior fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, told me. When you really look at folks who are struggling and having the worst outcomes, its people who are in rough economic shape and relatedly, those things are tied to poor social support.

Read: The knives come out for Josh Hawley

Democrats are quick to note that Hawley, for all his expressed concern about opportunities for working-class men, opposes the Biden economic agenda (both the bipartisan infrastructure bill and the broader reconciliation package), even though the plan targets many of its new benefits toward blue-collar families and would create millions of jobs in construction, manufacturing, and caregiving that do not require a college degree, according to analysis by the liberal Economic Policy Institute.

Juxtaposed against those positions, Hawleys speech embodies the confidence among conservatives that they can hold white working-class voters, particularly men, by identifying with their cultural anxieties, even as they vote against Biden programs that could deliver them tangible economic benefits. Hawley is opening a new front by focusing on gender rather than on race, but hes doubling down on the long-standing GOP bet that for most working-class white people, cultural grievance will trump economic interest.

See the rest here:
Josh Hawley's 'Attack on Men' - The Atlantic

Culture club: The culture wars against critical race theory, and mask and vaccine policies that appeared in local school board races will continue in 2022 in races for the U.S. Senate, the governor, the Ohio General Assembly and state and local school boards. Republicans lost suburban voters, in particular white women, when Donald Trump was president, and are trying to win them back, Laura Hancock reports.

Outside again: Gov. Mike DeWine made his first public appearance since being exposed to coronavirus last week, visiting Cleveland to give an update on the citys Innovation District, Eric Heisig reports. DeWine, as well as First Lady Fran DeWine, spent most of the past week at home in Cedarville after coming in close contact with two staffers who tested positive for COVID-19.

In lighter news: Starting next Fourth of July weekend, Ohioans will be able to legally able to set off consumer-grade fireworks on many public holidays, under legislation signed by Gov. Mike DeWine on Monday that ends a long-standing (and long-ignored) statewide ban. As Jeremy Pelzer reports, the signing of House Bill 172 means that, at the start of 2023, the state will issue new fireworks manufacturing and wholesale retail licenses for the first time in more than 20 years.

Were in the money: Ohios casinos and racinos continue to reap record revenues, posting $192.7 million in gambling revenue in October, Sean McDonnell reports. Thats a 14% increase over the $169.1 million made last October and a 22% increase over October 2019.

Back at it: The 2021 elections may be over, but as Seth Richardson writes, that doesnt mean voters get a break. With just six months until the primary elections, Richardson previews the races for governor, senator, supreme court and more.

All in the Family: The Federal Election Commission on Sunday flagged Rocky River Republican congressional candidate Max Millers campaign for accepting campaign contributions that exceed maximum allowable amounts from the candidates mother, Barbara Miller, and his future in-laws, car dealer and U.S. Senate candidate Bernie Moreno and his wife, Bridget. Individuals arent allowed to give more than $2,900 to a candidate in a given election. The FEC letter said Bernie Moreno gave double the allowable amount to Millers general and primary bid by donating under the names Bernie and Bernardo, while Bridget Moreno and Barbara Miller exceeded the maximum by lesser amounts. FEC also inquired about an $8,700 primary election donation from Texan Joseph Agresti. Cleveland.com has reached out to Millers campaign for a comment.

Race to the top: Turnout in Hamilton County localities with contentious school board races -- driven largely by the anger over critical race theory -- was much higher than in previous years, an indication that school board races were a significant turnout driver, the Cincinnati Enquirers Scott Wartman reports. While Cincinnati, with competitive mayoral and city council races, only reached 24% turnout, in some places like Wyoming brought turnout to 50% or more.

Democrat divide: While most of the chaos in the Senate race has been on the Republican side, some liberals in the Democratic Party are upset that the party apparatus has seemingly gotten behind Rep. Tim Ryans bid, the Columbus Dispatchs Haley BeMiller reports. That includes Adrienne Hood, a Franklin County Democratic Party central committee member, who thought the Democrats were trotting out a similar statewide candidate to the ones that have failed repeatedly over the past decade. Instead, theyd like to see a more open competition between Ryan and liberal challenger Morgan Harper.

Finish your plate: The Bureau of Motor Vehicles has sent out letters to owners of the Ohio Gold license plates saying the plates will need to be removed from circulation for public safety reasons, the Columbus Dispatchs Titus Wu reports. The plates were issued from 1997 through 2001 and around 236,000 are still in use. Some owners of the simply designed plates said they arent happy and dont think the states reasoning -- that they are difficult to read -- is true.

Bomb threats: Both Ohio University and Miami University investigated bomb threats over the weekend, according to WLWT-TV. While police determined they were hoaxes, a second round of threats at Ivy League Schools followed Sunday. Officials didnt say if there is any connection between the multi-campus threats.

Five things we learned from the April 29 financial disclosure form of state Sen. Sandra OBrien, an Ashtabula Republican.

1. A newly elected member, OBriens lone source of income was her Ohio Public Employee Retirement System pay of $50,000 to $99,999.

2. OBriens reported investments of her OPERS retirement fund and an IRA through American Financial Services.

3. At some point in 2020, OBrien owed more than $1,000 to Capital One.

4. At some point in 2020, OBriens campaign owed her $47,262.

5. OBrien did not report any investment real estate or gifts worth more than $75.

State Rep. David Leland, a Columbus Democrat, announced Monday hes running for Ohio 10th District Court of Appeals, which hears cases originating in the Franklin County Court of Common Pleas.

U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown

Ohio House Speaker Bob Cupp

Willa Bluestone, legislative aide to state Rep. Scott Lipps

I was delighted that the House finally found a way to pass the infrastructure bill last week. This will be the first time Ive come up here in a quarter of century when I thought maybe there was a way forward on the Brent Spence bridge.

-U.S. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican, quoted in a tweet by CNNs Kaitlan Collins on the recently passed infrastructure bill.

Capitol Letter is a daily briefing providing succinct, timely information for those who care deeply about the decisions made by state government. If you do not already subscribe, you can sign up here to get Capitol Letter in your email box each weekday for free.

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Culture war clashes figure to be a political mainstay in 2022 Ohio elections: Capitol Letter - cleveland.com

New guidance issued by the Ministry of Defence (MoD) is set to ensure transgender personnel in the armed forces will be shielded from the danger of misgendering, both at work and in the field.

The Times reports that MoD officials have been told to announce their preferred gender pronouns in meetings so as to show respect for everyones gender identity. This follows on from the MoDs decision last month to issue inclusivity guidance, which warns staff to be careful when using the word female in case it erases gender non-conforming people and members of the trans community.

These new edicts are rumoured to be the brainchild of Dunni Alao, a policy expert at the MoD who was appointed as a trustee of lobby group Stonewall in June. The MoD denies that Alao, the senior civil servant in charge of human resources, was responsible for these recommendations, though she has described herself as a fierce proponent of the Stonewall agenda. Indeed, the MoD confirmed this week that it has paid Stonewall 80,312 over five years, mainly for membership of its Diversity Champions scheme, whereby employers allow Stonewall to vet their internal policies.

The fact that the British military has issued the new guidance is hardly a surprise. In recent years, transwomen soldiers have become as much a military clich as squaddies brawling at kicking-out time. From former lieutenant colonel Jennifer Pritzker in the US to Captain Hannah Winterbourne MBE in the UK, there seems to be a pipeline between the macho world of the army and gender-identity clinics.

Notably, the first British woman to serve on the front line in close combat joined the Scots Guards as a man in 2012. In response to this momentous event, army general Sir James Everard expressed his delight, and cited awards from Stonewall as evidence of the militarys shift toward inclusion and diversity.

Yet while the army bathes in Stonewalls praise, it is also facing criticism on several fronts at the moment. There are the reports of veterans being turned out on to the streets and of instances of sexual abuse being covered up.

The experiences of women in the army, specifically of the traditional sort with vaginas, make for particularly grim reading. A recent government report, exploring some of the injustices faced by female soldiers, notes that nearly two thirds had experienced bullying, harassment and discrimination these behaviours, it says, include sexual assault and other criminal sexual offences.

The report also revealed a huge disparity between the career opportunities afforded to women and those afforded to men. Around 90 per cent of mid-ranking male officers have children, compared to just 10 per cent of women in similar roles. It seems women are still expected to choose between a military career or a family. Furthermore, even the design of body armour places women at greater risk of harm in combat because it is designed to fit men.

But rather than deal with these real problems in the armed forces, it seems the MoD would prefer to fanny about policing pronoun use and issuing nonsensical guidance for meetings.

Moreover, by taking Stonewalls transwomen are women approach, the MoD is putting women at even greater risk of sexual violence and harassment. The MoDs 2019 Policy for the Recruitment and Management of Transgender Personnel in the Armed Forces explicitly states that as soon as the transition process begins the person should be provided with accommodation that is appropriate to their affirmed gender. In other words, the moment a male member of the armed forces says he feels like a woman, he is entitled to be admitted to womens facilities. Of course, this works the other way round, too but women who identify as men do not as a rule pose a sexual threat to men.

In an environment known for closing ranks on whistleblowers, it would take ovaries of steel to object to the presence of men who identify as women in single-sex army accommodation. It seems that while the MoD is advising personnel to avoid using the word female, women themselves have fewer rights and protections than ever.

Ultimately, the new Stonewall-inspired guidance about pronouns is a meaningless performance that will probably be ignored by most. But it does raise the question if a soldier can be wounded by a word, how can we expect them to protect the country?

Jo Bartosch is a journalist campaigning for the rights of women and girls.

Picture by: Getty.

To enquire about republishing spikeds content, a right to reply or to request a correction, please contact the managing editor, Viv Regan.

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Why is the army fighting the culture wars? - Spiked

When the chair of the National Maritime Museum, Charles Dunstone, wrote to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) to extend Dr Aminul Hoques trusteeship into a second four-year term, it was just a formality. The letter, written in the summer of 2020, said Hoque was a valued board member. It did not say that he was the sole non-white trustee. It did not mention his academic position, or his BBC history documentary, or his MBE. There was absolutely no need to say any of that. No one had ever heard of a trusteeship not being extended: it was automatic.

An official at the department, however, telephoned Dunstone to say that Hoques term would not be renewed. There was no requirement for the culture secretary, Oliver Dowden, to justify the decision, they said however, they pointed out, Hoque had liked tweets hostile to the government. That autumn, Dunstone urged Dowden by phone to change his mind. He would not be able to defend the ministers decision to the museum and fellow trustees.

In January, though, Dunstone heard again from the DCMS: Hoques trusteeship would definitely not be renewed. Dunstone, honourably, resigned. For a giddy moment the other trustees, so I was told, considered going en masse their Im Spartacus! moment until they realised that doing so would offer the government the chance to stuff the board with its chosen people. Bear in mind that Dunstone, the billionaire founder of TalkTalk, and his colleagues among them a retired first sea lord and the then head of Lloyds Register were as far from woke warriors as can be imagined.

For his part, I was shocked, disappointed and baffled, Hoque told me. People should draw their own conclusions as to whether my previous academic research and writing contributed to the governments actions. (A DCMS spokesperson told me: There is no automatic presumption of reappointment, and ministers may decide to make a reappointment or launch a campaign to attract fresh talent.)

Ive had my own little trawl through Hoques tweets. Theres a lot of enthusiasm for the England football team. Theres also a bit about British history, which, he suggested, needs to be rewritten to include the stories of its ethnic minorities and acknowledge their important contribution to the development of the British national story. #decolonize #inclusive #multiplestories. Pretty mild stuff but the sort of thing thats a red flag to this culture wars-obsessed government.

Appointing political allies to influential public positions is nothing new. Under Thatcher, the Conservative Marmaduke Hussey became BBC chair; under New Labour it was Gavyn Davies, who had once worked for Harold Wilson and James Callaghan. What is different now, said Peter Riddell recently, is the breadth of the campaign and the close engagement of 10 Downing Street. Until September Riddell was commissioner for public appointments, in charge of ensuring the systems fairness.

The government, in short, is going in hard to shape English public bodies in its image. This project is being pushed forward shamelessly as in the case of Ofcom, where the process to appoint a chair is being rerun so that the favoured, but initially rejected, former Mail editor Paul Dacre can have another crack. In the arena of the arts, what is seen as a left-of-centre consensus born of the Blair and Brown years has been targeted for fixing. The arts have become a battleground where ideas of national image, heritage and history are fought over. At the heart of No 10, theres an intense dislike of the politics of identity, and a loathing of the suggestion that the British imperial project was harmful. Thats partly born of the assumption that anything that even hints at a lack of patriotism is a turn-off to the voters of the red wall.

A look at the board of the National Portrait Gallery in London gives a sense of how this might be going: the museum in charge of presenting Englands image back to itself, and currently in the throes of a major redisplay, has on its board Chris Grayling; Jacob Rees-Mogg (the leader of the House of Commons is an automatic appointment); and Inaya Folarin Iman, the culture and social affairs editor of the rightwing GB News. The chair is David Ross, who facilitated Boris and Carrie Johnsons infamous Mustique holiday.

Behind this campaign of realignment is Munira Mirza, Boris Johnsons culture adviser when he was mayor of London, now head of No 10s policy unit, and her husband, Tory fixer Dougie Smith. The trawling of tweets is not just about risk-assessing inflammatory or offensive things buried deep in a persons feed, but fishing for disloyalty. One person who recently sat as an independent member of an interview panel told me that their attention was drawn to one candidates tweet that was unfavourable about Brexit. Ill pretend I didnt hear that, they told me they replied.

The government, it is pretty clear, doesnt have a great deal of time for rules, or established practice, or the unspoken liberal norms that have traditionally funnelled behaviour into commonly accepted channels. Kicking out Hoque wasnt the done thing, but since it was possible, it did it. Youre not supposed to leak the names of favoured candidates before a public appointments process begins, but it did with Dacre for Ofcom. The process itself is designed to be transparent and rigorous: it involves an interview panel containing at least one independent member and chaired by a civil servant. The panel will name who it considers the best candidate, alongside one or two others deemed appointable. Riddell has voiced concerns about ministers ignoring recommendations and selecting candidates deemed unappointable; there has already been an attempt to do this, he said recently. Johnson has form; when he was mayor, he tried to insist that the former Evening Standard editor Veronica Wadley became chair of the Arts Council London, despite the interview panel having rejected her. (Blocked at the time by Labour culture secretary Ben Bradshaw, she later got the job under the then Tory culture secretary, Jeremy Hunt.)

How much does all this matter? Boards of trustees are innately conservative: that institutional stolidity might act as some protection from the radicalism of the right as much as it frustrates those on the left who wish for change. The direct influence of No 10 on arts institutions does not extend deep into the arts (and not much beyond Englands borders): aside from national museums, Arts Council England and a handful of others, English arts organisations are in charge of appointing their own board members. However and unarguably once the BBC is brought into the equation those that do fall under direct government influence happen to be especially influential ones.

The most important job of trustees is to select directors of organisations, and as Tory influence deepens on boards this may begin to have its impact on the way institutions are run and what the public sees. In the meantime, dont expect museum high-ups to utter the Tory trigger-word decolonise any time soon; an institutional caution around certain areas the empire, slavery may put them into conflict with their own audiences and even their workforces, many of whose younger members are increasingly impatient with structural inequalities.

More generally, the climate created by a government obsessed by culture wars is profoundly damaging. When staff members from a rather dull institution such as Historic England in charge of listing buildings and monuments receive threats from the far right, theres something amiss with the body politic. The Tories should be very careful what they wish for.

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No 10 is marching through cultural institutions and making a battleground of the arts - The Guardian

by Karina Le | published Nov. 12th, 2021

When I got to college, some of my friends were talking about the books they had to read for English classes. I confessed that I actually liked a lot of my readings. "Song of Solomon" by Toni Morrison and assorted works stood out in my memory.

My friends were confused. They've never read a Toni Morrison book before, much less for class.For the most part, all they read and knew were works likeShakespeareand "The Great Gatsby"by F. Scott Fitzgerald very white-centric novels written by men typically for men of the time. There was a distinct discrepancy in my education, being able to read a diversity of novels from diverse authors, in comparison to my friends and their white-centric education.

At times, this focus is understandable. Many white authors hold great importance to the foundation of the perspective during their times, but is it really history if we only hear one version of it?

Back in the '80s and '90s, parents and teachers alike fought for the diversification of the literature curriculum. It was during the culture warsof the late 1900s that the literary canon a grouping of what would be considered the most influential pieces of literature or narratives during a specific period that propelled these protests. An example of a part of literary canon would be Shakespeare.

Despite the culture wars of the '90s, there isstill a highly concentrated focus of white voices when discussing 1920s American literature, for instance. Again, works like The Great Gatsby are some of the most wellknown from that time, but cultural figures like Langston Hughes for his anthologies of poetry have less focus within the main curriculum.Hughes's work is fundamental for understanding the impact of the Harlem Renaissance, and hashad lasting impacts to the poetry world arguably as much as Fitzgerald had to the prose world.

Amit Ray, an associate professor specializing in postcolonial literature at RIT, spoke in depth about some of these lost authors.

They may be overlooked, but they still existed, Ray noted.

One of the biggest aspects of history is the recovery of historical artifacts. For literature, its finding the authors of the time that were lost due to reason and circumstance.

Daniel Worden, an associate professor with the College of Art and Design for RITs Art History program, explained some questionable aspects of restoration efforts.

One of the first exhibitions of comics, 'Masters of American Comics,' there [were] no women in the show ...very few of the artists were artists of color back in 2005, Worden explained.

Some reasons behind the loss of some artists was the occurrence of race conflicts in the past.

As African American artists, many of them couldnt buy paper, since suppliers didnt want black press in America, Worden said.

With the rise of diverse voices in modern times, however, it brings to question how schools are compensating for this increase of newer voices to the literary canon.

History is written by those in power, and the people in power are cisgender, heterosexual white male voices. This is reflected by who and what is taught in our general curriculum.The question becomes, when we move to the modern era, howdo we share the more diverse voices of our time? For some classics, however, theyre still readapted in our cultures and act as landmarks for the genre.

For Shakespeare, he serves as a central point and role in the Elizabethan language and history, Ray said. [Hes] still in demand, since his works are continuously adapted.

So long as we readapt tropes Shakespeare has made, he remains relevant tothe current literary canon. For Ray, he believes that there have been big changes to the school curriculum since the culture wars of the late 1900s.

At my daughters high school, they give a broad spectrum of writers both as people of color and as non-heterosexual perspectives, but it really depends, Ray said.

The national school curriculum isnt standardized. What someone learns in an advanced language class in New York may not be an opportunity given to a student in Wyoming. Even down to city schools against suburban schools, especially in Rochester, there is such a discrepancy between what the school can afford to give their students.

Even with the changes being made in secondary school, there is so much more we can do even for higher academia. Especially when colleges allow their students to freely explore subjects they do not have access to in secondary school.

Often times, when talking about the lasting consequences of living in white society, theres a feeling of helplessness that accompanies it. How does a single person, much less a student population, enact change against a system that has been in power for centuries?

However, with colleges, students can and dohave a lot of power.

Students have an immense power, an immense amount of say in their curriculum. RIT wants to be responsive to this change in culture, so theyre more receptive to [student needs], Worden said.

Ray offered a similar attitude in regard to curriculum changes.

When students demand change, asking for diversity in their curriculum, thats how change gets made, Ray said.

When students demand change, asking for diversity in their curriculum, thats how change gets made.

There is a lot of criticism to RITs student platform, PawPrints, about whether or not they truly encourage change with student voices. However, Worden encourages students to take a step further and talk to your professors, your deans and other administrative heads to let them know your needs.

Tell your academic advisors, email your department chair grassroots stuff works. I created courses because students asked me to, Worden said.

Tell your academic advisors, email your department chair, grassroots stuff works."

As someone who has been with the RIT community for four years, the student population is not blind to some of the problems within our own societies. What is stopping anyone from getting a group of like-minded people, and demanding change outright?

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History by White Men, a Retrospection - Reporter Magazine