Imagine a World Without Whiteness

Dr James Harrison, professor at Portland Community College presents "Imagine a World Without Whiteness" as part of PCC's Whiteness History Month.
James S. Harrison has over 40 years of experience as an educator: he has been an elementary teacher, high school teacher, a grade school principal, a college counselor and is currently a history professor. He has worked on the Cascade Campus since 1993.
As a citizen of the world he fully internationalizes each of his courses. His world view has been informed by his extensive travels to such places as ten nations in West Africa, Spain, Sweden, Great Britain, Canada, Mexico, Venezuela, Brazil, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, St. Croix and Japan and he shares his global insights with his students.
For more information visit www.pcc.edu/ab...

[@johnnyv1982]

Linguistically and ethnically they are different - but yes connected - hence “Eurasia” - there was a natural barrier between the two sides of the landmass, an absolutely massive swath of grassland- which allowed for the Asian and European cultures to grow apart and separately without much intermingling - apart from merchants on the Silk Road wich is how the bubonic plague was spread along with medieval shipping lanes - but yes 6 landmasses, and yet 7 distinctions- must be hard to wrap your mind around-

[@on2thenextthing]

This presenter has tunnel vision and it's easy to see where it leads him.

[@rmcgraw7943]

Imagine if we judged people by the content of their character, rather than the color of their skin. Imagine if we all were equally 0, unless proven otherwise by our actions. White or black,tall or short, etc. are merely features of a being. We only group people by those features for the purpose of logical classification, like when the plurality of people with a certain feature/trait behave/act in a measurable/observable manner, and/or perform an apprehensible action. The evil of such classifications is when someone uses these groupings to divid us, rather than to understand an unaddressed problem that could be remediated if understood better.

[@keatongreen8069]

Six years late but getting to watch now. While watching this I beloved there was a few ideals I thought differently with. I am white yet much like the Dr. I am experienced in West Africa, Bénin specifically. What the Dr claims is a global class structure of whiteness is the problem of everything. The minority is always experienced systematic stresses. He clames being white makes people ignorant to the agency there skin gives them. in Bénin, I became the minority so many of these systems he claims I inherently have I didn’t. Culture is defined as shared experience, we can share ideals and religion yet the reason there are minorités as there is experienced people can’t share.
The ideas of whiteness being the problem is weird. The problem is the power of structures, the minority. In the USA this is white people, in Bénin it was the Dahomey peoples. The same Dahomey who would sell there own people, or sell the other tribes of people they conquered.
You make this a situation of color when in reality it’s a situation of power dynamics that don’t regard the minority.
Of course this is super relevant in the USA even so more because of how small the countries history is. Yet making a critique that this world would be better without witness is confrontational can lead to being just as separatist.
He wants a world of unity and joint identity yet individuals clame cultural appropriation when this is done. A term inherently against the idea of culture. We all dissimulâtes form the same society and culture they grow and learn.
This is what is needed not a counter attack on “whiteness”.

[@rekaybrogdon7127]

Thought provoking 👏🏽❤️

[@BiGsImY]

Awesome