No, you know what sounds to me like a valid reason not to give money to the new Disney Mulan? The fact they filmed it in Xinjiang, working with the local authorities involved in the Uyghur concentration camps.
I cannot stand the “academic writing is inaccessible (and ableist and classist and racist) because its So Hard to Understand” argument
Academia is racist and cements class antagonism by its very structure and mode of existence, not because you don’t want to put the effort in reading or learning. Academia is racist and “classist” by its admission standards, it test score standards, is demographic quotas, in the adherence to a propagandistic white western canon, and its flip side the tokenization of BIPOC voices, in the very system of paying for education, loan debts, school districts, funding, material inaccessibility, journal paywalls, the complete deprivation of publicly readily available knowledge, the impoverishment of common intellectual life.
A more accessible academic life would see the complete shattering of the ivory walls. Life long learning. The end of tenure. The end of capitalistic competition in publishing the newest piece of trash.
There is bad writing. Of course. But when I see “write so a 5th grader can understand” I hear a call for the further impoverishment of intellectual life. A disregard for intellectual rigor.
And worse, I hear a complete infantilization and dehumanization of the very people you’re trying to advocate for. Black people are not stupid. Poor people are not stupid. People with mental illness are not stupid. And they’re certainly not in “5th grade”
you know even if a homeless person or a starving person is in that position because of their own “bad decisions” i don’t care. it doesn’t matter. no supposed financial misstep is enough to condemn someone to homelessness or poverty.
