NYT: Whites are Arbiters of Culture
This may seem like hanky-using, protruding-pinky-finger kinda’ stuff, but it’s bothering some people. A recent New York Times Book Review, in a collection of essays called “Why Criticism Matters,” extolled the virtues and place of critics and their ideas, with a glaring omission.
One of the people off-put by this was Randy Shaw, of Beyond Chron, San Fracisco’s alternative Online Daily. He writes:
“Citing the importance of the critic as cultural arbiter, the Times asked six critics to address the subject – none of whom were black or Latino. Further, the back page of the section cites seven cultural critics who inspired the issue’s theme: all seven are white men.”
Hanky and pinky and all, I read the Book Review and think that it takes a high opinion of one’s self and one’s publication to stand on the soap-box of cultural arbitration. Who are you to tell me what’s Culture and what’s not? But if you’re gonna do it, and if you’re the NYT book review, I’ll read it. And yet:
“It should be considered remarkable that in 2011 the New York Times Book Review would put out an issue on cultural criticism that excludes no representatives of the leading ethnic and racial minority groups of the United States. Sadly, this exclusion, particularly for Latino critics, is par for the course.”
Shaw kinda’ flubbed a sentence there, “excludes no representatives” means that they included some, but they didn’t, which is what he was trying to say. Anyway, here’s the meat of the thing: the editors of the Review make a distinction, in this “age of opinion,” between “contentious assertion” and “genuine understanding.” An interesting way to sketch the divide between us and them.
Breathe deeply, take a sip of your beverage of choice, and dive in:
“African-American and Latino critics have long noted the disconnection between the nation’s values and constitutional principles and its actual policies and actions. Because these critics attack the hypocrisy of the elite, their views are often described as “ideological,” and to lack “genuine understanding.”
Yeah!…what he said.
Basically, Shaw thinks that not including Latinos in it’s critic’s-are-so-important edition was disrespectful to Latinos. What do you think?
