U.S. Politics, American Cultures style

Heavy on the “cultures,” light on the “American”

By James Fullmer
From the October 2005 Print Edition

All right, it’s time for a pop quiz: What do the departments of Theater, Spanish, Sociology, Rhetoric, Psychology, Political Science, Native American Studies, Music, Linguistics, Integrative Biology, Information Systems, History, Geography, Gender and Women’s Studies, Ethnic Studies, Environmental Science, English, Education, Comparative Literature, City and Regional Planning, Art Practice, Architecture, Anthropology, and African-American Studies have in common? You can insert your own joke here, but the intended answer is that, this semester, they all are offering classes that satisfy the University’s American Cultures requirement.

For those of you alums, freshmen, or really confused super-seniors who don’t know why someone in Sproul Hall keeps telling you that you haven’t fulfilled all your requirements, a brief explanation of the AC requirement might be in order. According to the official Web site of AC at Berkeley (amercult.berkeley.edu), AC classes “focus on themes or issues in United States history, society, or culture; address theoretical or analytical issues relevant to understanding race, culture, and ethnicity in American society … and are integrative and comparative in that students study each [ethnic] group in the larger context of American society, history, or culture.” The Web site’s assurances to the contrary notwithstanding, AC courses far too often end up being lessons in oppression. This is an especially impressive feat when the supposed topic of the class is music or architecture, but somehow it gets done. This year, for the first time ever, Political Science 1 has joined the ranks of classes that satisfy the AC requirement.

P.S. 1 is Berkeley’s equivalent of a high school civics or government class, and it is a prerequisite for majors in the Political Science and Mass Communications departments, along with being one way to fulfill the University’s American Institutions requirement. In 2005, 864 students either completed P.S. 1 or are currently enrolled in the class. Though it isn’t the largest class on campus, it is taken by a large cross section of the student body. Furthermore, it is the only lower-division class focusing on American government.

Or, more accurately, P.S. 1 was the only lower-division class focusing on American government. From all appearances, the newly incarnated P.S. 1AC seems to have abandoned a focus on government in favor of a more politically correct study of race and ethnicity in America. But don’t just take my word for it.

Let’s start by taking a look at the professor, Taeku Lee. In his first lecture to the class, Lee stated, “I’m a card-carrying progressive, liberal, whatever you want to call it. I happen to think that one side has a stronger argument in most cases, and I’m going to let you know that.” Compared to many professors here at Cal who are so utterly convinced of the correctness of their own position that they consider themselves the broad mainstream of American society, Lee’s candor is refreshing. However, his liberal views, along with his focus on the role of race and ethnicity in politics, are clearly reflected in the way he has structured his course.

For example, the differences between the course overview of P.S. 1 from Fall 2004 and P.S. 1AC from this semester are striking. The old P.S. 1 focused on “the basic architecture of American government — the Constitution, federalism, Congress, the presidency, the judiciary, and bureaucracy … and comments on how the American system differs from other forms of democratic governance.” Pretty straightforward, right? P.S. 1AC, on the other hand, seeks to answer “a single, perhaps defining question about American politics.” All right, I’m listening. “[A]re our politics designed to reinforce and perpetuate existing inequalities and injustices or to resist and purge them?”

Ah, that question.

After a few more questions in the same vein, the syllabus goes on to mention that “[i]n the course of grappling with these questions, students will learn about the institutions, ideologies, processes, and contexts that constitute politics in the United States.” In other words, the discussion on whether or not racism and inequality are the driving forces behind America’s system of governance will — once in a while — touch on the actual institutions of American politics. But don’t worry; that only happens in the course of grappling with the more important questions.

The first full lecture of this semester in P.S. 1AC lived up to expectations. By my count, Professor Lee mentioned slavery once, Japanese internment — which he compared explicitly to Guantanamo — twice, the United States’ less than stellar history with American Indians twice, and the PATRIOT Act once. In contrast, George Washington was mentioned once, and only in the context of a quote on why government was needed.

Score: Founding Fathers 1, liberal talking points 6.

Thomas Hobbes was also mentioned, with the conclusion that gloomy Leviathan philosophy is somehow similar to the way politicians today appeal to our fears to gain votes.

And that was that for the usual philosophers. Instead of the Federalist papers or the writings of John Stuart Mill, which students in P.S. 1 used to study, the next stop on the P.S. 1AC agenda was Charles Mills’ Racial Contract.

The Racial Contract, according to its author, “is that set of formal or informal agreements or meta-agreements … between the members of one subset of humans, henceforth designated … as ‘white’ … to categorize the remaining subset of humans as ‘nonwhite’ and of a different and inferior moral status, subpersons.” Mills goes on to state that “The Racial Contract is a historical actuality” and that “The Racial Contract is an exploitation contract that creates global European economic domination and national white racial privilege.” Forget capitalism, the free market, rugged individualism, or a moral society. As far as Mills is concerned, American success is the result of one thing, and one thing only: a Vast White-Wing Conspiracy. Sorry, Hillary, but that line was too easy to steal.

The semester is, of course, still young. Perhaps The Racial Contract was put in the reader simply as an example of a political scientist having had one too many martinis. Let’s just move on from there and see what’s on the reading list for the rest of the semester.

For the lecture on “Civil liberties and citizens’ rights,” one of the required readings is the transcript of a radio interview with Ward Churchill. Yes, that’s Professor Ward Churchill, formerly of the University of Colorado, who compared the victims of the 9/11 attacks to Nazis and refused to apologize for it. In the interview, Churchill stated that while he personally didn’t feel the Twin Towers were legitimate targets, the United States had made them into legitimate targets through a heavy-handed foreign policy. The syllabus also stars Noam Chomsky, and there aren’t enough lines on these pages to let me dive into that one.

For the lecture on “Red and Blue,” presumably a discussion of the supposed division of the country between conservatives and liberals, the articles assigned are titled “Why They Won,” “Two Nations Under God,” and “The Red Zone,” by Thomas Frank, Thomas Friedman, and Maureen Dowd, respectively. Frank, the author of What’s the Matter with Kansas?, argues that Republicans won the election based on their tricking the electorate into believing the GOP is the party of populism and values. Friedman, when he’s not busy mentioning how depressed he is that Bush won, claims that the election turned out the way it did because Bush tapped the “spiritual energy” of the “Christian fundamentalists.” Dowd repeats the old claim that Bush and the Republicans won by dividing the country on fear.

Every article has one common theme: that we live in a divided country. The other position is put forth in the book Culture War?, a much calmer, rational piece that argues that we do not live in a divided country. The differences between a well-researched scholarly work and three articles written by disappointed leftists are obvious, and yet somehow they are viewed as being on enough of the same level to engender a good discussion of the state of division in our country.

It is too early to pass full judgment on the effect of teaching Political Science 1 as an American Cultures class. But here at Cal, where even classes in architecture and information systems examine the topic of race and ethnicity, do we really need one more class to inundate us with the latest politically correct diatribe about the problems dead white men are responsible for? Considering the lack of general knowledge about American government among young people — a survey sponsored by the National Constitution Center several years ago showed that more teens could name the Three Stooges than could name the three branches of government — the university must examine whether it makes sense to replace a good, solid civics class with one that seems more interested in teaching a fad of political science.

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