An astronomy course at prestigious Cornell University, concerned about racism in the universe, not just Planet Earth, has posed the deathless question: ‘Is there a connection between the cosmos and the idea of racial blackness?’
This is according to an article on the conservative website, the Daily Wire, this week.
Astronomy professor Nicholas Battaglia and comparative literature professor Parisa Vaziri suggest that ‘(conventional) wisdom would have it that the “black” in black holes has nothing to do with race’.
‘Surely there can be no connection between the cosmos and the idea of racial blackness. Can there? Contemporary Black Studies theorists, artists, fiction writers implicitly and explicitly posit just such a connection.
‘Theorists use astronomy concepts like “black holes” and “event horizons” to interpret the history of race in creative ways, while artists and musicians conjure blackness through cosmological themes and images.’
Emory University English professor Michelle Wright’s book, The Physics of Blackness: Beyond the Middle Passage Epistemology, invokes ‘Newton’s laws of motion and gravity’ and ‘theoretical particle physics’ to ‘subvert racist assumptions about Blackness’.
The Cornell course also studies music by Sun Ra and Outkast to ‘conjure blackness through cosmological themes’.
Author and commentator Heather MacDonald wrote in City Journal: ‘Today’s academic charlatanism consists in part in mistaking rhetoric for knowledge and words for things. This sleight of hand is particularly prevalent in matters relating to race. Hunter College professor Philip Ewell argues that the concept of tonal and harmonic hierarchies in music theory is a stand-in for pernicious racial hierarchies. … Seeing specters of racism everywhere, the racial avengers are tearing down every institution associated with Western civilization, simply because of its “whiteness”. Science had stood as a guard against such metaphorical, magical thinking. Bit by bit, it is succumbing.’
[Image: Alexander Antropov from Pixabay]