Q: What's all this I hear about 'colonization'?
When I used to employ this jargon, for me it was about a 'decolonized mind'. When you are *outside* of the 'system' as many people from enclaves are, you identify with your neighbors, some old traditions, archetypes, myths, religions, patterns of speech etc. So there is always a sense that *your* America is exceedingly different from 'The' America. And what 'The' America wants from you is to correct your English, get a haircut, stand up straight, wear a tie, learn X, Y and Z and all this is the necessary toll for access to that place where the success is.
So the paradigms of tribal vs cosmopolitan, pidgin vs King's English, civilized vs natives, educated vs ignorant, civil vs criminal, respected vs condemned all map very conveniently to white vs black, gay vs straight, inner city vs upscale suburb, bodega vs bistro. Again this harkens back to 1990 when Audre Lorde's Sister Outsider was blowing a certain subset of American minds.
So all of the things that weren't considered 'corporate' in the 80s, in the days of network television, were placed in this context. What did Gordon Gecko want you to say? 'Greed is good'. The Man was taking as his toll for your inclusion in 'The' America, the colonization of your mind. Anything and everything that made you different from the Kings of the World, was that which made you a native. So what is the American system of education? It is the colonization process of your mind. It turns you filthy, nasty Boyz in the Hood into respectable citizens. It bleaches your soul so that you can walk past the doormen, police, vice-principals and not give off that peasant stink.
For my case, the educational theory of Paolo Friere played into the mix. So if you want to know how it was that the Multiculturalists got up the nerve to bomb the Canon, it was from his cues. Friere essentially posited that all non-technical education is a barf-back method. Or what he called 'banking'. The student is an empty vault. He only gains value when he accepts, without alteration, that which the professor deposits in his mind. Friere wanted to change this and make education non-hierarchical and interactive. That the student should be responsible for changing the professor. This is the only path, sayeth Friere, towards the decolonization of the oppressed - resistance to the aristocracy of the professoriate.
So basically this is part of the theoretical framework of the disunification and tribalization of America. The taught idea, now prominent in post-modern universities, that a fundamental transformation of the soul is what the powers that be demand of anyone seeking a living wage - that you don't belong if you lie along any of the intersectional axes of oppression, and that you must be committed to lifelong struggle because Gordon Gecko and his ilk run this whole country. How do you know them? You know them by the way they swim in America, freely, without any consideration of the water itself, the water of America that drowns all of us outsiders. Decolonize your mind, stay filthy nasty Boyz, that is your only integrity.
Now you understand everything about the Culture Wars.
Now the thing to understand about these pictures is that the above picture with me in the tie was the 'before' and me in the bandanna is the 'after'. I had already spent my college years on track to be that which I wanted to be - a young urban professional. You see I had already been a union employee having dropped out of college after a semester at USC. That entry level job that I got 4 years too late did not captivate me completely. I wasn't giving it up of course, but I needed to understand what all this multiculturalism was about. The writer part of me was intrigued by guerilla poetry, the reader part of me was astonished by Toni Morrison and the yuppy part of me was bored with pool parties. Every part of me could not afford the down payment on a condo in Los Angeles, so I traded to the opposition. (They had better music too.)
It took about 3 years to put down that rebel in me. But I firmly understood the theoretical ground upon which I stood. Ultimately I realized that I wanted to get married and have children and that fatherhood was totally incompatible with the mindset of a rebel.
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