People interested in a similar role reversal in a very different situation may like to look up a post at my blog, Same Difference, titled Whose World Is It Anyway.

In contrast, the Students Union, which makes so much noise around these issues, is largely an irrelevancy. The vast majority of students I have met at SOAS simply roll their eyes at the antics of the Union, and I’m aware of few who bother attending UGMs unless their society involvement requres them to. Fair play to those involved – they are passionate and devoted to their various causes and that’s a positive thing to see, however odd some of those causes may be – but it’s a little irritating, at times, to see the university and its student body being defined and dismissed according to the often ridiculous noises made by the Union, when the majority of us are just putting our heads down and studying alongside our classmates – gay, straight, male, female, and every hue of skin under the rainbow.

“Indeed, whilst white, straight males are now in the minority at SOAS, no evidence has yet come to light of such students facing racist, sexist or heterophobic discrimination on campus. ”

But this:

“White males are also less likely to graduate with a first or upper second class degree and find immediate employment than their female classmates”

… is prima facie evidence of negative discrimination isn’t it? If one group consistently underachieves in an institution, we usually take that to mean that there are structural elements limiting their achievement, don’t we?

I sympathise with your reaction – although I’ve attended lectures by (rightly) distinguished academics who spent the whole of their time slot filling a backboard with mathematical proofs of theorems in economics – which could easily have been circulated in handouts – rather than by reviewing the relating critical literature and empirical work.

It perhaps needs to be said that in places, there is a tendency to regard mathematics in economics as symbolic potency in much the way that medical practitioners used to wrap up medical terms in Latin or clerics still conduct religious services in Latin.

The consequential obfuscation seems to reinforce the power of the message. A rebuttal is that for all of Keynes’s commitment to conveying his theoretical insights in The General Theory in plain English, it took the various attempts by others (Hicks, Meade, Modigliani etc) at formulating his theory in mathematical terms to illuminate the substance.

An interesting place where the majority of students are kids from home and abroad trying to get ahead in life. In one of my seminars there was me and two girls from here, two malaysian girls, a girl from Brunei, a boy and girl from Thailand, one yank bloke and a girl from a small west african country. Oh and a guy from Japan.

The common thread amongst us all, is that we would all be considered working or lower-middle class in the countries we were from. Rich kids go to Oxford, Cambridge, LSE. We had no need of ‘diversity officers’. None of us voted in their silly elections or took part in their even sillier events. We ‘had’ to get the pass to get on in life. Human desires and needs are remarkably similar when you don’t have someone around emphasising difference all the time. Lucky for us, none of the student union bores were in our seminars.

Penny says I, as a SWM would find myself ”required to confront their roles as members of a privileged minority”. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact I had my faith in humanity restored, as boys and girls, from all corners of the world, rejected the aggresively noisy minority who sought to define everything in terms of difference, instead embracing the mundane: exams, certificates, jobs, homes, family. Beer. Sex. Crap TV.

As a SWM, who grew up in a council estate in Walworth, lives in another in Peckham and the son of parents who grew up in estates in Belfast and Vauxhall respectively, I find it amusing that you would think I would be confronted by anything at SoAS. SoAS is overwhelmingly conformist.

If you want to see the real breakdown of difference, visit an inner city council estate, go to Singapore, get on a Budget Airline, go to a gig, spend a week in a package holiday resort. But then there are no middle class diversity officers making these places the melting pots of humanity that they are. Spontaneous progress is anathema to those who seek to assert their own power.

If I were still at SoAS now this issue would get about as much attention as the SU activities got when I was there. Which is to say none. It’s something to keep the little rich kids happy (and warm up their CVs for high office) whilst everyone else gets on with their lives.

SOAS, MSc International Politics, 2008

And that’s the point, they may be a minority but they are not disadvantaged in the wider world.

“growing up white, straight and male in Britain today is so often a confusing and painful experience.”

That’s why the suicide rate for this group is so high then? No, wait… I call b/s on that. It’s still far more confusing and painful to grow up a victim of prejudice… the “everyone thinks i’m a racist” whine does nothing for me.

As a white male (with some knowledge of SOAS) I think this is pandering a little to the idiots who don’t understand how racism works.

Today it’s people from groups who HAVEN’T faced a tradition of persecution claiming that they are the most persecuted – tomorrow all that BNP racism comes flooding back in.

“The gradual movement of today’s young, white, straight men towards a positive identity model deserves all the support it can garner.”

I agree, but I think this is in danger of validating the (recently popular) idea that straight white men face persecution – and therefore know all about it – and can therefore make an informed comment that “it’s not such a big problem”

(and please don’t use the word queer)

And we want our own loos, too!

Here’s something newsworthy you may have missed:

http://www.takimag.com/blogs/article/casualties_of_diversity/

chin chin !

I’ll never understand people who, just because they’re not particularly interested in a post, try to hijack it to be about issues they *are* interested in. It may come as a shock to you, but not everyone can talk about the “most important” issues of the day all the time! In fact, some people can even specialise in particular things! Not everything is about your pet issue.

And 24, do you really think right wingers give a crap about class?

I think I’d have less trouble with this if it wasn’t attempting to shoehorn gender, race *and* sexuality into one monolithic identity. If the idea was for a men’s officer then there are problems, but it at least makes sense along with a women’s officer. Whereas a straight white men’s officer seems move defined by the groups that it excludes than anything else. At the very least, I’d be willing to bet that not only are an overwhelming majority of the students there straight, but that this is still overwhelmingly seen as the default position. It is only in conjunction with the other two that straight identity even makes sense…

If someone from a family like mine ends up there he doesn’t want to be hectored, he is actually feeling quite unsure of himself because of the class factors whose existence you seem not to notice.

I have explained that I am anti-racist & anti-sexist because I know I have more in common with a working-class black or Asian woman than with the sort of entitled boy who goes from places like, oh let’s say Lewes, to leading universities as if he were born to it, which he was. I deny that white, heterosexual males are all the same.

Same again when I’m less tired, eh? As I’m sure you’ll be repeating yourself soon enough.

Remember the fuss over ‘themed parties’ that students were having?

Amongst the colleges that make up the University of London, the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) is renowned for its multicultural atmosphere and laid-back, boho-chic, bong-hugging students. Yet when the SOAS rugby club put up posters for an ‘English’ party a couple of weeks ago, all hell broke loose.

http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/3989/

Christ, must we? I’d always assumed that it was one of the benefits of being white, male and straight that one didn’t have to identify on a racial, sexual or sexuality basis.”

NB:
‘it is the dominant race that reserves for itself the luxury of dismissing racial identity while the oppressed race is made daily aware of their racial identity’ (bell hooks,1981 p.138)

An interesting debate.

When we are sending young men to the other side of the world to be blown to pieces in a war without purpose, it seems crucially important that that the psychological well being of the white boys at the SOAS is ensured by their having a student union officer appointed to look after their rights. Right?

What about an article on whether or not lesbians should wear short skirts, and, if they do, whether heterosexual men should be allowed to look at their legs?

I’m sure you’re up to that one, Laurie and Sunny will find a sexist photo to go with the article and someone will object to it and……