Dead white males or
Dead White European Males (
DWEM) is a derogatory term that refers to a purportedly disproportionate academic focus on contributions to historical and contemporary
Western civilizationWestern culture, sometimes equated with Western civilization or European civilization, refers to cultures of European origin and is used very broadly to refer to a heritage of social norms, ethical values, traditional customs, religious beliefs, political systems, and specific artifacts and...
made by European males.
Dead white males or
Dead White European Males (
DWEM) is a derogatory term that refers to a purportedly disproportionate academic focus on contributions to historical and contemporary
Western civilizationWestern culture, sometimes equated with Western civilization or European civilization, refers to cultures of European origin and is used very broadly to refer to a heritage of social norms, ethical values, traditional customs, religious beliefs, political systems, and specific artifacts and...
made by European males.
This paradigm is closely associated with a critical view of the
Great Man TheoryThe Great Man Theory was a popular 19th century idea according to which history can be largely explained by the impact of "great men", or heroes: highly influential individuals who, due to either their personal charisma, intelligence, wisdom, or Machiavellianism utilized their power in a way that...
of history and the
Great BooksGreat Books refers primarily to a group of books that tradition, and various institutions and authorities, have regarded as constituting or best expressing the foundations of Western culture ; derivatively the term also refers to a curriculum or method of education based around a list of such books...
focus of
educational essentialismEducational essentialism is an educational philosophy whose adherents believe that children should learn the traditional basic subjects thoroughly and rigorously. In this philosophical school of thought, the aim is to instill students with the "essentials" of academic knowledge, enacting a...
and
educational perennialismPerennialists believe that one should teach the things that one deems to be of everlasting importance to all people everywhere. They believe that the most important topics develop a person. Since details of fact change constantly, these cannot be the most important. Therefore, one should teach...
.
History
The phrase "dead white males" (or "dead white men," "dead white guys" etc.) criticizes the emphasis on
high cultureHigh culture is a term, now used in a number of different ways in academic discourse, whose most common meaning is the set of cultural products, mainly in the arts, held in the highest esteem by a culture...
in
Western civilizationWestern culture, sometimes equated with Western civilization or European civilization, refers to cultures of European origin and is used very broadly to refer to a heritage of social norms, ethical values, traditional customs, religious beliefs, political systems, and specific artifacts and...
in
schoolA school is an institution designed for the teaching of students under the direction of teachers. Most countries have systems of formal education, which is commonly compulsory. In these systems, students progress through a series of schools...
s (especially those in the
United StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
). Critics of the traditional curriculum argued that it enshrined a world view that valued older European history, for example, over non-European achievements. Users of the term also argued that the traditional curriculum was praising one's own culture; proponents of this type of curriculum, however, argued that "one's own culture" is the logical aspect to place emphasis on in any one nation-state. A similar approach to historical studies is the "
Great man theoryThe Great Man Theory was a popular 19th century idea according to which history can be largely explained by the impact of "great men", or heroes: highly influential individuals who, due to either their personal charisma, intelligence, wisdom, or Machiavellianism utilized their power in a way that...
" of history.
While the term generally applies to dead white men with conservative views, it has been used ironically to poke fun at "dead white men" on the political left, such as
Karl MarxKarl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement...
and
Vladimir LeninVladimir Ilyich Lenin was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and communist politician who led the October Revolution of 1917. As leader of the Bolsheviks, he headed the Soviet state during its initial years , as it fought to establish control of Russia in the Russian Civil War and worked to create a...
.
Criticism of term
Critics of the term have alleged that it aims to reject people or ideas on the grounds of race or
sexIn biology, sex is a process of combining and mixing genetic traits, often resulting in the specialization of organisms into a male or female variety . Sexual reproduction involves combining specialized cells to form offspring that inherit traits from both parents...
, and that the term may encourage academics to exclude the valuable ideas of those who are white, male, and dead from college curricula. The term is often used in a pejorative manner, in the context of specific regret that the contributions of those who are contemporary, non-white, or female rarely receive an equal amount of notice in academic references.
Classicist
Bernard KnoxBernard MacGregor Walker Knox was an English classicist, author, and critic who became an American citizen. He was the first director of the Center for Hellenic Studies. In 1992 the National Endowment for the Humanities selected Knox for the Jefferson Lecture, the U.S...
made direct reference to this term when he delivered his 1992
Jefferson LectureThe Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities is an honorary lecture series established in 1972 by the National Endowment for the Humanities . According to the NEH, the Lecture is "the highest honor the federal government confers for distinguished intellectual achievement in the humanities."-History of...
(the U.S. federal government's highest honor for achievement in the
humanitiesThe humanities are academic disciplines that study the human condition, using methods that are primarily analytical, critical, or speculative, as distinguished from the mainly empirical approaches of the natural sciences....
). Knox used the intentionally "provocative" title "The Oldest Dead White European Males", as the title of his lecture and his subsequent book of the same name, in both of which Knox defended the continuing relevance of classical Greek culture to modern society.
See also
- Anti-bias curriculum
The anti-bias curriculum is an activist approach which its proponents claim challenges prejudices such as racism, sexism, ableism/disablism, ageism, homophobia, and other -isms. Anti-bias curriculum has a strong relationship to multiculturalism curriculum and its implementation...
- Identity politics
Identity politics are political arguments that focus upon the self interest and perspectives of self-identified social interest groups and ways in which people's politics may be shaped by aspects of their identity through race, class, religion, sexual orientation or traditional dominance...
- Political correctness
Political correctness is a term which denotes language, ideas, policies, and behavior seen as seeking to minimize social and institutional offense in occupational, gender, racial, cultural, sexual orientation, certain other religions, beliefs or ideologies, disability, and age-related contexts,...
- Postmodernism
Postmodernism is a philosophical movement evolved in reaction to modernism, the tendency in contemporary culture to accept only objective truth and to be inherently suspicious towards a global cultural narrative or meta-narrative. Postmodernist thought is an intentional departure from the...
- WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant)
White Anglo-Saxon Protestant or WASP is an informal term, often derogatory or disparaging, for a closed group of high-status Americans mostly of British Protestant ancestry. The group supposedly wields disproportionate financial and social power. When it appears in writing, it is usually used to...
- Missing white woman syndrome
Missing white woman syndrome or missing pretty girl syndrome is a term used by some media and social critics to describe the seemingly disproportionate degree of coverage in television, radio, newspaper and magazine reporting of a misfortune, most often a missing person case, involving a young,...
External links
- Columbus As A Dead White European Male: The Ideological Underpinnings of the Controversy Over 1492, an essay from The World and I, a publication of The Washington Times
The Washington Times is a daily broadsheet newspaper published in Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States. It was founded in 1982 by Unification Church founder Sun Myung Moon, and until 2010 was owned by News World Communications, an international media conglomerate associated with the...
, December, 1991
- Kudos to the grand old DWEM, an essay from the National Post
The National Post is a Canadian English-language national newspaper based in Don Mills, a district of Toronto. The paper is owned by Postmedia Network Inc. and is published Mondays through Saturdays...
, November 20, 1999
- John Searle, "The Storm Over the University," The New York Review of Books, December 6, 1990
- The Crime of White Maleness