Radio shows, Western-ness, and science enthusiasm don’t make you right.
The staff at Radiolab, the WNYC-based, NPR-distributed radio show, recently recorded an extremely biased, callous interview that was as offensive for it’s lack of scientific rigor as it was for it’s cultural bias, two strains of intellectual weakness that no doubt fed off each other. It was an arrogant display of racism, ironically in a podcast about truth. The only truth displayed is that the producer and hosts are unaware of their biases, and the producer in particular is completely crippled by, and even proud of it. There was no science in this episode, only cultural disrespect and ethnocentrism. Their attitudes reminded me of those of mental health authorities in the 50s, where passion is misinterpreted as confusion or insanity. Their attitudes also reminded of the cavalier attitudes held by cable “news entertainers,” who not only completely disregard the opinions of those they see as inferior, but also seem genuinely and entirely incapable of any degree of empathically understanding their views. The episode is here. I can only conclude these guys were always in over their heads, but at some point they lost any humility about it.
It makes me all the more frustrated that people argue there’s enough, or too much, diversity in higher education. I was lucky enough not to succeed in my pursuit of my engineering degree. I was instead forced to continue my higher education in the university’s arts and science college, studying (what was at the time) my next favorite subject, political science. The college’s g.e. requirements led me to stumble upon courses exploring the philosophical bases of knowledge, the relationship between knowledge and social power, and the history of bias in research. It was a true blessing in disguise. Education can open the world, but without diversity it closes the world.
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