Prof Tells Art Teachers to Reject ‘Geometry of Whiteness’

A University of North Texas art professor Tyson E. Lewis has an urgent message to fellow educators: fight “geometries of whiteness.”

“Geometries of whiteness?”  I don’t understand exactly what this professor is saying, do you?  That’s likely because it’s unintelligible gibberish which should disqualify him from teaching anyone anything ever. But, let’s give him a chance to explain.

Lewis points out that there aren’t as many minority teachers in K-12, and posits, “the question of whiteness cannot be avoided if we are to continue to uphold the idea of educational equity and equality.”  Campus Reform has more:

To address this, Lewis urges educators to develop a deeper understanding of whiteness. Though previous scholars have conceptualized it as an “experience” or a “feeling,” Lewis suggests that whiteness is better understood if one considers its geometrical dimensions.

Lewis posits that there is a “corporeal geometry of whiteness,” and that what emerges from his analysis “is a description of the aesthetic dimensions of discrimination through the geometric deployment of lines (that maximally extend white bodies into space) and an angle of vision (that constitutes totalized and rigidified racial hierarchies).”

“Race is lived through an aesthetic geometry of lines and angles that connect and disconnect bodies on a pre-conscious level,” Lewis asserts, adding that “whiteness is a kind of one-dimensional way of being in the world.”

Got that?  Me either.

“Can we interrupt the corporeal geometry of lines and angles that compose the style of whiteness?” he asks. Maybe “anti-oppressive art education” could help.

Hmmmm….  I was wrong to give him a chance.

Like much of academia, this is just stupidity hiding in polysyllabic words.  Anyone who treats it as anything other than unintelligible gibberish is lying to themselves and the culture.

Hat Tip: Campus Reform

Image Credit:  (U.S. Air Force photo by Mark Herlihy)