Prof Wants Social Justice in Art Classes to Combat ‘Geometries of Whiteness’

Prof Wants Social Justice in Art Classes to Combat ‘Geometries of Whiteness’

It’s almost like progressives only see higher education as a vehicle to achieve their political ends.

Campus Reform reports:

Prof calls on art teachers to reject ‘geometry of whiteness’

An art education professor at the University of North Texas is urging his fellow educators to use social justice-themed art classes to fight “geometries of whiteness.”

Tyson E. Lewis, who teaches classes on critical pedagogy and aesthetic theory, contributed a chapter on “Art Education and Whiteness as Style” for a new guide aimed at other educators, The Palgrave Handbook of Race and Arts in Education.

“Art education needs to draw upon critical whiteness studies to further its social justice agenda while at the same time recognizing the resources that art education brings to questions of whiteness,” Lewis writes in the preface of his chapter.

In response to concerns over the lack of minority educators in K-12, especially as schools are becoming more racially and ethnically diverse, Lewis argues that “the question of whiteness cannot be avoided if we are to continue to uphold the idea of educational equity and equality.”

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).”

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