Academic Apartheid

Day 12
We spent the first half of class today watching the first part of a television documentary on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (RCC) in post-Apartheid South Africa. Remarkable how Bishop Desmond Tutu officiated that noble public discussion and testimony—helping guide that country away from devolution into anarchy and additional bloodshed and into a more-free, equal, and open society. Thus, Apartheid rests upon the ash-heap of history with sister evils: Communism, Fascism, and slavery, among others (though pockets of Communistic thought and slavery exist to this day).

I take nothing away from the historic nature of those events or the tragic impact upon the individual lives and collective soul of South Africa when I ask, “Why are we watching this video here and now, in this class?”

If this topic is to be the framework for our study of Advanced Argumentation, why are we not exploring the nature and quality of the arguments that facilitated the philosophical surrender of the South African regime? Why do we not hear Desmond Tutu’s speeches that were of such quality as to prevent revenge-seeking and retaliation by the repressed and disaffected black population? Why do we not hear the arguments made before the United Nations that caused the governments of the world to lean the weight of economic sanctions against the few, struggling, and increasingly isolated supremacists leading the South African Nationalist Party?

Instead, we only see the suffering and hear the stories of the oppressed in emotional appeal. These are worthy stories, indeed. They are worth telling together with the tales of the Holocaust, Gulag survivors, and other heroes and martyrs for humanity. But this class is to teach us the intellectual weapons wielded in such struggles and the student might be better served with less history lesson and reflected guilt—and a bit more effective argument and persuasion technique. This is an opportunity lost to learning the lesson at hand. Progress toward the focused education course implied by my degree track sits in the back of the bus behind dogma and indoctrination.

Be well,