Dead White Males - History

History

The phrase "dead white males" (or "dead white men," "dead white guys" etc.) criticizes the emphasis on high culture in Western civilization in schools (especially those in the United States). 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 theory" of history.

While the term generally applies to dead white men with conservative views.

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Famous quotes containing the word history:

    “The history of progress is written in the blood of men and women who have dared to espouse an unpopular cause, as, for instance, the black man’s right to his body, or woman’s right to her soul.”
    —Emma Goldman (1869–1940)

    “The only thing worse than a liar is a liar that’s also a hypocrite!
    There are only two great currents in the history of mankind: the baseness which makes conservatives and the envy which makes revolutionaries.”
    —Edmond De Goncourt (1822–1896)

    “History ... is, indeed, little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.
    But what experience and history teach is this—that peoples and governments have never learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it.”
    —Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)