Talk:Dead white men

message: After all, we're talking about WESTERN culture here, not Chinese, Arabic etc etc. Of course it is going to be dominated by Europeans when Western = European for hundreds and hundreds of years. The argument is an appeal to itself. It is circular. 
If you want to debate anything, debate the fact that European (Western) FEMALES are underrepresented in Western Canon.
noobs.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.139.135.89 (talk) 20:27, 12 July 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: The addition of "white" to the phrase may be the result of two factors: 1) the delayed addition of any serious study of the great Asian and Middle Eastern cultures (much less the radically different indigenous cultures of Africa and South America) to the undergraduate curriculum and 2) the delayed addition of the contributions of American blacks, Indians, Asians, Latinos and Middle Easterners to the classroom. The first problem may well be that we were only talking about WESTERN culture and excluding the study of Chinese and Arabic thought, literature, etc. The second problem is that even after non-white Westerners had clearly made substantial contributions, they were not being taught, or were only being taught as exceptions rather than as indicative of an entire group of people within the population. Phillis Wheatley and Samson Occom were both published in the late 1700s, but it wasn't until the 1970s that African American and Native American studies were given any serious place in the academy. FWIW. Aristophanes68 (talk) 19:10, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

text: The phrase is just an anti-white combat term created by certain groups within academia to push multiculturalist propaganda. No one blames the Chinese or Japanese for focusing on their own heritage as Europeans and Americans are blamed.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.49.253.184 (talk) 23:24, 3 March 2014 (UTC)
thread_title: Why not just Dead Males?

message: Could this be merged with DWEM and the redirect at dead white males updated? This article has non-Wiki-standard capitalization in the title. --Wtshymanski 05:46, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually it would be better to find an umbrella term that is on one level of further abstraction. E.g. Negative characterisations of the European tradition. Charles Matthews 10:43, 30 July 2005 (UTC)

text: How about criticism of Eurocentrism as an umbrella title? Charles Matthews 11:12, 24 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I think that the phrase "dead white males" is noteworthy enough to have an article on its own, in addition to any articles about Eurocentrism and its critics.  Would anyone object to moving the article to dead white males (currently a redirect), in accordance with standard Wikipedia article naming? —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 23:49, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I've performed the move, and fixed all the redirects and links, except for those on talk pages and one reference to the play Dead White Males, which I figure can remain as a redirect since it is a proper name.  If the play ever gets its own page, it can be split off to Dead White Males (play). —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 18:57, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

text: Unless there is notable citation evidence of the use of the term, and I do not see that in the article now, this article should be deleted or merged with DWEM, which has a longer provenance in the literature.  As it is, the article seems to be more of an internet bulletin board for opposing positions to be aired on yet another open-access internet forum.  The article as is is not encyclopedic. N2e 13:53, 5 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Merge

message: I am highly suspicious that the expression DWEM or any of its cognates were ever used seriously by anyone on the left. Much like 'political correctness,' it seems like a shibboleth, created by right-wing culture warriors in the 1990s, to make anyone proposing a leftist critique of pedagogy look hystrionic and venal. As someone who was very much on the left, and very much in academia, I never heard myself or my colleagues use either DWEM or political correctness in a serious way. Both terms are shot through with precisely the kind of essentialism and narrow-mindedness that 'left-wing' (but really just open-minded and self-reflective) thinkers have always been critical of.
Vague gesturing at 'some critics' in the 1990s isn't enough to substantiate that this term was ever used as claimed. Can't you cite even one article where this term was used in earnest by a left-wing academic, and not sarcastically by a right-wing culture mercenary? If you can't, I think you need to at least raise the possibility that the whole thing might be a bit of a hoax to discredit critical theorists on the left.
To the above undated and unsigned message poster: Sorry to burst your bubble but I personally have heard this phrase on numerous occasions. Never by right-wing culture warriors/mercenaries whoever they are, but repeatedly by people emphasising their rejection of high culture in both the Arts and the Sciences, typically without offering a credible alternative, though. It is often used to provoke and encourage retaliation. As for 'political correctness', you may not know but it is often used as a cloak in progressive circles and a tool to emphasise greater tolerance that in fact is just as intolerant as the terms it seeks to supplant. In English-speaking countries other than US, it is commonly seen as an attempt by the USA to export its divisive culture wars.--AssegaiAli 20:06, 14 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sources, if any? 

message: Sorry.  I removed this point as the term is not pejorative.  If the author was referring to a dead, white and european male, then the term 'dead white european male' is not pejorative.  It is factual.  
--Nukemason 16:33, 13 Aug 2006
I have also made some modifications to who made the most contributions to mathematics and science during the 20th century (I think that everyone agrees it disproportionately involved individuals of Jewish descent - specifically, the Ashkenazim).  Anyone, I don't believe that this is an anti-semitic remark.  The following site is a good source of info here : 
http://www.jinfo.org/Mathematics_Comp.html
I'm happy to have this removed.  Though if it's true, I don't see why is should be...
--Nukemason 16:33, 13 Aug 2006
I have to disagree. The word "dead" serves two purposes -- first, to indicate that the people in question are dead literally; second, to present the people in question as irrelevant. I have never seen the term used in a positive fashion, as in "We really value the contributions of dead white males." Does the word "dead" fit in that sentence? I think it makes it sound ironic or sarcastic. If you really meant it, you would say "We really value the contributions of these white male historical figures." In my experience, I have primarily seen it is used in a pejorative sense, as in "This is nothing but the legacy of dead white males", except in cases like this talk page where there is a discussion about the term itself. Stdarg 15:56, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Pejorative?

message: The second paragraph of this section in particular seems to be conjectural and is supported by no sources. What is the basis for claiming that school now ignore the accomplishment of dead white european males "almost entirely?" The claim that discussions of war (in a high school history setting) ignore Robert E. Lee and focus on peripheral historical figures is used as an example in a rather un-encyclopedic manner. I never heard the DWM term in any classes I've taken, whether in high school (in America and Europe) nor in Universtiy classes. It seems like this may be backlash against attempts that some school districts are taking to emphasize the importance of non-white or female historical figures, but to say that all white males are "almost entirely" eliminated from curricula seems inaccurate. I have mostly come across the term in media sources and, most recently, in wikipedia.Melancholia i 02:17, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  History and usage: sources? 

message: I'm going to be bold and take out some of the silliest remarks in here.  The idea that dead white males are "ignored completely" is insane, and I defy anyone to find a widely-used textbook which doesn't still focus on white males.  Certainly there is more focus on marginalized people than ever before, but not anywhere approaching the exclusion of dead white males.  Very, very few high-school classes use, for example, Howard Zinn's People's History of the US, which has a lot less about dead white males than most history books.  But even Zinn's book has a significant number of dead white men (probably a majority of the book is discussing the history of white men).
Also, the idea that it came out of "political correctness" is a very silly idea, and the only citation of that "fact" is from an opinion piece from a very right-wing journal.  The article that the citation comes from is explicitly against the idea of DWEM, so I'm not sure it's the best place to cite.
This whole article is pretty agressively against the topic of the article, which leads me to think that maybe there needs to be a little more diversity represented in the people who are writing the article.  Hopefully I've improved it a little, and removed some of the more outlandish claims.  I'm not great at the whole wikipedia thing, so hopefully someone who is a more eloquent writer/better editor will tidy up my contributions and improve on this pretty poor article. 24.218.218.249 18:48, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Massive Rewrite Needed 

message: There have been a lot of improvements to this article, and I think most of the POV issues are now fixed.  Certainly the article isn't perfect; there is some redundancy and many missing citations.  However, I think there is now a balance of the two sides and the language is more civil.  Does anyone still find this article POV?  If so, what specifically needs work?  SomethingFamiliar 23:04, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Remove Tag?

message: I'm not sure that POV is the issue - its uncited, generally original research-ish material only. I thing that a general statement of the idea at the top, with at least one or two good references, should be all that this article contains until someone takes the time to reference all the other claims. If there are no objections, I will stub the article this week. AvruchTalk 17:59, 19 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Are you proposing to stub the article or to make it a redirect to Eurocentrism?  I would oppose the latter.--BirgitteSB 19:39, 19 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The cite tags are only a month old. I would oppose a major reduction in size, though some sections are dubious - although having said that I think it is very unlikely that they could not be properly referenced, given the nature of many academic contributions to this debate.  Removed material should be posted here.  Johnbod (talk) 19:48, 19 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I think either a formal redirect, or a stub with a 'See also' would work - we don't need to transfer article text to the talk page to preserve anything, its all in the edit history. Alternatively, if you'd like to maintain the article to continue working on this version, you could recreate in your userspace. I'm not convinced that citing this article appropriately with reliable sources will be easy - I think the colloquial nature of 'dead white men' means that it isn't generally referred to that way academically or in the media. AvruchTalk 21:29, 19 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Don't redirect it; there is nothing "European" about being male or dead.  I added some of the sources in.  The main problem with referencing is an overabundance of hits.  Anyone with access to a database restricted to good sources should make short work of it.--BirgitteSB 21:35, 19 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: You left out 'white.' Eurocentrism is pretty closely identified with the Great Man style of history. In any event, I personally think unreferenced content should be removed and then added with references, so that the text contains an accurate summary of a the reference rather than the authors opinion and shoehorned citations. AvruchTalk 21:44, 19 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: That because unlike the other items "European" does correlate with white.  I can hardly argue that your opinion is different than what you claim.  Just don't act on in the face of objections.--BirgitteSB 22:18, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

text: No, I think the article should say what is verifiably true.  I just find your suggested course of action to be beyond the "verifiable article" supported by policy and more towards the "fully cited article" end of the spectrum.  That is out of sync with current practice on Wikipedia.  But I am not necessarily opposed to you rewriting the article.  Go for it in your userspace and lets have a look.--BirgitteSB 18:03, 20 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm not confident that rewriting a significant non-stub article using reliable sources is possible. Either way, the burden of verification of contested material is on the editor(s) supporting its inclusion, per WP:Verify. Without sources, much of this article appears to be original research. This article has been tagged for improvement since 2006. I'm not willing to allow it to remain in its current state if no one who believes the material should remain is willing to provide citations for its claims of fact. AvruchTalk 20:57, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

text: Yes, that is better, though a half-way course between the old examples and none might be better. Johnbod (talk) 22:25, 20 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I also think it is better, so please update the current article.  I think specific examples should be added back in with citations in the future. These lists just grow out of control, without being strict that the examples are notable to the concept.  One thing that might deserve future attention is a small section on  "Dead white man on a horse".--BirgitteSB 15:20, 21 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Stub Article, Redirect to Eurocentrism

message: This artcile is highly bent towards the POV of people who oppose the term, not to mention the criticism addresses a strawman version of the definition. That is in addition to being uncited and poorly explained. NeoApsara (talk)  —Preceding comment was added at 11:51, 27 June 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: POV and sloppy

message: I think it's a problem to conflate Great Man Theory to the Great Books curriculum.  Great Man Theory is something Thomas Carlyle dreamed up, as a model of history that credible academics do not use.  Critics of this theory are varied and widely-considered reasonable; indeed, GMT has been on the way out for a century or so.  Great Books, on the other hand, is the Closing of the Western Mind critique.  Dead White Men, I think, is a relevant criticism here.
I think some of the Who? and citation tags should be removed, because they're overly-hostile.  I do not believe it is actually controversial that many academics believe the Western Canon is overly-white or overly-dead (i.e. Eurocentric and biased towards old, irrelevant theories).  The whole thing, though, is written in passive voice, and that's frustrating.  But the "Who?" tag is for indicating the possibility of contradiction--i.e. that maybe the people who believe, say, the Western Canon is Eurocentric are fringe--when in fact this should be cited and parties identified merely to strengthen the article, provide more information, and to avoid eyebrow-raising, bad sentence structure.  I'll look for citations tomorrow, and play with the wording, but this is my nod to discussing it first.98.16.26.157 (talk) 21:11, 16 August 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Great Man Theory versus Great Books, and other problems

message: if this non-obvious claim is advanced in the article, then where are the sources for it? Because on the face of it, "dead white males" is about hating and rejecting intellectual heritage of white people (most of those who left any heritage being male) whereas Great Men are notable individuals of any given culture. There were great men among Chinese, Indians and Africans, and one could argue that they did or did not have a major historical impact on their countries - this would be relevant to that theory but not to the dead white males topic. 76.119.30.87 (talk) 21:43, 22 May 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  who says that Great Men theory has to do with Dead white males? 

message: Scudder died in 1940, the quote (ultimately from "Modeling My Life" (1925)) does not support her presciently objecting to DWMs - simply to repetitive representational forms, I believe she accepted the commission to celebrate Longfellow, simply preferring a different form (fountains). In any case she was an avid fan of his. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 01:03, 12 June 2014 (UTC).
::I continue to be surprised and amazed by the objection to this section.  Sculpture of real people in the United States is almost universally of dead, white males.  Carptrash (talk) 18:27, 14 July 2015 (UTC)
thread_title: Removed - Sculpture

message: The three words are easy English.  If the phrase "Dead black men", "Dead yellow men", "Dead red men" or "Dead green men" are offensive, you might be the target audience.  Those affected might wish to read this reference from the article.
50.0.75.4 (talk) 03:59, 28 May 2015 (UTC)
thread_title: Not Mysterious

message: :Category:Dead people is a container cat (subcats only, no articles), so I'm hoping someone well versed on the topic can move the article into an appropriate subcat. --Slivicon (talk) 23:02, 21 June 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Categorization 

message: This topic is just one aspect of a broader discussion covered by the article Western canon. Therefore, are there any objections to merge this article with that one? Rwood128 (talk) 17:01, 17 April 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: As there has been no objections, I will complete the merge shortly. Rwood128 (talk) 11:04, 21 April 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merge with Western canon