Affirming the Marxist Orthodoxy

Vincent J. Curtis

6 Jan 21

RE: What the pandemic has taught us about BIPOC displacement.  Hamilton Spectator op-ed of 5 Jan 21.

I’m sure the poor quality of writing protected the public from reading the arrant nonsense offered by Sarah Adjekum in her piece on BIPOC displacement.  (BIPOC = black, indigenous, and people of color)  I have often commented on the poor quality of scholarship in the Humanities, and this article presents another worrisome example.

A Ph.D. thesis requires a much higher quality of writing than exhibited in the article, and I don’t think the author was trying to write down to her audience.  A thesis is written in pursuit of truth, and needs therefore to present facts is an objective manner.  But her article was replete with tendentious falsehoods that weren’t hard to spot.

For example, the statement that the occupation of the Foxgate property in Caledonia is “on the remaining Haldimand Land Tract, unceded Haudenosaunee land.”  The ceding of the land has been well documented, and objectivity requires acknowledgement of that, even if you sympathize with the illegal occupation.

Also lacking were figures showing how much more the downtrodden have suffered as a result of the pandemic.  The remarkable thing is that the homeless haven’t suffered.  One would think the homeless encampments would be breeding grounds of disease, and in this pandemic they haven’t been, anywhere.  Adjekum is challenged on basic facts, because she doesn’t have them.  Show me the figures.

Not a promising showing for a Ph.D. candidate in sociology.  But, hey, nowadays scholarship in the Humanities is all about affirming the orthodoxy, and she did that.

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