{"id":2476,"date":"2012-03-07T15:57:59","date_gmt":"2012-03-07T13:57:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.military-history.us\/?p=2476"},"modified":"2026-06-10T15:47:02","modified_gmt":"2026-06-10T13:47:02","slug":"bias-in-academic-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.military-history.us\/2012\/03\/bias-in-academic-history\/","title":{"rendered":"Bias in Academic History?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I got my latest copy of the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.smh-hq.org\/jmh\/jmh.html\">SMH Journal of Military History <\/a>a few weeks ago and am working my way through the articles. \u00a0 The Journal always provides grist for at least one post, most of the time it is a thought provoking article that prompts me to post. \u00a0 This time it is different. \u00a0 There is a phrase in one of the articles that caused me to raise my eyebrows. \u00a0 The article is:\u00c2\u00a0 Candice Shy Hooper, &#8220;The War That Made Hollywood: How the Spanish-American War Saved the U.S. Film Industry,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d <em>The Journal of Military History<\/em>76 #1 (January 2012): 69-97. \u00a0 The phrase is:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;The newest form of mass entertainment in the United States was, virtually from the outset, held hostage by a very small, primarily mechanically minded monopoly of <strong>urban white males<\/strong>.&#8221; Emphasis mine<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The sentence is at the end of a paragraph discussing the stagnation of film as an industry after it&#8217;s introduction. \u00a0 What got me thinking was what the point of the sentence, especially the last three words was. \u00a0 I cannot figure out the implication of the whole <strong>urban white male<\/strong> piece except that the author is somehow implying that any other group of people would have done a much better job of developing the nascent film industry. \u00a0 I good go into an orgy of being offended but I will not, instead I will simply point out that the author does not expand on why this was a bad thing other than to claim lack of imagination.<\/p>\n<p>I cite this as an example of why current academia is losing it&#8217;s popular appeal. \u00a0 Knowledge is no longer for the masses, it is restricted to an elite group of people who let their own prejudices guide them as they delude themselves into thinking ow open-minded they are. \u00a0 I guarantee that if she had made the same remark but substituted black males or females, the comment would not have made it past the peer-review process. \u00a0 In many ways, those that claim to be open-minded or objective are just as much, if not more prejudiced tha thse they are writing about.<\/p>\n<p>Mostly, I am just shocked that this comment and its tone made it into the Journal. Apparently the reviewers agree with her implication that urban white males are somehow bad. \u00a0 Never mind the fact that most of the scientific advances of the last 400-500 years have come from that group. \u00a0 They have bought the white man is an oppressor meme hook, line, and sinker. \u00a0 How sad.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><em><strong>Comments please, I would love to get a discussion going on this.<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I got my latest copy of the SMH Journal of Military History a few weeks ago and am working my way through the articles. \u00a0 The Journal always provides grist for at least one post, most of the time it&#8230; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.military-history.us\/2012\/03\/bias-in-academic-history\/\">Continue Reading &rarr;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[341,29,1226,121],"tags":[502,1027,501,327,503,1007,404,403,504,198,33],"class_list":["post-2476","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-history","category-historiography","category-non-historical-asides","category-scholarship-2","tag-academic-bias","tag-american-history","tag-bias","tag-cultural-history","tag-ethnic-history","tag-historiography","tag-history","tag-military-history","tag-modern-liberalism","tag-multiculturalism","tag-scholarship"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.military-history.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2476","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.military-history.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.military-history.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.military-history.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.military-history.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2476"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.military-history.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2476\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21145,"href":"https:\/\/www.military-history.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2476\/revisions\/21145"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.military-history.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.military-history.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.military-history.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}