Dead white males or Dead White European Males (DWEM) is a derogatory term that refers to a purportedly disproportionate academic focus on contributions to historical and contemporary Western civilization made by European males.
This paradigm is closely associated with a critical view of the Great Man theory of history and the Great Books focus of educational essentialism and educational perennialism.
Read more about Dead White Males: History, Criticism of Term, Sculpture
Famous quotes containing the words dead, white and/or males:
“Every boy was supposed to come into the world equipped with a father whose prime function was to be our father and show us how to be men. He can escape us, but we can never escape him. Present or absent, dead or alive, real or imagined, our father is the main man in our masculinity.”
—Frank Pittman (20th century)
“Your wits can’t thicken in that soft moist air, on those white springy roads, in those misty rushes and brown bogs, on those hillsides of granite rocks and magenta heather. You’ve no such colours in the sky, no such lure in the distances, no such sadness in the evenings. Oh the dreaming! the dreaming! the torturing, heart-scalding, never satisfying dreaming, dreaming, dreaming, dreaming!”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“For a boy to reach adulthood feeling that he knows his father, his father must allow his emotions to be visible—hardly an easy task when most males grow up being either subtly or openly taught that this is not acceptable behavior. A father must teach his son that masculinity and feelings can go hand in hand.”
—Kyle D. Pruett (20th century)