dgiharris
Old Crusty Vet
I heard someone describe it as any major that end in the word "studies"... as in your friend's "African
American Cultural Studies" or "Women Studies'...etc....
that's not a bad observation.
funnily enough, those sorts of majors aren't necessarily bad, they are just missing a few vital courses. If you married those majors to something with a Business component, Marketing Component, Human Behavioral component, or Political Science Component then your major would have value.
I'd imagine that in the political world, having quantifiable knowledge of "women" or "African Americans" as relates to political theater (polling, sampling, influencing, etc) is something of immense value.
A little while ago I was on the periphery of a business deal gone bad between a group of White businessmen and Investors of color (Black and Hispanic). The Hispanic guy had on a short sleeved polo shirt that showed tattoos on his arm. One of the tattoos was a picture of someone with a date beneath it. In the urban community (Black and Hispanic) this sort of tattoo is INSTANTLY recognizable as a RIP --rest in peace-- tattoo, as in someone died. In the urban community, you don't really talk about those tattoos unless the person with the tattoo brings it up. Unfortunately, the businessmen didn't know that and they were asking questions about it and confusing it with a gang tattoo but asking if it is a gang tattoo in a roundabout way. To be fair, from their perspective the questions and observations were earnest and I'm sure they didn't mean any disrespect... but that is not how they came across. The mood in the room immediately soured and went south. The deal didn't go through and those questions were the principle reasons.
Had there had been a guy with "African American Cultural Studies" in the Businessman's group that question would not have come up or at the least they could have asked their guy first...
I guess what I'm saying is that there are places and opportunities for the knowledge in those "studies" degrees to make a difference. However, in order for that to be the case, those studies need some anchoring to other stuff that is more core and more useful.
If I were to make an analogy to the human body... Muscles are extremely useful but if they aren't anchored to a skeleton then they are just useless masses of tissue. I believe that all knowledge has power but said knowledge needs to be applied over some sort of "core" or "Skeleton".
In today's world, there are various cores and skeletons you can graft knowledge onto: computers, digital, online, social media, business, marketing, politics, etc.
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