An Oregon teacher takes issue with assertions made by her students but perhaps for the wrong reason.
For example, “No one can seriously argue that . . .” and “It goes without saying that everyone here believes. . .”
are not refutations or rebuttals because one can seriously argue just about anything and there’s not much that goes without saying.
“These are the sentence-starters of the privileged, those whose views of the world are so thoroughly normalized, so regularly validated, so wholly reflected in their lived experience, as to seem like certainties, even truths,” Ursala Wolfe-Rocca writes. “In my classes, comments that begin with these phrases are usually uttered by young white men, and to a lesser extent, young white women.” Maybe instead of show and tell they should do “show, don’t tell.”
