WARNING - This is a serious email which discusses the serious problems of the quizbowl community. If you are easily offended, please do not read. Prologue: A specter is haunting quizbowl – the specter of knowledge. Part One: NAQT : Another Imagined Community As an interested party in the dynamics of the quizbowl community, I have become aware of certain trends that prove themselves quite disconcerting, especially in today's context of an interdependent, globalized information = economy. Recent additions to the "You Gotta Avoid These Common Mistakes" list on the "You Gotta Know" section of the NAQT website have crystallized these concerns in the form of a particularly reactionary entry= – "Oriental Names." What year is this?! I find this deployment of outmoded,= fascist, ethnocentric hate speech to be absolutely unacceptable and anti- American. This latest attempt to exoticize the cultural Other, specifically Asians, b= elies a long-running, deeply insidious project to rob minorities of their identitie= s and deny them access to the knowledge techno-structure that has historically been the privileged purview of white males. The very processes that quizbowl as an institution executes time and time again reflect a concerted= marginalization of that which is not "us." NAQT is a typical example. Jus= t examine the organization in totality – the background of its website is whi= te, as are its esteemed board of directors. It is curious that a "chosen race,= " an exclusive ethnicity underlies their consistent rhetoric of circuit expansio= n. Even a perfunctory glance at the hierarchy that is depicted in their member= s page should alarm us as concerned and equal-opportunity citizens of the world. In fact, the only minorities to be found on their website are the "Japanese authors" and "Egyptian deities," these subjects only to be stereotyped and then filed away into concrete categories of positivistic "knowledge." Though this self-congratulatory cataloguing passes itself off= as deceptively benign and objective, a rank and vile ideology is forwarded. I= n actuality, this tool that purportedly serves the memory, and helps the aspi= ring team to enter this meritocratic system, reveals itself as neo-imperialist, = hyper- jingoistic, and self-legitimizing.
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