Chapter 15: Going Beyond Business-as-usual

Throughout my accounting education, from a Bachelor's to a Doctorate, nowhere was I pushed to look beyond business-as-usual. I was never pushed to interrogate the practices or structures I had come to accept as normal in our “white supremacist, capitalist patriarchy.”¹ Therefore, I wasn't able to see the systemic issues arising from the way our economic relations are structured and “the way information in the classroom is slanted to protect the interests of ruling class groups” (hooks, 2012, p. 42). Going into college, I passively accepted the “business isn't personal” perspective that was portrayed in TV and movies and that was being reinforced in my classrooms. A small part of that passivity was me wanting to fit into my new surroundings, but most of it came from my socialization within a western and US-centric paradigm. For the most part, the structuring of our economic system was a given, not to be challenged, questioned, or even named outright. No one talked about how “slavery as an institution pav[ed] the way for advanced capitalist society” (hooks, 2012, p. 40), let alone how continued colonial-imperialism and neoliberal economic policy maintains it. Instead of making these realities clear and discussing the ways that accounting practice has aided in the dehumanization and oppression of entire groups of people for centuries, my accounting education focused on technical application and passing exams.²