This article in the Philadelphia Inquirer deals with a form of “anti-racism” training sponsored by the University of Delaware. Conservative and libertarian blogs, to no ones surprise, have been having a field day with this issue. Bloggers are particularly offended by the suggestion that white people are inevitably and incurably racist because, whether they know it or not, they benefit from white privilege.
White supremacy, according to some anti-racist theorists, is a natural and unavoidable outgrowth of white privilege which is the only kind of racism that matters. In other words, racism isn’t primarily a matter of believing that non-white people are inferior, nor is it about behaving as if white people are superior; racism is about white privilege, period.
Take me, for example. I see white privilege as an obvious and undeniable reality. Being white confers all manner of advantages on me, whether I like it or not. Thus, I am a participant in a racist system, and, if racism means benefiting from whiteness, I guess that makes me a racist.
If critical race theorists choose to define “racist” in this way they are free to do so. As Frank Stagg, my old New Testament professor at Southern Seminary used to say, “words have usages, not meanings.” The word “racist” can be used in all sorts of ways; like all words, it means different things to different people.
Does the anti-racist definition of “racist” comport with common usage? Certainly not. Is there much chance that more than, say, 10% of the American population will ever adopt the anti-racist analysis? Probably not.
Conservative Black intellectuals like John McWhorter and Shelby Steele have argued that blaming all of society’s ills on white racism forces young people of color into fatalism and victimhood. I tend to agree; but that doesn’t mean the anti-racists are necessarily wrong.
My concern is more practical than ideological. The racial divide Jena has exposed tells us that Americans (particularly those of the African and European persuasion) need to talk. Conversation is the key; indoctrination is both impractical and ineffective. We need to start where people are and move from there. Real conversation is open-ended. That means we can’t know at the outset where the process will lead, or if it will lead anywhere.
Getting any kind of a conversation about race started in America represents a pretty high hurdle. We aren’t trying to usher in the Kingdom of God here; we’re trying to grope and stumble our way to a rough and ready consensus. We’re trying to get us a little justice.
The racial history of these United States needs to be part of the conversation–I’ll stipulate to that. But defining white people as moral lepers will create the kind of backlash we are presently seeing at the University of Delaware.
I am the kind of Christian who sees the human race (black, white and indifferent) as fallen, broken and in desperate need of redemption. I am not the redeemer; and neither are you. My ideas are full of holes; and so are yours. Talking about race won’t fix anything in the absolute sense; but it might nudge our nation down a better road, and that’s all deck hands on a ship of fools have any right to expect.
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Diversity program creates division
Delaware freshmen unsettled.
When University of Delaware freshmen showed up at their dorms this semester, their orientation included an exercise aimed at bridging cultural divides.But the program backfired after they were told to write down stereotypes of different ethnic and religious groups and publicly give their views on issues such as gay marriage and affirmative action.
“You have girls giving you hard looks because they’re Jewish, and you just wrote something offensive, like they’re cheap, even though you don’t believe it,” said Grace Banks, 18, of Smyrna. “It caused a lot of separations. . . . The whole situation was really uncomfortable.”
Delaware’s diversity training program is under scrutiny after students complained that they were pressed to adopt university-approved views on race and other sensitive topics, participate in squirm-inducing exercises, and rated on their responses to questions about their sexual and cultural beliefs.
Parents and professors also complained that the program is politically slanted, citing training material that claims all white people living in the United States are racist.
“It’s straight-out indoctrination,” said Linda Gottfredson, an education professor who looked into the program after her Honors Program students grumbled about it.
Another education professor, Jan Blits, president of the Delaware Association of Scholars, labeled the program “political propaganda and brain-washing.”
“I’d be out of a job in a day if I asked students questions about their sex lives or their experiences as oppressors. . . . It’s illegal,” he said.
In a letter to Delaware president Patrick T. Harker, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), a Philadelphia-based free-speech group, called the program a “threat to freedom of conscience” and asked that it be dismantled immediately.
“The most terrifying thing is it’s teaching a generation of students that it’s OK to force people to believe what you believe, if you believe you’re right, and that’s not what a free society is supposed to be about,” said FIRE president Greg Lukianoff.
Michael Gilbert, the university’s vice president for student life, acknowledged “missteps” in the program, which is intended for the 7,000 students living in dormitories on the 970-acre Newark campus.
Among the problems Gilbert acknowledges: Resident advisers told students the sessions were mandatory when they were voluntary; the term “treatment” was used, which he said could be “easily misinterpreted” and “construed as inappropriate”; and students were rated “best and worst” by RAs after their one-on-one meetings.
Students “are not required to adopt any particular points of view but are presented with a range of ideas to challenge them and stimulate conversation and debate,” Gilbert said in a posting on the university’s Web site.
A few “overzealous” RAs told students they had to attend the meetings, he said. After students complained recently, they were informed last week that they did not have to attend.
As for the prying sex question, Gilbert said the exercise was intended to help students “reflect on a number of things” and to become “critical thinkers,” and would continue.
It a student declines to answer “our obligation is to accept that and respect that,” he said.
An RA who asked that he not be identified for fear of being fired said he was so uncomfortable asking students about sex and race in the one-one-ones that he never did it.
“It’s an insane thing to ask,” he said.
During the interviews, which are held twice a semester, staff evaluate students on their “level of change or acceptance,” he said.
Gilbert said the only ratings were of RA interview skills.
The senior, who is in his second year as an RA, said: “There’s very little dialogue. It’s very much a monologue.
“They call it diversity, but what it really is acceptance of a specific set of dogma,” the student said.
The 20,000-student brick-and-ivy school, which started as a private academy in 1743, is overwhelmingly white, 83 percent; African American, 5.3 percent; Hispanic 4.4 percent; and Asian, 3.8 percent.
There are few racial problems on campus, according to students and administrators. The diversity program was started, Gilbert said, to help students become “active and successful citizens” of the world.
Topics such as internalized and institutional racism, diversity, and environmental and social justice are taught at various dorms.
Materials from an August 2007 training session for Whole New World included articles that described a racist as “one who is both privileged and socialized on the basis of race by a white supremacist (racist) system. The term applies to all white people (i.e., people of European descent) living in the United States . . . ”
Another article said “white culture is a melting pot of greed, guys, guns and god. It is a deadly brew.”
Gilbert said those were not the university’s views and should not have been posted on the school’s Web site without some “context.” The material is among “thousands” of documents used to teach the course, he said.
Other articles on the Web site included the confessions of a “recovering racist” and a list of the daily effects of “white privilege.”
Students said they felt pressured by RAs to agree with an ideology in which whites were oppressors and minorities were victims.
“It made me feel that because I was white and not at the lower economic spectrum of society, I was in some way racist, when in reality I do not think differently of anyone because of their race or gender or sexual identity,” said Brooke Aldrich, 18, who lives in Russell Hall dorm.
In one exercise, she said students had to go to different sides of the room if they agreed or disagreed with statements about gay marriage or affirmative action.
“You had to take a stance, yes or no. There were no gray areas. It was very uncomfortable,” Aldrich said.
In another session, students had to step forward or backward depending on their response to statements about race and sexual identity. Those who ended up at the front were supposed to be white males, which they were told were the least oppressed members of society, she said.
Kelsey Lanan, 19, a sophomore, said, “It seemed like they were trying to convince us we were racist and sexist and were horrible people.”
For many students, the worst was the one-on-one meetings in which they were given a sheet of questions such as, “When were you first made aware of your race?” and “When did you discover your sexual identity?
Matthew King, 19, said that when he asked his RA if he could skip the question on sexuality, she said, “I’m really going to need you to answer it.”
They sat in silence until he wrote something down.
One student identified in a write-up as an RA’s “worst” was a young woman who said she was tired of having “diversity shoved down her throat” and that the questions that were being asked were nobody’s business.
Another “worst” student who was angry about the program was said to be “very set in her ways – to the point of annoyance.”
A parent of a biracial boy said he found the program “very disturbing” and was hesitant about keeping his son at Delaware.
Peter Johnson’s 18-year-old son told him there was pressure to agree that “all white people are the committers of racial oppression and everybody else is a victim.”
He said he was stonewalled when he asked the school for program materials but when he insisted, he received them.
An RA who is Latina, Lorraine Makond, agreed that the program was a flop because students didn’t really want to be there.
“For the most part students put up a wall,” said the 19-year-old junior, who is president of the Latino student union. “When people hear diversity training, they put their politically correct sensors on for three hours, then go back to their regular behavior.”
One-on-One Sample Questions The University of Delaware’s student diversity training required freshmen to meet one on one with dorm resident advisers to answer these questions and others. The university says the program was voluntary, but students in some dorms were told it was mandatory.
1. When were you first made aware of your race?
2. When did you discover your sexual identity?
3. Who taught you a lesson in regard to some sort of diversity awareness? What was that lesson?
4. When was a time when you confronted someone regarding an issue of diversity? What was the confrontation about? If haven’t, why not?
5. When was a time you felt oppressed? Who was oppressing you? How did you feel?
6. Can you think of a time when someone was offended by what you said? How did that make you feel? How do you think it made them feel? How did his/her behavior change toward you?
Friends of Justice 
Everyone has their view of what racism is or isn’t and those views are informed by a number of factors that can be and invariably are argued “when America sits down to talk about race.” I’ m admittedly disappointed at your simplistic approach to this very complex issue – particularly because you admit the “obvious and undeniable reality of white privilege” and “all manner of advantages” conferred upon you as a result of it. While those “advantages” into which you were merely born may or may not make you inevitably or incurably racist, THEY are, however, inherently racist – whether you like it or not – simply because they have not been and still are not equally “conferred” upon Blacks simply because they were born Black instead of white. Kind of like getting credit for a home-run when you got your hit from third base.
Are you an inherent racist, I’d venture to say that you probably are. Are you an incurable racist? Well that depends on you. The most important component of this particular “-ism” which is, more often than not, completely ignored by most whites and some conservative Black intellectuals, is the power inherent racism has bestowed upon white America and the lack of power it has imprinted on the psyche of Black America (and yes, I do believe John Edwards is correct in saying there are two Americas – whatever his agenda).
That Bloggers are particularly offended by the suggestion that white people are inevitably and incurably racist because they benefit from white privilege does not particularly surprise me. After all, recognition and/or admission of the benefit would not only give credence to the philosophy put forth by the facilitators but it just might make some people REALLY THINK about how we all got to this place in America. Since I wasn’t present at the workshop nor have I seen the actual materials, I won’t comment on them – yet. I prefer to find out what was actually presented and by whom and base my comments on the actual material instead of on Kathy Boccella’s article (unless, of course, she sat in on the workshop) or your interpretation of it.
You seem particularly piqued by the phrase, “white people are inevitably ad incurably racist” and the term “white supremacy” which I find quite interesting. White supremacy is a given in America Alan. And I’m not talking about the Ku Klux Klan here, though they DEFINITELY believe in the inherent right of white people. I’m talking about the controlling power and influence over people of color that whites have always had in this country. And you recognize it yourself, particularly as it relates to your own agenda – the justice system. You’ve written and spoken about that power and influence at length, which is why I don’t get what appears to be an about-face on this particular blog. When you wrote Upsetting White Folks back on August 18th, 2007, what did you really mean?
Racism in America is about white privilege from which flows the belief that non-white people are inferior and the behavior that white people are superior. And those beliefs and behaviors produced a group of people with an inherent feeling of superiority of a particular race -the white race.
We could spend a lot of time and space trying to parse whether “words have usages, not meanings.” But it would be a lot of time and space that could be better spent. However, you suggest there’s another denotation (or connotation, for that matter) of the word racist that has nothing to do with white privilege here in America – I beg to differ. But feel free to enlighten me. Now DISCRIMINATION based on sexual preference is not white privilege based (which I assume was the focus of the questions on sexuality during the workshop – but I don’t know because I haven’t seen all the material). All races, unfortunately, seem to think the LGBT community is fair game. for all kinds of abuse.
Sadly, I have to agree with you that there’s not much chance more than 10% of the American population will ever adopt the anti-racist analysis. As evidenced by the students’ comments in Kathy Boccella’s article – that would be much too “uncomfortable” and “squirm-inducing” for those who have always been comfortable in their “belonging.” After all, as you said in that August 18th post, “That would mean getting the white folks upset, and, Lord knows, we don’t want that.”