It is shocking but I am not shocked.  This is actually less of a surprise to me then many, as the local schools went down this road already.  I’ll get right back to that.

I first noticed the story at Hot Air:

FIRE: U of Delaware student indoctrination teaches that all white people are racist

You can’t make this stuff up: The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) has found a program that would make the most totalitarian Communist proud of its hard left bias, its heavy handedness and gall.

The University of Delaware subjects students in its residence halls to a shocking program of ideological reeducation that is referred to in the university’s own materials as a “treatment” for students’ incorrect attitudes and beliefs. The Orwellian program requires the approximately 7,000 students in Delaware’s residence halls to adopt highly specific university-approved views on issues ranging from politics to race, sexuality, sociology, moral philosophy, and environmentalism. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) is calling for the total dismantling of the program, which is a flagrant violation of students’ rights to freedom of conscience and freedom from compelled speech…

The university’s views are forced on students through a comprehensive manipulation of the residence hall environment, from mandatory training sessions to “sustainability” door decorations. Students living in the university’s eight housing complexes are required to attend training sessions, floor meetings, and one-on-one meetings with their Resident Assistants (RAs). The RAs who facilitate these meetings have received their own intensive training from the university, including a “diversity facilitation training” session at which RAs were taught, among other things, that “[a] racist is 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, regardless of class, gender, religion, culture or sexuality.”  (emphasis added)

Granted the fact that the white majority has been responsible for a certain amount of the racism in this country, the fact is that racism is not a solely white issue, had they any intellectual honesty.  This is more then the usual uber sensitivity and political correctness.  This is forcing white guilt onto people who may never have had a racist thought in their lives.  

Sister Toldjah continues the story and clarifies the positions:

Here’s an example of some of the UDel’s “required thoughts”: (emphasis mine)

“A RACIST: A racist is 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, regardless of class, gender, religion, culture or sexuality. By this definition, people of color cannot be racists, because as peoples within the U.S. system, they do not have the power to back up their prejudices, hostilities, or acts of discrimination. (This does not deny the existence of such prejudices, hostilities, acts of rage or discrimination.)” - Page 3

—–

“REVERSE RACISM: A term created and used by white people to deny their white privilege. Those in denial use the term reverse racism to refer to hostile behavior by people of color toward whites, and to affirmative action policies, which allegedly give ‘preferential treatment’ to people of color over whites. In the U.S., there is no such thing as ‘reverse racism.’” - Page 3

—–

“A NON-RACIST: A non-term. The term was created by whites to deny responsibility for systemic racism, to maintain an aura of innocence in the face of racial oppression, and to shift responsibility for that oppression from whites to people of color (called “blaming the victim”). Responsibility for perpetuating and legitimizing a racist system rests both on those who actively maintain it, and on those who refuse to challenge it. Silence is consent.” - Page 3

Ah yes, white privilege.  That would be the the privilege that keeps me in my apartment, driving my used 1999 car.   And note how they carefully predefine any attempts to protest the definitions as being racist defense of white privilege.  Talk about a stacked deck.  See the bottom of my blog for a list of the authors of this fine bit of reeducation.

Blue Crab Blvd provides a blog reaction roundup.

Of note, MacsMind notes:

So according to the University of Delaware all whites are racists, and no black can be racist?

So Al Sharpton and Louis Farrakhan are white?

I’m shocked!

Heh.  Likewise, Flopping Aces says:

I read this piece and I had to doublecheck to see if it didn’t come from The Onion.

Right Voices wraps it up with:

You have the right to free speech as long as the liberals approve of the message. You can have free thought, just as long as you think what the liberals want you to think.

As I noted earlier, Seattle went this route earlier this year.  As I noted in this blog, the issue was raised locally by sending a bunch of High School kids to a White Privilege Seminar.  You should be even more alarmed to learn that the curriculum is being pushed at high school levels too:

And speaking of White Privilege, that has made the news in Seattle, where the over compensating racial policies have turned a new page, are now sending students to a white privilege conference:

https://www.seattleschools.org/area/equityandrace/whiteprivilegeconference.xml

For the first time, Seattle Public Schools are sending students from four high schools to attend the annual White Privilege Conference, sponsored by the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, the University of Denver, Teaching Tolerance, Study Circles Resource Center, The Matrix, Center for Judaic Studies, GLSEN, and many more organizations. Speakers include Geneva Gay, Peggy McIntosh, Joy Leary, John-Paul Chaisson-Cardenas and many others who are actively engaged in anti-racism.

This year’s conference takes place in Colorado Springs from April 18th through the 21st. There are workshops designed specifically for youth, as well as sessions open to all conference participants. We are very excited about this opportunity for students and teachers to grow and learn together at an intense 3-day conference. In support of increasing student voice related to school reform and equity, funding for students to attend the WPC is provided through the small learning communities grant.

From their website:

” The annual White Privilege Conference (WPC) serves as a yearly opportunity to examine and explore difficult issues related to white privilege, white supremacy and oppression. WPC provides a forum for critical discussions about diversity, multicultural education and leadership, social justice, race/racism, sexual orientation, gender relations, religion and other systems of privilege/oppression. WPC is recognized as a challenging, empowering and educational experience. The workshops, keynotes and institutes not only inform participants, but engage and challenge them, while providing practical tips and strategies for combating inequality.

“The conference participants and presenters include corporate and non-profit community members, students, educators, activists, musicians and artists. This conference is not about beating up on white folks. This conference is about critically examining the society in which we live and working to dismantle systems of power, prejudice, privilege and oppression.”

Seattle has a history of this overly sensitive multi culturalism, and reading back in previously blogs, you will note that White Privilege is an old theme that previously generated a lot of controversy:

Caprice Hollins needs to go

Today’s P-I has a news article on the swirling controversy over the Seattle School District’s bizarre definition of racism and the woman responsible for it, “Director of Equity and Race Relations” Caprice Hollins. The P-I’s headline reiterates what I noted yesterday: “School district pulls Web site after examples of racism spark controversy“. The original definition of racism is still in the google cache. And the statement that replaces it is just as appallingly un-American and racist as the original:

Our intention is not to … continue to hold onto unsuccessful concepts such as a melting pot or colorblind mentality.

If these people think that a colorblind mentality is somehow inimical to racial equality then they’re at odds with an awful lot of people, including the late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr and his family —

School District spokesman Peter Daniels offered the P-I this nonsensical non-defense of the perverted definition of racism:

“It did not have enough context for people not working on this issue, and it was poorly written,” Daniels said. “… It’s about institutional racism, particularly in an educational setting. There are particular structures and practices in place that disadvantage other students who are not of the Caucasian or white majority.

One wonders where Peter Daniels gets his information that non-whites are inherently disadvantaged in Seattle schools. As I’ve written many times before, the School District’s own data show that the most successful ethnic blocs of students in Seattle public schools are not white, but east Asian.

What bothers me about approaches like Seattle’s, is the presumption that melting pot and color blindness are not good enough.  The theory should be that equality means equal.  But that must also be a delusion of my white privilege.

And I should note that the Seattle School District has had money issues that forced school closures and all manner of complaints about academic levels.  So the question needs to be asked, is spending money sending “students” to a conference in Colorado a good use of money?

I cannot help but wonder if any of this is a good thing or not.  First of all, despite my whiteness, I don’t feel particularly privileged, but then according to the concept, how could I?  I have been shielded from the world by my privileged status, right?  But the logic inherent in that reads like a self fulfilling prophecy.

I am not sure I buy this as a valid issue.  According to a web definition I read, white privilege is reflected in things like:

• Whites can turn on the television or read the newspaper and expect to see members of their own race widely represented;

If anyone has a right to complain about under representation, it is Asians, Muslims or East Indian.

• Whites can expect their children to read books and materials in school that affirm and discuss the history of their race;

Sorry, you lost me here.  There are so much diversity based curriculum in schools now, this is not an issue.

• Whites can swear, dress in second-hand clothes, or not answer letters, without having others attribute these behaviors to the bad morals, the poverty, or the illiteracy of their race;

Ask Bill Cosby about that one…

• Whites can speak their opinions without being asked to speak for their race;

And yet one stupid comment by an ignorant white person is said to reflect all white people.

• Whites can do well without being called credits to their race;

Only because diversity demands the recognition of the non whites.

• Whites easily locate books, greeting cards, toys, and magazines prominently featuring members of their race;
• Whites do not have to wonder whether they are being singled out because of their race when being approached by the police;

I agree racial profiling is a problem, but there are far too many factors to dismiss it is WP.

• Whites can take jobs without accusations that they were hired as part of racial quotas;

Sure, likely because they were not hired under quotas.  While I agree that there should be no presumption that anyone hired was done so because of racial preferences, the fact remains that the reason those accusations exist is that people in many places are actually hired because of quotas ans other affirmative action programs, and there

• Whites are most often evaluated by members of their own race;
• Whites do not appear threatening to those of the dominant culture.

Except Hillary.

• Whites have higher incomes than African or Hispanic Americans.

Wonder why they excluded Asians?

The thing is that while there are some things to be concerned about here, some of them are as much internal perceptions that lead to false accusations of racism.  Real racism exists but people dropping the race card is in some ways a worse issue.  Cynthia McKinney for example.   By signing on to the issue of WP, any perceived lack or inequity is assumed to be the advantage of whites or racism in general, and sometimes it is just that life is unfair.

And really that is the attitude I see in the Seattle Schools, this pandering presumption about White Privilege or White Majority.

Our society is very aware of racial inequity, and it should be.  Racial injustice and intolerance is unacceptable.

But the goals are equality and justice and trying to instill a culture of white guilt in our children is not going to make it happen.  All they are doing is enabling non whites to feel resentment against Whites, and attempting to guilt the whites  into an attitude of contrition for something they cannot control.

Bryan Suits on the radio last night also mentioned a study that showed that African immigrants do better in income and literacy then blacks living here all their lives.  That also makes one wonder where the real problem is.

We need to focus our children on acceptance and achievement, not blaming and exclusion.

But that is just my White Privilege talking

So, meet the minds behind the reeducation campaign:

CLARE BAYARD is a core member, organizer and trainer with the Catalyst Project. She has played a lead role in forging alliances between mostly white global justice and anti-war groups with immigrant-led economic and racial justice organizations. As a member of Catalyst, Clare serves on the national committee of the War Resisters League supporting counter-military recruitment organizing. Clare worked for many years with Food Not Bombs and was a participant in the Mission Anti-Displacement Coalition fighting against gentrification and for community power in community planning. Clare played a leading role in building relationships between Food Not Bombs and the Day Labor Program and Coalition on Homelessness. Through her work with the anti-imperialist Heads Up Collective, she continues to develop strategic alliances to build movement in the Bay Area.

INGRID CHAPMAN, a core member of the Catalyst Project is a community organizer, educator, and carpenter by day.  Her roots within radical left organizing began as a leading member of the global justice movement in the late ’90s. She was a student organizer and member of the Direct Action Network that mobilized thousand of people to shut down the WTO in Seattle.  She was a founding member of “Active Solidarity; a collective for anti-racism education” and has led workshops with activists around the country.  She has led trainings on direct action skills with the Ruckus Society and played a role in their anti-racist transformation process. She spent much of the last year in New Orleans working with the Peoples Hurricane Relief Fund and Common Ground supporting the struggles for the right of return and equitable rebuilding. The last 5 years she has worked with Oakland residents in struggles for tenant rights, community safety and alternatives to incarceration and policing.

CHRIS CRASS is the coordinator of the Catalyst Project.  He has been engaged in left/anarchist politics for the past 18 years.  He participated in anti-war organizing during the Gulf War in 1991 and was heavily involved in struggles for Ethnic Studies and immigrant rights In Orange County, CA.  For six years he played a leadership role in San Francisco Food Not Bombs with a focus on building the anarchist movement nationally.  He was a co-coordinator of the Challenging White Supremacy Workshops from which the Catalyst Project emerged.  He was a co-founder of Colours of Resistance with Helen Luu and Pauline Hwang.  His essays on collective liberation politics,  anti-authoritarian leadership, organizing strategy and movement building have been published widely in Left Turn, Clamor and on ZNet and Infoshop.org.  He is a member of the anti-racist/anti-imperialist Heads Up Collective in the Bay Area that bridges organizing for economic and racial justice with global justice and anti-war struggles.  Chris is also a Unitarian Universalist and lives with his comrades, including Natasha Janoski who is four, at Praxis House.

AMIE FISHMAN has been a member of the Catalyst Project since 2001, after participating in and being a trainer with the Challenging White Supremacy Workshops.  She developed as an anti-racist/anti-imperialist organizer through prisoner rights work in the U.S. and working in solidarity with the Palestinian struggle for self-determination.  She continues to work both within and outside of the criminal justice system to support struggles against the prison industrial complex, the death penalty and police brutality, and she collaborates with members of local organizations and individuals to develop transformative justice-oriented, community-based alternatives to incarceration and policing.  Amie organized for many years with Jews for a Free Palestine, a group of Bay Area Jews organized to support Palestinian self-determination and right of return through political education and direct action, and she continues to be part of a local network of radical Jews engaged in this work.  In the last year, Amie developed and led anti-racism and solidarity workshops for mostly white volunteers headed to New Orleans to do solidarity relief work in the Ninth Ward. 

MOLLY MCCLURE Molly McClure first got radicalized through queer, feminist, and global justice organizing in the 90s.  While living in Philadelphia from 2001-2006, Molly has been doing gender and sexual justice work with an antiracist approach, which included organizing for trans inclusion in Philadelphia’s homeless shelters and historically women’s institutions, facilitating self-defense workshops for groups targeted by gender and sexual violence, and teaching sex education in public schools. Starting in 2002, Molly has been part of the Solidarity Committee of the CYOC (Community Organizing Collective), a community-based immigrant workers’ rights organization in Philadelphia’s Chinatown, and has been facilitating “Whites Confronting Racism” workshops for white activists around the country with Training for Change. Since Hurricane Katrina, Molly has been organizing around the struggle for justice in the Gulf Coast, and spent four months doing solidarity work in New Orleans. Molly recently moved home to the Bay Area to be closer to family, loves air hockey, and is a new member of the Catalyst Project.

JOSH WARREN-WHITE (on leave) Josh has spent the past year as a staff organizer at Just Cause Oakland, a Left, membership-based community organization building the power of tenants and workers. Before coming to community organizing Josh came of age amongst a broad array of progressive movement work, from global justice and anti-war activism to tenant organizing. He has spent many years as an anti-racist organizer and trainer with the Catalyst Project, and two years doing movement-based publishing. He was first trained as a tenant organizer with the Right to a Roof project of the San Francisco Coalition on Homelessness. Josh also does graphic design work for a number of publishers and progressive organizations, and has recently completed researching and writing a thesis on community organizing in the US.

Our advisory board brings together long-time mentors and comrades who have supported our political and organizational development over the years. We have much gratitude for their leadership, guidance and support.

• Nisha Anand
• Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
• Max Elbaum
• Linda Evans
• Paul Kivel
• Elizabeth “Betita” Martinez
• Sharon Martinas

NISHA ANAND has been a leading trainer, activist and fundraiser in the global justice, direct action and anti-violence movements in the U.S.   As a student activist she founded the annual National Conference on Organized Resistance, which is celebrating its 10th year. In 1998, Anand was arrested passing out pro-democracy leaflets in the military dictatorship of Burma and sentenced to five years in jail with 18 other international activists. This arrest led her to both nationally and internationally delivering speeches at numerous events and conferences and interviewing for radio, T.V, and the press for the Free Burma Coalition. In 1999, she received her Masters Degree in International Peace and Conflict Resolution from the American University in Washington, DC.

Anand was the National Field Organizer for the War Resisters League, an 85 year-old peace organization and then worked as the Director of Development at the Ruckus Society, a national direct action training organization.  She was the Director of Development for San Francisco Women Against Rape. SF WAR is a women of color led anti-violence/anti-rape organization that operates from an anti-oppression framework. She facilitates trainings on Anti-Racist Organizing, Nonviolence, Grassroots Fundraising, Direct Action, and Conflict Resolution. In the past, Nisha has conducted workshops on a variety of issues including militarization, police brutality, sexual assault, and the FTAA.  



ROXANNE DUNBAR-ORTIZ is a longtime activist, university professor, and writer. In addition to numerous scholarly books and articles she has published a trilogy of historical memoirs, Red Dirt: Growing Up Okie (Verso, 1997), Outlaw Woman: A Memoir of the War Years, 1960–1975 (City Lights, 2002), and Blood on the Border: a Memoir of the Contra War (South End Press, 2005). 

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz grew up in rural Oklahoma, daughter of a landless farmer and half-Indian mother. Her paternal grandfather, a white settler, farmer, and veterinarian, had been a labor activist and Socialist in Oklahoma with the Industrial Workers of the World in the first two decades of the twentieth century. The stories of her grandfather inspired her to lifelong social justice activism.  She was a leading member of the Women’s Liberation and anti-war movements of the 1960s and 1970s.  She worked with the American Indian Movement and continues to struggle for indigenous self-determination and land.

MAX ELBAUM has been involved in peace and anti-racist movements since joining students for a Democratic Society (SDS) in Madison, Wisconsin in the 1960s. Through the 1970s and 1980s he participated in campaigns defending affirmative action and opposing U.S. military interventions in the Third World while writing extensively for the radical press and taking part in then-widespread efforts to construct a new US revolutionary political party. In the 1990s, he was the editor of CrossRoads, a magazine featuring dialogue and debate among socialists and radicals from different left political traditions.

Elbaum is the author of “Revolution in the Air: Sixties Radicals Turn to Lenin, Mao and Che” (Verso, 2002), termed by Pultizer Prize-winning historian David Garrow “an absolutely first-rate work of political scholarship” (Village Voice, July 3-9, 2002). Elbaum’s writings have appeared in the Nation, Radical History Review, the Guardian, and the Encyclopedia of the American Left. Most recently, he was among the founders of War Times, a new bilingual nationwide antiwar newspaper, and serves as one of its editors. Elbaum lives in Oakland, California.

LINDA EVANS is currently an organizer with All of Us or None, a national organization of prisoners, formerly-incarcerated people, and our families.  All of Us or None is fighting the many forms of discrimination people face because past imprisonment or a conviction history.  Linda was a political prisoner for 16 years because of her activities against the U.S. government.  In the 1960’s, Linda was a regional organizer for Students for a Democratic Society (SDS/Weatherman), working to end the Vietnam War and to support Black liberation.  She was active in the women’s liberation movement and the lesbian community, and she organized support for Black and Chicano/Mexicano grassroots organizations in Texas. She was a national leader of the John Brown Anti-Klan Committee, which fought against white supremacy and the KKK, forced sterilization, and killer cops. Linda began working with others to develop a clandestine resistance movement to change government policies. She was arrested in 1985, and received a 40 year sentence, which was commuted by President Clinton on January 20, 2001.

PAUL KIVEL’s work grows out of three decades in community education, engaged parenthood, political writing, and practical activism all focused on one overriding question: “How can we live and work together to nurture each individual and create a multicultural society based on love, caring, justice, and interdependence with all living things?”

Kivel is a leader in the anti-violence movement developing resources to work with men against patriarchy and violence.  He is also a leader in the anti-racist movement developing resources for white people against white supremacy and inequality.  He is the author of “You Call This a Democracy?  Who Benefits, Who Pays & Who Really Decides”, “Uprooting Racism” and “Men’s Work”. 



ELIZABETH “BETITA” MARTINEZ was one of two Latinas in the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee working to build grassroots power in working class Southern Black communities in the 1960s Civil Rights movement.  She worked in New Mexico from 1968–1976 in the Chicano Power movement and edited a movement newspaper. An antiracist, social justice activist for forty years, she has published many articles and six books on liberation struggles in Las Americas including 500 Years of Chicano History and De Colores Means All of Us.  Martinez worked in the feminist movement and prioritized alliance building between communities of color.   

A cofounder and currently director of the Institute for MultiRacial Justice in San Francisco, she lectures widely in the United States and is an adjunct professor at California State University, Hayward.  Martinez and the Institute support younger generation organizers of color to build multiracial alliances.

SHARON MARTINAS joined the movement in the summer of 1965, when she was recruited to teach in a Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee Freedom School in Selma, Alabama.  She played a leading organizing role in the student strike led by the Third World Liberation Front  at San Francisco State University that won the first Ethnic Studies program in the country.  She was a legal staff worker with the National Lawyers Guild and developed curriculum at SF City College for working class women navigating the welfare and prison systems.  She was the volunteer coordinator through the 1980s with the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES).   

In 1990, she co-created a history course for activists called “Addressing White Supremacy in Progressive Movements.” After participating in a People’s Institute “Undoing Racism Workshop”, Sharon co-founded “The Challenging White Supremacy Workshop” in 1993, for which she wrote The CWS Workshop Exercise Manual. In 2000, she co-created Anti-racism for Global Justice which then became the Catalyst Project.  She is part of European Dissent in New Orleans and works closely with grassroots people of color-led organization work to rebuild New Orleans post-Katrina.  She continues to mentor hundreds of white anti-racists in the Bay Area and around the country.

That list just reeks of fair and balanced….

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