Despite claims to have cornered the market on civility, liberals have no qualms about wishing conservatives dead. On the occasion of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’s 65th birthday in June of 2013, Twitter lit up with hate messages from the left, many filled not only with death wishes but racial slurs.
Such venom is seldom apologized for. Instead, liberals — or at least those cursed with having been born Caucasian — save their apologies for the sin of white privilege.
Thanks to a new program at Northwestern University titled “Deconstructing Whiteness,” white students there can now take their mea culpas a step further.
Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?
The College Fix explains:
The “6-part workshop series for undergraduate students who self-identify as white” launched in January and runs through March, according to the university’s website. Students enrolled chose to do so – it is voluntary.
Self-identify as white? Who in his right mind would submit to that self-flagellation in this era of political correctness unless he could claim a long lineage of all-white forbears?
Bob Rowley, a spokesman for the private university located outside Chicago, was asked about specifics of the program but was willing to say only that it is “part of Northwestern’s Social Justice Education effort to create learning opportunities for our students.” The website is equally closed-mouth about the content, though the student newspaper, The Daily Northwestern, quotes Michele Enos, who will be leading the workshop, as saying:
Especially with everything that’s happening both on this campus and other campuses and in this country, I think now is a very important time for white people to start to understand their role in doing social justice work.
Kate Gladstone, a senior, added:
It’s important to have a space for white students to have these discussions because so often the burden of teaching about race and racial injustice falls on the shoulders of people of color, and that’s an unfair burden for them to bear.
I understand her point. In March 2015, white students at Ryerson University in Toronto were barred from a meeting of the Racialized Students’ Collective, a group that, according to its Facebook page, is dedicated to “building an anti-racism community on campus.”
Other universities have taken other measures to deal with the scourge of whiteness. Last month, Portland Community College in Sylvania, Ore., added a “‘Whiteness History Month” to its calendar of events. “Whiteness,” the school explained on its website, is “a state of consciousness, often invisible, shaping how white people view themselves and others and thus perpetuating ignorance throughout communities.” In other words, if your goal is racial equality, a first step to achieving it is acknowledging that being white is tantamount to being racist.
It sounds like there’s much to apologize for after all.
