Bad Whitey 101
In this space in the June issue, readers learned about a flock of students from the American Studies program at Randolph College who flapped off to the Chicken Ranch Brothel in Nevada to study the profundities of the cathouse. They also learned about yet another aesthete who believes emissions from the nether regions of the human anatomy constitute art. But these two contributions to the chronicles of the campus have nothing on the University of Delaware’s failed Residence Life Program. Whereas the other schools joined the culture war with attacks on erudition and art, UD is battling against the White Man—not that the other schools haven’t honed their ideological tomahawks to lift a white scalp or two.
UD’s Residence Life program for incoming students did not, as you might expect, confine itself to imparting lessons on the city’s bus system or hip restaurants and beer joints. Instead, it taught students what’s wrong with whitey.
Consider these excerpts from the program’s core document: “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. . . . 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.)
“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. . . . In the U.S., there is no such thing as ‘reverse racism.’
“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’).”
Last year, when the university watchdog group FIRE (the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education) publicized this bizarre screed, UD’s president canceled the program. “While I believe that recent press accounts misrepresent the purpose of the residential life program at the University of Delaware,” he declaimed, “there are questions about its practices that must be addressed and there are reasons for concern that the actual purpose is not being fulfilled. It is not feasible to evaluate these issues without a full and broad-based review.”
How one could “misrepresent” the purpose of the program is unimaginable, given the inflammatory and naked vitriol directed at palefaces. This is the key demographic group, of course, supporting the university through contributions. In any event, this past spring, a new, improved program rose from the ashes of the old one. The program plan published online does not include the words racist or racism or hate, or even the cosmically silly multicultural. Diversity shows up six times, which must be an all-time low for a document published by university eggheads.
What possessed UD’s administration to create such a program, and what did they hope to accomplish? Since it is whites who are promoting this nonsense, antiwhite racism doesn’t fully explain it. Rather, the “all-whites-are-racist” trope emerging from the First State’s phrontistery and other education factories is merely part of the radical left’s broader attack on Western culture and Christianity, which the left perceives as white racial artifacts impeding the imposition of leftist ideology on society. If all whites are racist, then so is Western civilization. And so, then, is Christianity itself.
Much of this racialism emerges from an ideology for which “race does not exist.” So, how can one destroy something that isn’t there?
Even leftist race deniers know that race exists. But leftism is inherently mendacious. Even worse, it is congenitally totalitarian and viciously anti-Christian. It has always sought to destroy the Church. The historical fact that Caucasian missionaries successfully proselytized the Faith, along with its artistic, musical, and literary riches, is why whites, at long last, are a preferred and open target in the left’s war on culture and religion.
So the charge of racism only superficially attacks whites and really strikes at Western culture and the Faith itself, for anything affiliated with the white man must also bear the mark of Cain with which the left has branded him.
—R. Cort Kirkwood
This article first appeared in the August 2008 issue of Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture.
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You say: "What possessed UD’s administration to create such a program, and what did they hope to accomplish? "
You are asking the wrong question. The question should be: "Who pays for this?"
If you find out who pays for this nonsense, then you will also find the answers to the other questions soon enough.
I was taught in my diversity class in the doctoral psychology dept that only white men could be not be discriminated against; a widely held PC dogma that inadvertently ascribes to white males an inherent superiority.
Another example of the culture war in America.
More reason why good conservative Christian parents should not send their kids to public universities if they can at all help it.
I believe everyone is missing something. The UD administration was actually most clever in choosing the only effective means on campus to act against the prevailing leftism. They knew that by initiating such a radical program, the majority of young people, who can be counted on to rebel against adult authority, would immediately learn to abhor their politically correct professors, and administrative leftists. A program such as this was guaranteed to work against the interests of the left. It is a shame FIRE was successful in eliminating a plan that would have been so beneficial to the conservative cause.
"part of the radical left’s broader attack on Western culture. . . If all whites are racist, then so is Western civilization."
In other words, it is an ideology of genocide, but until you stop namby-pambying around and start using the G word, and until you start rightly connecting this ideology of genocide with rape and murder in the street, don't expect much to change. What is needed is zero tolerance for any leftist double-standard on race. For example, it is outrageous that fictional murderers on TV are portrayed as almost exclusively white (it's even more outrageous that racist violence is almost 100% portrayed as being committed by whites). It is outrageous that the federal government can issue its annual "hate-crimes" report without anyone of note attacking it as the Nazi fiction that it is. People literally die because of this report, but our "conservative" media doesn't have the nerve to speak out about it. These little things are bellwethers on the state of liberal dominance, if they can make you grin and take it on these things they know you'll be submissive on the major issues.
If the left really wanted to attack Christianity more than the majority, they're in a position academically to do so. Instead of looking for profundity, trying to peel away superficiality, why not see the power-greed and naked bad faith that drives this whole process on? Power-greed is irreducible, anti-volition-ism on the left is profound and ineradicable, but the smear approach of choosing race issues first last and always needs to be answered directly, not waved away rhetorically as lacking in profundity.
Whenever the left tries to smear opponents as racist, fascist, xenophobic, etc., the answer must be: You have to try to use smear-terms because there is no good argument for why your side should have more power. Don't try to untie the knot, cut through it.
It really says how odius this program was that there was a hue and cry against it and it was cancelled.
Another reason to start some Wal-Mart Universities: help put this rubbish out of business and BTW give kids a better practical education.
Heh, I went through a program like this when I was in college. We all had to.
In a way I'm thankful for it, because it got me thinking about how screwed up our system is, and why things are the way they are.
What I learned is that the targets of these programs are not "white people", they are middle class white people. It's a way to condition middle class whites to acquiesce to things like illegal immigration and affirmative action.
I'm so glad I'm out of that horrible place.
In other, totally unrelated news, my university is having trouble raising funds from alumni- especially young ones, like myself. I wonder why.
Speaking of Cain, is it not Cain (Kajin - whose father was not Adam by the way hence the separate genealogies of Adam and Cain) or rather his progeny who war with the Church to this day? When Christ taught the parable of the Tares, wasn't He teaching us about Cain's hallucination (deception) inspiring progeny and their ill effect upon the wheat (believers)? Given that we won't be rid of them until the harvest, we are to resist (not resent) them and overcome them with good (speaking and doing God's truth) until that harvest time comes.