The University of Minnesota – Duluth (UMD) is now sponsoring an ad-campaign designed to achieve “racial justice” by raising awareness of “white privilege.”
In the past few days, several blogs have reported the latest insanity coming out of academia. This one comes from the University of Minnesota at Duluth, home of the Bulldogs. It is designed to make white students feel guilty. It has the full support of UMD's chancellor.
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/not-fair-to-be-white-see-the-unbelievable-new-campaign-sponsored-by-the-university-of-minnesota-duluth/
You know, I actually was in Duluth once. It was back around 1980, and I was en-route to Winnipeg, Canada in the middle of January on an extradition assignment. After changing planes in Minneapolis, we boarded a flight to Winnipeg that landed in Duluth. It was minus zero degrees. I did not get off the plane, but I must confess. When I looked out the window, all I saw was white.
And I have felt guilty ever since.
Only in academia could such nonsense be peddled. Such a message may have had meaning 50 years ago, but not now.
So what is the message here? That all whites are racists, or that they and their parents have achieved whatever they have due to the color of their skin? Is this what we send our children to college to learn? I firmly believe that the young generation of Americans has it right on ethnic issues. They are willing to have friends of all races and afford all an equal chance. They don't need to be put on a guilt trip. We know our history, and we have taught it to our younger generation-in order that such discrimination not be repeated. The problem is that so many in academia want to teach our dark chapters to make young people believe that they live in a deeply flawed and still racist country. That I reject.
This sounds as stupid as "white studies."
ReplyDeleteWe will not end racism by wallowing in it. We will end racism by throwing it away.
There are some things people who continue to choose to think of themselves as "white" might do well to learn about reasons Americans of African descent remain sensitive about race. I doubt this masochistic program will accomplish any such thing. It can't be done by guilt-tripping.
I thought this was going to be the first "post racial" president and electing him would prove that the US was not a racist country.
ReplyDeleteAll he has done is make race relations worse. We were making great strides with more accomplishments in all fields by blacks. Now he has put race relations back 30 years!
Between Obama and Holder (and Valerie Jarrett) there is no more important thing in the world than the color of your skin.
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I am undoubtedly just dense. I cannot for the life of me see how there could still be any legitimate vestiges of "white guilt" remaining in 21st century America.
ReplyDeleteSiarlys may have it right on this one. Of course racism still exists here as well as elsewhere.
It is my view that it occurs significantly less often than all the (many) race-baiters/pimps, to whom race is not just everything but in fact the only thing, would have us believe, but somewhat more often than the very few, if there are any at all, who would have it that it has been totally eradicated.
There are things that could and should be done on both sides of the street, but guilt should not be among them.
Racism in this country, now, is about on the same level as the old rivalries in most eastern and midwestern cities between the ethnic ghettoes of Poles, Germans, Irish, Italians, Jews, Hungarians, Slovenians, etc. etc. etc.
ReplyDeleteUgly, sometimes vicious, but a far cry from legislated, judicially honored, and universally customized. That goes for white, black, and every other surviving variant.
What many Americans of African descent ARE still dealing with is
a) the legacy of several generations of being forcibly prevented from accumulating the capital from generation to generation that a larger percentage of "white" families were able to amasse, and,
b) a long period in which survival for most "black" people virtually required a lack of initiative, responsibility, or pride, which unfortunately remains woven into the culture to this day.