Academics recently gathered for a conference to battle “whiteness” in America.
The workshop, called the “All Y’all Social Justice Series,” was held July 24-25 in Jacksonville, Florida.
The organizers said their goals were to “[shatter] the glass ceiling of whiteness” — and to find ways to gain “emotional resilience for the social justice leader.”
The University of North Florida’s center for urban education and policy, the University of North Georgia, and the University of Florida sponsored the event, as Campus Reform reported.
At the conference, organizers discussed some new “commandments” in terms of being white on a college campus today.
#AllYallEdu #FLTLFellows pic.twitter.com/eB3BUSVSgP
— Tiffany Affeldt-Bailey (@typhanee83) July 25, 2018
A few of the lowlights are here (the uneven capitalization, spelling and punctuation shown below are all theirs):
- “Thou Shalt Recognize Your Privilege, White Folks”
- “Thou Shalt Do the Work on Thine Own Without Coddling. (It is not the responsibility of your students or peers of color to help you reckon with your own biases. Don’t put that burden on them, especially students.)”
- “Thou Shalt be an ally in private AND in public.”
- “Thou shalt understand Allyship is a process. A process with no end point in site.”
- “Thou shalt understand that if thine does not see it or is immediately effected by it, that does not mean the problem does not exist.”
It goes on — but clearly, this isn’t at all about teaching. This is about indoctrination.
Here is a tweet retweeted by the “All Y’all” Twitter account from a professor who says outright, “Teaching is a political act.”
Teaching is a political act. A Podcast on Historical Black Teachers
Listen! I am grateful to @JulianChambliss for talking with me on this podcast episode. Listen below. #studyingsegregation #EduColor @AllYallEdu @vivettdukes https://t.co/uys9fdZzrB
— Diedre Faith Houchen (@DiedreFHouchen) July 29, 2018
Dr. Cathy Atria, a professor of educational practice at the University of Florida and a former middle school and high school teacher, agreed academics should abandon criticality if a “person of color (POC)” claims an idea is problematic.
Shana White: Dismantling whiteness among colleagues, in hiring, and school leadership. #AllYallEdu pic.twitter.com/yYbFeD1t3F
— Dr. Cathy Atria (@CathyAtria) July 24, 2018
“Listen to POC in your building,” a PowerPoint slide for the program declares. “If they say something is problematic, it is.”
This is actually a form of racism: It proposes that minority academics should not be held to the same standards of rigor and criticality as other colleagues.
Related: The Anti-White Bias on Campus Couldn’t Be Clearer
What’s also problematic is that objections to racism in all its forms is being abandoned on college campuses in favor of a pseudo-intellectual form of racism against whites.
If stereotyping is wrong, if overgeneralization is wrong, if prejudice is wrong, if bias is wrong — then it is not OK if it’s against males or whites.
Bigotry is the logical end result of these professors’ own positions, whether or not any academic calls the reasoning “problematic.”
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