Towards the abolition of whiteness 113

Where you live, are you and your property protected by law? Is there a free press? Impartial justice? Can you say whatever you want to say, wherever and whenever you choose? Can you vote for your preferred representative in the body that makes the laws you live under? Can you make and implement lawful decisions affecting your own life and the lives of your dependents without hindrance from a person or institution?

If so, it is because white men have made it possible.

Do you move about in cars, buses, trains? Fly in airplanes? Watch television? Use a phone? Work and play on a computer?

If so, it is because white men have made it possible.

Nevertheless, white men and all that they have created are an abomination. They are the curse of the earth.

If you are a white man, you need to hang your head in shame and do penance. Whiteness itself is an unacceptable condition. So white women too, and white children, abase yourselves. Subjugate yourselves to non-white men and women.

You are oppressors. You are guilty of doing nothing but wrong.

This belief, growing in popularity throughout the civilized world, is not just a shallow notion held by an ignorant underclass, but is being seriously taught – or preached – in the most prestigious universities.   

A case in point:

The College Fix reports that Yale University deplores “whiteness”. 

Yale University is offering a course this semester which aims to help students understand and counteract “whiteness”, exploring such topics as “white imagination,” “white property” and “white speech.”

According to the syllabus for “Constructions of Whiteness” obtained by The College Fix, the English course is an “interdisciplinary approach to examining our understanding of whiteness.”

The class, which is apparently being offered for the first time this semester, discusses “whiteness as a culturally constructed and economically incorporated entity, which touches upon and assigns value to nearly every aspect of American life and culture”.

The goal of the class is to “create a lab for the construction of counternarratives around whiteness in any creative form: play, poem, memoir, etc.,” states the syllabus.

Taught by Professor Claudia Rankine, the class is divided into eight topics: Constructions of Whiteness, White Property, White Masculinity, White Femininity, White Speech, White Prosperity, White Spaces and White Imagination, according to the syllabus.

Students in the course are asked to read books such as [white] Michael Kimmel’s Angry White Men: American Masculinity at the End of an Era, [white] Richard Dyer’s White: Essays on Race and Culture, and [white] Richard Delgado’s and [white] Jean Stefanic’s Critical White Studies: Looking Behind the Mirror.

Other required readings include Hazel Carby’s White Woman, Listen!, [white] Juliana Spahr’s My White Feminism and Professor Rankine’s own work, The White Card.

Rankine did not respond to multiple requests for comment from The College Fix.

The Fix also reached out to the chair of the English department, Langdon Hammer, and professor of English & African American studies Jacqueline Goldsby. Neither responded.

Outside of Yale, Rankine is active in the theater community. Her play The White Card is being produced at Boston’s Emerson Paramount Center. The play, which centers around “a conversation at a dinner party”, focuses on the question: “Can American society progress if whiteness stays invisible?”

Classes like “Constructions of Whiteness” are not unique to Yale. A controversial course titled “The Problem of Whiteness” is currently offered this semester at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Meanwhile, Stanford University offered a class in the fall called “White Identity Politics”, during which students discuss the “possibilities of … abolishing whiteness”.

At the University of Michigan last December, meanwhile, a workshop taught white employees how to address the “discomfort” of being white, instructing participants how to “recognize the difficulties they face when talking about social justice issues related to their White identity, explore this discomfort, and devise ways to work through it”.

Another example, mentioned above (many are easily found on the Internet), also reported by The College Fix:

Stanford University is slated to offer a class this fall called “White Identity Politics,” during which students will “survey the field of whiteness studies” and discuss the “possibilities of … abolishing whiteness”, according to the course description.

Citing pundits who say “the 2016 Presidential election marks the rise of white identity politics in the United States“, the upper-level anthropology seminar will draw “from the field of whiteness studies and from contemporary writings that push whiteness studies in new directions.”

Questions to be posed throughout the semester include: “Does white identity politics exist?” and “How is a concept like white identity to be understood in relation to white nationalism, white supremacy, white privilege, and whiteness?”

“Students will consider the perils and possibilities of different political practices,” according to the course description, “including abolishing whiteness or coming to terms with white identity.”

The course will be taught by instructor John Patrick Moran. Reached by e-mail, Moran declined to comment, instead directing The College Fix to Stanford communication’s office.

Ernest Miranda, a spokesman for Stanford, told The Fix via e-mail that “‘abolishing whiteness’ is a concept put forward in the 1990s by a number of white historians. Their belief was that if other white people would, like them, stop identifying politically as white, it would help end inequalities.”

White people “identify politically as white”. A fact proved by “the 2016 Presidential election” which “marks the rise of white identity politics in the United States”.  The underlying fact – so obvious and incontrovertible –  being that President Donald Trump and all who voted for him are … you guessed it …. racists, white supremacists.

Miranda added that “abolishing whiteness” is “among the past and current concepts that will be considered” in the “White Identity Politics” courseThe Fix requested a copy of the syllabus, but Miranda declined, saying “We do not share our course materials.”

Reached by e-mail, Stanford Professor Tomás Jiménez [an associate professor of sociology and comparative studies in race and ethnicity], told The Fix that he sponsored a student-led class at Stanford on whiteness last semester, [and] said via e-mail:

Whiteness is the set of behaviors and outlooks associated with the racial category, white. Just about any social category and subcategory has a ‘-ness’ to it. So, liberals and conservatives; men and women; Wisconsinites and New Yorkers are all social categories, and adding ‘ness’ to any of them is shorthand for the behaviors and outlooks associated with that category. 

A racist is someone who believes that every individual is chiefly characterized by the alleged qualities of his race. “The behaviors and outlooks associated” – by the racist – “with that category”.

This movement against “whiteness”, led by whites, is a crude and cruel cult of racism plain and simple.

It is very stupid and deeply immoral.