What kind of social impact is needed? The answer is "the anti-white kind." Such was recently confirmed at a Mountain West college.
Utah Valley University (UVU) -- previously Utah Valley State College -- boasts a Center for Social Impact (CSI) that promotes "six diverse pathways" of positive change:
- Direct Service
- Social Entrepreneurship and Corporate Social Responsibility
- Policy and Governance
- Community Organizing and Activism
- Philanthropy
- Community Engaged Learning and Research
Students can learn a lot from the socially-conscious community, including that white people should -- to put it politely -- go get mated. As noted by Young America's Foundation, on September 20th, CSI hosted the Pathways Masterclass Series -- during which it welcomed a guest identified online as Eryn Wise.
From Eryn's LinkedIn bio:
I am a Jicarilla Apache and Pueblo of Laguna writer, musician, and media strategist based on the Jicarilla Apache Nation. ...
I...am a co-founding mentor to the International Indigenous Youth Council where together, we resisted the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline in Standing Rock, ND; resulting in the awarding of the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award to the IIYC in 2018. I am currently an advocate and mentor for Six Nations youth and youth of the Kawenni:io/Gaweni:yo Private School in Six Nations of the Grand River Territory...
In an online video of UVU's virtual seminar, human rights hero Eryn recommends a recipe for social impact. As it turns out, Caucasian moderator Amber McGuire and white workshop attendees should shut up:
"[I]t is hard to hear, 'Hey, you're white; and be quiet.' But I'm sorry, there's been like -- it's not specifically your fault -- but there's been, like, almost 600 years of all these other white people, like, just talking and not being quiet, and look at where we are in our world right now."
She could unpack whiteness, but she shouldn't have to:
"[W]hiteness is something that I don't need to unpack for other people because that makes me more tired, right? And that detracts from my rest, and that doesn't help me continue to do the work that I need to do..."
She's suffering from a genetic condition...
"[T]he compassionate side of me wants to tell...young folks, like, we carry blood trauma."
Here's a pickled peck of unpacking:
"We know that [blood trauma is] a thing, especially for people of the global majority who have only known this experience [the] entirety of their lives. You know, like, we don't have...anybody that can connect us to a time before (whiteness). ... We don't have people anymore that remember the time before colonial impact."
Eryn's on a popular path; myriad American arenas seem desperate to return to that precolonial time -- except maybe in cases where it requires them to give up any part of postcolonial life. A host of headlines chastise chalkiness:
University Tells White Students to Stop Exhausting Everyone Else
Mental Health Journal's Article on 'Parasitic Whiteness' Laments There's 'Not Yet a Permanent Cure'
White Woman Who Lectures on Racism Says All White People Should Shut Up
Related to that last title, Eryn knows white people well -- she's one of them. At least, that's half true. Fifty percent of her traumatized blood must be battling the rest of the life within her:
"I went to high school in [Eden, Utah], and it was really white. And my dad and his wife are really white. So it was, like, hard, because I'd go to school and I'd have all these intense experiences and feeling, like, very isolated and alone. And then I'd go home and it was just, like, more of that."
But that wasn't the turning point; her activism began as a preborn:
"I think [it] was probably in my momma's womb, right? Because she knew she was going to have a baby with a white man, and that it was going to be really hard for her daughter to have an identity and also to, like, hold space because my dad has never wanted me to do the things that I do."
Thankfully, he and his oppressive whiteness can't stop her and her resilient half-whiteness:
"[H]e doesn't really get a choice, right? Like most white men in this country, like, my body and my being and the ancestors I carry in my blood predate his existence and his ancestors' existence."
Eryn is holding to hope for humanity. She addresses perpetually-nodding host Amber:
"I think that decolonization is already happening. I mean, this conversation is decolonial, right? You're a white educator, and I'm talking to you about the dismantling of a system that ultimately upholds who you are as a person. And so, and I mean, for you to be in agreeance with me feels a little bit decolonial to me because I don't feel, like, even among friends, I could've had this conversation ten years ago."
She can sure have it now. And as part of it, there's something she'd like to let out.
How do you say something you want to say without saying it? Say it, and then say you won't say it even though you want to say it:
"[There's], like, the compassionate...side of me that doesn't want to just be like 'F**k white people' to kids, even though that's how I feel."
Amber nods once more.
Eryn knows another way to say it, via expressed excitement for a young nonwhite woman on the Zoom call:
"[I] see you for being a brown woman in Utah. So, like, I hope that, you know, college at least provides you kind of that pathway to wherever you're going next because it'll be really awesome when you have that moment where you're like, 'Oh my God, I'm surrounded by, like, a grip of brown folks and black folks and it just feels really good.'"
As for the nationwide grip of whiteness, it seems to be relaxing. Hopefully, it doesn't loosen too much within Eryn, as it's part of the organic material holding her together.
Back to Young America's Foundation, the group has released a statement on UVU's workshop:
The fact that CSI and [the school] would give their platform for someone to promote such a blatantly hateful and racist worldview is horrific.
See the footage in five segments below (LANGUAGE WARNING):
CSI and UVU are merely keeping up with the times. There once was a period in America where race was increasingly viewed as irrelevant; but those in charge have evidently determined that was wrong. What will be the result? Partly, it may be white people uniting to condemn white people. Maybe if all can denounce their whiteness, it will make them no longer white. And then, perhaps, we can return to the glory of precolonial times. Six hundred years ago, life was good -- except for things such as mass death due to disease, along with the absence of flushable toilets and Zoom calls. But at least, according to Utah Valley University's philanthropic guest of honor, white people kind of kept their traps shut.
-ALEX
See more content from me:
Disneyland Streaker Goes Skinny-Dipping on a Ride, Gets Carried Out Naked by Cops
One More Gone Woke: Girl Scouts Stick With BLM, Will Train to 'Decenter' Whiteness
Find all my RedState work here.
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