You are White, and You Should Feel Bad About That. So Attend This Retreat.

If anything tops my list of concerns in 2015, it isn’t addressing and correcting the so-called racial privilege of college students. But that’s just me, and I’m not the University of Vermont.

Before the barbaric terrorist attacks in Paris last Friday, student protesters at Mizzou and elsewhere had been vocal about the privilege of white students compared to the oppression of black students. Since the attacks, the mantra hasn’t changed, except for slamming coverage of the horrors in Paris. Some students even took to social media to rudely and selfishly scold society for its focus on the many dead and injured that were half a world away. Priorities askew? Yes.

Happy to oblige in delusions, the aforementioned University of Vermont held a retreat for the grossly privileged, which took place from November 13-15. The free weekend was called: “Examining White Privilege: A Retreat for Undergraduate Students Who Self-Identify as White”. I wish I could say this is a joke, but in a world where women are women and men are too, the idea of “identity” has been muddied beyond belief.

Campfire 2

From their website:

Program Description:

Students will have the opportunity to:

– conceptualize and articulate whiteness from a personal and systematic lens;

– recognize and understand white privilege from an individual experience

– as well as the impact of white privilege on the UVM community and beyond;

– build a community of dialogue and support in taking action against racism.

We will explore questions like:

– What does it mean to be white? How does whiteness impact you?

– What action steps can you take individually to interrupt racism

We live in the age of Rachel Dolezal, the white-girl-turned-black-activist who identified as black, and was eventually praised by some for her identity. But there are retreats for those who are white and identify as white (cis-white, I guess) so they can learn what “being white” actually means? Ok.

Individual responsibility is a thing entirely foreign to the Left. The side that blames rape babies for the rape and all NRA members for gun deaths believes educating people on their identity is something that 1. needs to be done, and 2. is something they can do. As groundbreaking as it sounds, racial “identity” as a whole doesn’t need to be explored and corrected, because the problem isn’t universal; it’s individual.

I don’t condone racism, whether it be on a U.S. campus or anywhere else. The same goes for sexism. To say both of these things no longer exist is incorrect. We know there are instances of each, from black, white, male, and female. But overwhelmingly, the focus is on white students, signing up for a retreat weekend to “discover” themselves, and upon men, who should learn not to rape. Setting one group aside, in order to indoctrinate them, does nothing to actually address the unfortunate instances that do occur.

 Self-identifying – as what you actually are  should never be given a negative connotation. According to liberal logic, though, being white and identifying as white automatically means you must learn about your supposed subconscious contributions to oppression, regardless of whether you’re actually at fault or not. This mindset, which seeks to overcorrect for wrongs of generations past, is only harmful in the present. It really is nothing but judging others based on their appearance and cultural upbringing, assuming things about both, and trying to correct them. And that sounds a lot like a wrong that has been done before.
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