Students living in the university’s eight housing complexes are required to attend training sessions, floor meetings, and one-on-one meetings with their Resident Assistants (RAs). The RAs who facilitate these meetings have received their own intensive training from the university, including a “diversity facilitation training” session at which RAs were taught, among other things, that “[a] racist is one who is both privileged and socialized on the basis of race by a white supremacist (racist) system. The term applies to all white people (i.e., people of European descent) living in the United States, regardless of class, gender, religion, culture or sexuality.”
Update – University of Delaware President Patrick Harker:
“While I believe that recent press accounts misrepresent the purpose of the residential life program at the University of Delaware, there are questions about its practices that must be addressed and there are reasons for concern that the actual purpose is not being fulfilled. It is not feasible to evaluate these issues without a full and broad-based review.
Upon the recommendation of Vice President for Student Life Michael Gilbert and Director of Residence Life Kathleen Kerr, I have directed that the program be stopped immediately. No further activities under the current framework will be conducted.”
I posted this yesterday in the tips after reading David’s blog. It truly is frightening. Also, how can opposition to censorship run counter to the modern left’s emphasis on political correctness?
Could go a long way to reinforcing the following posit, author unknown:-
“Enemies – The real enemy is within us, in the immense constituency of the semi-educated narcissists vomited by our universities each year – the glib, smug, liberal, left-leaning and defeatist victim culture, that infests academe, the media, the legal establishment and the bureaucracies. These are the self-appointed opinion leaders of our society, who live almost entirely off the avails of taxation, who make their livelihoods biting the hands that feed them, and who strive to undermine the moral order on which our solidarity and security depends. These are the greatest threat to our western civilization”
Do I wish I could claim that one!
I read the university policy over at “thefire.org” (my favourite web site). It’s a bit long, but guaranteed to get your adreneline pumping…
http://www.thefire.org/pdfs/730a8163b35b360f8edd2b889c832ce9.pdf
Rabbit…..I printed it out yesterday for some research I’m doing and yes, it does get you a little pumped. I especially liked the part about ‘A Racist’, that it applies to ALL white people and by this definition, people of colo(u)r cannot be racists. Anyone who hasn’t read the manual, please do.
When I read the whole article yesterday, I thought it must be a parody from The Onion. I wish.
Not the least of issues with this sick abomination of civil rights and privacy is what I consider the sexual harassment aspect. Probing kid’s sexuality in an involutary one-on-one basis, my God, you’d never get away with that on a job site. I doubt you could pull it off at a high school.
It’s not for nothing that the base word of facilitator is facile.
If you want to see that thought process in action, there’s an old thread at CJunk between Paul and Dr.Dawg – who very much buys into the “white people are racist by default”. It’s an amusing exchange.
The statement itself is racist. Assuming all white people are racists smacks of racial bias. Of course racism comes in all shapes, sizes and colours. Just more of this whites can’t be victims, only victimizers, crap.
The University of Delaware is in BIG trouble for this one. As a public university, they are obligated not to do this. I’m a financial supporter of FIRE, and, as a result, I talk with their president, Greg Lukianoff, on occasion. A few months ago, over dinner, he said, with respect to San Francisco State University and their harassment of the campus’s Republicans, “they are going to get sued over this, and they are going to lose.” That applies here, too (SF State changed its behavior before it came to a lawsuit).
If the students are getting all this ‘training’ in their residences then there’s no point in them taking classes…
Best bumper sticker at the New York medical school I attended: “Buy a gun. Piss off a liberal.”
Mine was almost as good: “Too close for missiles, switching to guns.” Looked dandy on the ’78 Olds.
I lived through the “sensitivity” training by asking inconvenient questions and laughing at all the wrong times. It helped that I was much bigger and older than the instructor.
When in doubt, loom over the Lefty instructor, cross your ham-like forearms and smile engagingly.
If you can’t loom, just say Ronald Regan is your hero. ~:D
This is the result of 50 or so years of parents letting televisions raise their children.
So… white people are all Klansmen, eh? I could write a long rant about the unsurpassable stupidity of this sort of glib, self-righteous posturing, but that’s more their style and everybody here knows the drill anyway. So I’ll just settle for my favorite editorial comment from college:
BWAA-HAAA-HAAAA!!!
I pride myself on being fair-minded. I am also extremely skeptical of paranoid Dr.Evil type scenarios but this universities behavior is disturbing.
For many of these young people this is their first experience with being away from home. This makes them more susceptible to group pressure to feel a sense of belonging. The university residency taking advantage of this by instituting an official “reeducation” program is an abuse of authority. They are attempting to brainwash them through repetition of subject matter. Finally, by forcing them to reveal extremely personal information, it gives the RA’s psychological power over them. Scary and unacceptable.
Just more of this whites can’t be victims, only victimizers, crap.
i suppose if whites were victims nearly as often as they are the victimizers, your anger might mean something.
as it is, in western culture, it’s the brown peeps who seem to get the roughest ride from where i view things.
Sorry, Kate – there is a serious error in this post. It should read:
“Students living in the university’s eight housing complexes are required to attend training sessions, floor meetings, and one-on-one meetings with their Resident Assistant Trainers (RATs)”
Well, well, it appears a university official responded yesterday to FIRE…..In a letter to FIRE released late Wednesday, Michael A. Gilbert, Delaware’s vice president for student life, rebuffed many of the group’s claims, including its assertion that the university requires students to participate in the program — or to adopt specific views. “This type of goal,” Mr. Gilbert wrote, “is both highly undesired and wholly unattainable.”
Yesterday’s comments at The Chronicle of Higher Education site are interesting. I loved this one:
“U of Delaware the new Gitmo. Freshman orientation the new waterboarding. U of Delware administration the gestapo. Imagine the poor white kid, already suffering from low self-esteem due to an alcoholic parent and poverty, somehow making it through high school to the University of Delaware, and the first thing he finds out is he is a racist.”
FIRE is going to crush these morons like a cheap suit.
Child abuse. Commerical fraud.
Actually, jeff, in other parts of the world, different people are both aggressors and victims.
In Africa, you have black vs black; the difference in ‘suitability’ is superficially the shade of ‘blackness’ and the height. Deeper – it’s the economic role each group has traditionally played.
In other parts of the world, it’s brown against brown. The difference is religious nuance – and economic power. You’ll find that in the ME, in India, in Pakistan. In Central and Latin America the differences are skin tone, body shape – and economic power.
In China – it’s the same. The differences would be invisible to you but, facial characteristics, body type, skin tone – and language – outline differences. And are a basic for discrimination. It’s also about economic power.
For you to agree with a claim that skin colour, any skin colour, is innately ‘racist’ is the height of ignorance. And to claim that only white people are ‘racist’ is – stuck on stupid.
Just like that University’s mandate, obviously written by an ignorant and stupid person. The fact that the University permits it, is a violation of the US Constitution.
@Alistair Macfarlane: One comparison that came to my mind was the old custom of having prisoners dig their own graves before they’re shot.
it’s the brown peeps who seem to get the roughest ride from where i view things.
Geez, jeff, rocks don’t have windows. Blacks victimize more blacks than white by a huge margin if you look at crime statistics. (Google, is your friend, jeff)
Economic crimes against “brown peeps” by whites, hardly, we’ve paid out of pocket for decades of welfare stipends without much fuss. Affirmative action has skewed job and college entry in their favor too. Even the US courts have agreed on that one.
Maybe it’s time to revise one of your predictably boring, outdated, and fact challenged jeff memes. You can do better than that.
Oooo, a drive by from Jeff Davidson! I cross my arms in your general direction Jeffie.
White Canadians are racist? BWAHAHAAAAA!!! I’m going to pull a muscle lauging at that one.
You haven’t heard racism until you’ve heard an older Chinese guy going off on the Japs. Or how about a nice Six Nations Spokeschick talking about Caledonia residents? Oh baby!
If there is one word that has been abused over the years it is indeed ‘racist’.
In the old days a racist was someone who insisted one race (usually, his own) is superior to others, and the inferior races had to be treated differently.
Nowadays if you oppose affirmative actions and racial quotas, you’re a racist. Insisting that everybody be treated the same is racist.
End all speech codes. End hate speech laws.
Here’s one spot where I’ll be critical of the Jews: they should never have pushed for the criminalization of Holocaust Denial.
This is what the EU slipped in under the rubric of Holocaust memorialism. Notice the inclusion of insults.
Re: “Council Framework Decision on combating Racism and Xenophobia”, we find that it imposes an end to free speech:
[T]his proposal provides for the approximation of the laws and regulations of the Member States regarding offences involving racism and xenophobia. Racist and xenophobic behaviour must constitute an offence in all Member States and be punishable by effective, proportionate and dissuasive penalties. […] Racism and xenophobia will mean belief in race colour, descent, religion or belief, national or ethnic origin as a factor determining aversion to individuals.
Certain forms of conduct outlined below committed for a racist or xenophobic purpose will be punishable as criminal offences:
* public incitement to violence or hatred;
* public insults [e.g. the Danish cartoons] or threats;
* public condoning of genocide or crimes against humanity as defined in the Statute of the International Criminal Court;
* public dissemination or distribution of tracts, pictures or other material containing expressions of racism and xenophobia;
* directing of a racist or xenophobic group (by “group” is meant a structured organisation consisting of at least two persons established for a specific period).
[…] In all cases, racist or xenophobic motivation will be considered as an aggravating circumstance in determining the penalty to be applied to the offence.
My source: Brussels Journal.
As one who spends most of his life in foreign parts, I can say with some confidence that the only non-racist, non-sexist people on the planet are white males.
We are the only people on earth who are continually assailed for our attitudes and we have adjusted accordingly.
The rest of the world’s population just goes on happily being racist and sexist without criticism.
Hahaha … Bugbiy wishes he had a RA position at Delaware! Big surprise.
Go back to sucking your thumb now you self righteous little tit!
GreenNeck:
On the extreme political left, a racist is defined as a white person. Literally. I’m not making this up. They wouldn’t let me on the internet if I made stuff up.
Allow me to quote from the U of Delaware policy manual I gave a link to before:
A racist is one who is both privileged and socialized on the basis of race by a white supremacist system. The term applies to all white people (i.e., people of European descent) living in the United States, regardless of class, gender, religion, culture, and sexuality. By this definition, people of color cannot be rascist…
The above definition strikes me as rather – what’s the word? – oh yeah, racist.
Whooopsi… That’s BUG BOY …. (biy?)
F’rinstance, all you Torontonian holier than thou Lefties, here’s an experiment for you to do next time you leave your mum’s basement. (Its science ok, but don’t be scared.)
Have a look around the subway/coffee shop whatever, and count the number of dreaded White Males with other-than-White chicks on their arm. M’kay? Wherever you go there will be a bunch, be prepared to take your shoes off so you don’t lose count.
Now count the number of Muslim guys with anything-other-than Muslim women. Ok, its hard to tell under the head thingie. How about Chinese guys with anything-other-than Chinese girls? Sikh guys? Black guys? You can put your shoes back on now.
Nine out of ten other-than-White women agree, White Men may not be racist, but they are HOT!
if you want an education, university is not the place to get it. mind you, it is necessary for such trades as medicine, engineering,etc. it is not necessary to train people to be socialists, just give them money for doing nothing.
My beef isn’t that there are people that are so stupid as to believe that crap. My beef is that they’ve managed to gain power over our youth.
How did universities degrade themselves so badly that positions so obviously illogical, inconsistent and hypocritical are mandatory instead of being ridiculed as the rantings of retards.
Jeff, you surprise me by even attempting to excuse this crap. Only stupid people can’t see the holes in the logic. There are so many of them to see.
Hmmm, so, If I don’t hang around with spicks, chinks, buckwheats, bamboo coons, dangos, mulattos, bhuddaheads, yellow-eyes, brownies, musleems, smutt-butts, darkies, wet-backs, Ban-Cans, high-yellers, jews, japs, slant-eyes, blue-gums, poo-recons, gooks, halfricans, hymies, camel-jockeys, cab-drivers, charlies, chilli-chitters, moors, .6ers, wagon-burning geronimos or zipperheads that means I am a racist ?
Dang, I would have never fiqured that out by myself.
You all laughed at me when I said brown people women and homosexuals gang up on white men.
WHO THE EXPLETIVE IS LAUGHING NOW??????
Stupid white men
The Democratic party shouldn’t abandon its progressive agenda in pursuit of white male voters. For one thing, it doesn’t need them.
…
“Ignore the fact that white men are demographic losers, composing just 33-36% of the US electorate, and quickly being overtaken by the burgeoning population of college-educated single women and people of color, both groups that prefer the Democratic party.
…
If some white men can’t deal with the changing face of the Democratic party, it’s OK to let them go.”
commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/dana_goldstein/2007/10/white_male_voters.html
@rabbit:
Actually, the word that occurred to me was “cunning.” I suspect that the politically-correct’ers have sized up the high-achieving students as gullible fools, who can be strung along by a valid reasoning process with faulty premises. (And, of course, there’s intimidation for those skeptical enough to question the premises.)
dmr:
The thinking is quite horrific, isn’t it? Here’s a proof of my racism:
1. By definition, a racist is a person of whiteness.
2. I am a person of whiteness.
3. Therefore I am a racist. (QED)
Or if you prefer a more complicated proof:
1. A white person that believes they are a racist is a racist.
2. A white person that doesn’t believe they are a racist is really a racist.
3. I am a white person.
4. I either believe or don’t believe that I am a racist.
5. Therefore I am a racist. (QED)
Such is the state of scholarship in university humanities departments these days. Since such “thinking” is indefensible, it requires, as you say, overt intimidation (i.e., the threat of denial of education) to get students to swallow this crap.
I’ve gotta think that in more than a few cases, this line of reasoning is going to backfire. “What? I’m a racist, just by virtue of my being white, and there’s nothing I can do about it? Fine. I’m a racist. Where’s some brown people I can oppress?”
FIRE recently posted on their site their response to the Vice President for Student Life’s disingenuous denial.
It completely shreds his moronic pretense that the program is benign.
Here it is.
FJ:
I agree. It mirrors the situation a decade or more ago when many humanity departments embraced post-modernism, which says in part that all truth is relative and personal.
Then they realized that if all “personal truth” is valid, then it’s valid for white supremicists as well, which is not exactly the result they were looking for.
Of course anyone with an ounce of sense could have seen that one coming right from the get go. Which is to say, they didn’t.
Mockery is sometimes the only appropriate response. I like the “to stupid to…” retort…
“If you believe that, you must be to stupid to feed yourself.”
“If you believe that, you must be to stupid to understand toilet paper.” *
“If you believe that, you must be to stupid to procreate.” *
*Bowlderized versions
@Farmer Joe: Actually, the specific point I was making was that these lines of ‘discourse’ work best at suckering those with very high SAT scores. Mensans tend to swallow the bait easily; a group of stright white males with more horse sense would see through it more easily.
(Come to think of it, if anyone down in the U.S. wants to repay cunning with a sneak, I note that the farmers have been given the short end of the shrift by the general culture ever since H.L. Mencken hit his peak back in the 1920s. “Cultural victimization” may be hard to swallow, but it can go a long way…)
RA =resident Apparatchik.
This is swful, like the Great Leap Forward and collectivisation.
The president of U of Delaware has just announced the suspension of the program. See here:
http://www.thefire.org/index.php/article/8585.html
Undoubtedly this is due to the bad publicity from SDA. Okay, maybe not.
I’ve seen this many times while following FIRE. I don’t know whether university presidents act so quickly because they can’t tolerate injustice once it’s brought to their attention, or because they have the backbone of an tape worm.
My guess is that university lawyers told the president that he would be spending the rest of his life in litigation if he didn’t do something now.
Penny? here it is?? What? Here is….?? What?
Pursuant to the above, here’s the final sentence in the president’s announcement:
Vice President Gilbert will work with the University Faculty Senate and others to determine the proper means by which residence life programs may support the intellectual, cultural and ethical development of our students.
I think they should be concentrating on the ethical development of the administration. A course on civil rights would be a good place to start.
Jeff’s a moron—sorry about the ad hominem, but it’s true. E.g., Teachers, especially majority culture ones (unless they’re homosexual), are altogether at the mercy of non-white or other “minority” students, who have learned that, not only can they behave in the most egregious manner and get away with it, they can go even further: “Frame the Teacher”‘s a game (for certain subsets of them). SAY to administration that a teacher did such and such and see the teacher get in trouble. It’s easy, it’s fun! (Here! In Canada! I’m not kidding!) And, even if the student—usually the lowest common denominator type—eventually gets caught out, hey, no problem: there ARE no consequences. (Kids are observant: they know low risk from high risk.)
I know of a situation, which can be replicated over and over, of an unreliable, trouble making (female) student “of colour”—there are lots of them: whoops! I guess that’s a “racist” comment—who lied about the (heterosexual, married) teacher’s behaviour. (“She touched my arm” [Oh, my GOD!]: she didn’t. There were witnesses.) Although the result of the “strong-arming” (excuse the pun) that I’m going to document is more extreme than most, the casual AND calculated lie telling, which is taken seriously by administration, is not. It’s epidemic.
The teacher was told there was an allegation—no details were provided—and forthwith, escorted from the building and left, in limbo at home (with pay: only right), with no communication from admin., for weeks. I don’t know what the final outcome was, but, from experience, even if it’s established that the teacher was entirely innocent of any wrongdoing—as is the case almost 100% of the time—the minority student will get off scott free: not even an apology, let alone a consequence.
And jd, thinks “whitey” gets what he/she deserves. Please . . .
800 thousand blacks killed in Rawanda by racist very black “white” guys!!!!!
my oldest grand daughter is 1/2 black. She has experienced a lot of racism, all of it directed at her by blacks. She now appears to reject her “black” heritage, and by the crap kate posted, it will probably get worst for her!!!!
People who are truly affronted by the University of Delaware’s program to re-program its students in residence need to get beyond glib comments about “who’s a racist now?” and do some serious thinking about an ideology that runs throughout our entire education system.
The statements about “white guilt”, diversity and oppression that are so obviously nonsensical to people living in the real world, (Where some people are actually racists, and some people are not racists) are accepted as a necessary truth by those who live in the academic world. These are not stupid people – they are Phd’s, teachers, and professionals and they are training the next generation into their ideas.
It is only a small comfort that Delaware will cancel the resident life program, since these same students will be bombarded with the same types of ideas in their university classrooms, especially if they study social sciences like psychology, anthropology, sociology and social work. They will be pressured and shamed in the exact same way, and all the more persuasively since the dogma is presented to them by their respected professors. Sure, they may laugh at first, or protest that it doesn’t make sense, but to resist, they will have to push against the full weight of a faculty which tolerates no dissent from its accepted doctrines. On top of that, the students will have almost no exposure to any other views of politics, or society. Most of the students will decide that it is better to conform, and will come out four years later as indocrinated instead of educated individuals.
Whatever we think about the University of Delaware, I do not doubt that the situation in Canadian universities is even more dire. At least in the United States, there are highly valued constitutional concepts such as freedom of conscience and religion and freedom of speech, which can be used to challenge such re-education programs. I don’t think that our current Canadian constitution carries any such weight.
The only way to tackle the re-programmers is to recognize that they take their philosophy seriously, and to mount a serious intellectual response. (Sorry guys, but we need something a lot deeper than “I know a black guy who is racist” gain-saying) The great strides against racism and sexism that were accomplished in the Civil Rights revolution were based on very different ideas and values than the current intellectual fads and politically correct identity politics of modern academia. Our students need to know that there are other ways of looking at these issues ways that will make them proud of Canada’s heritage of western liberal democracy and Judeo-Christian values.
lookout: Have you every read Franz Kafka’s “The Trial”? If not, after reading your account of the teacher sent home and told nothing, now might be a good time!
OLD JOKE FROM THE ’90s:
Q: What’s the definition of a racist?
A: A white guy winning an argument with a liberal.
MODIFIED JOKE FOR 2007:
Q: What’s the definition of a racist?
A: A white guy
mhb23re
at gmail d0t calm