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Anti-Racism Mania at Elite Private Schools
For over half a century America has struggled to improve race relations and progress is modest, at best. But optimism soldiers on although failure only seems to breed desperation. A recent New York Times article recounts the latest crackpot panacea. The article tells how wealthy white children enrolled in some of New York City’s toniest and expensive private schools are being detoxified of their poisonous white racism. The message is that these youngsters must develop “anti-racist thinking” as a skill, a competency necessary for the 21st century. It exaggerates only slightly to compare this process with Maoist self-criticism where people publicly confessed to crimes, many imaginary, and then admit remorse as the first step in “voluntarily” embracing the party line (see here).
Typical was a daylong session (“A Day of Concern”) at Manhattan’s upscale and largely white Friends Seminary where speakers lead the workshop discussion about social justice and its relationship to racial/ethnic identify, gender, and most of all, privilege and power. According to Derrick Gay, a professional diversity consultant who led the discussion, the exercise was to help students escape their racial/ethnic “bubble” that hinders them in a global society. Mr. Gay explained that everyone has an identity, for example, lesbian or Jewish and society does not value all identities equally. But that is nobody’s fault -- you just must be aware of the inequality.
Elsewhere comparable elite schools held discussions, often in all-white groups, about unearned (white) skin privilege, white racism and dominance (see here and here and here among others). A particularly hot topic is white micro-aggression -- how whites unconsciously, often with the best of intentions, repeatedly harm people of color, for example, compliment black students for a high test score that would not draw praise if the student were white. Some schools send students to the annual White Privilege Conference where they examine privilege and oppression to help build a more equitable world. ...
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