It never seems to end, does it? If you are white (which the majority of Americans still are, and even afterwards will be the majority minority), you are guilty of all kinds of sins and evils simply because, not of your character, but by simple dint of your skin’s tint. It seems from politics to the arts to the media and academia, if you are low on melanin, you are automatically The Oppressor regardless of what you haven’t done (or your ancestors – after all, what kind of a guilt party is to be had if SJWs can’t haul in your entire family tree into their fiery rage?). Conscious, unconscious, be outright like the Klan or polite as all get out, “you will be made to care” (H/T: Erick Erikson) and be guilty because DIVERSITY! And SOCIAL JUSTICE! And POSTCOLONIALISM! And RAGE! And….you get the picture. The SJW chains of Oppression are out for anyone that disagrees with them.
And here comes this screed by a “chip on her shoulder” Reshmi Dutt-Ballerstadt who has decided to provide a list of “tails you lose, heads you’re guilty” observations,
Are You Supporting White Supremacy?
For faculty of color, women and particularly those scholars who are outspoken about dismantling the master narratives of white supremacy within our colleges and universities, playing by the rules is neither an option nor an obligation…After many years and many battles, and after much thought, I have created a list of qualities and attributes of those that overtly or covertly support or contribute to a culture of mundane and everyday white supremacy within our institutions. Such mundane acts manifest themselves in who is hired, who is tenured and promoted, whose scholarship is (de)valued, who receives the campus awards for teaching and service, whose voice is heard, whose ideas are policed, who is tone policed, and who is called out as not being “civil” — a coded word for speaking against the status quo of white privilege. Participating in acts that enable white supremacist structures to exist obstructs the social justice and antiracist work that many of us are trained to do within the academy. We are marked as troublemakers when in truth we are trouble identifiers. Here then is a list of 15 “troubles” that I have identified to help others in academe recognize your (un)conscious contributions to white supremacy.
- You work in a position of power in a predominantly white institution, and while you claim to be working for social justice, you do nothing to change the white supremacist power structures within your departments, committees and institutional decision-making process.
- When your colleagues who are marginalized complain to you about their “oppressive” work conditions, you think that they are difficult.
- When your colleagues and students claim that they experienced microaggressions, your response is “I am so sorry. This is unbelievable!”
- When you are asked to nominate your students and faculty colleagues for awards or leadership positions, your first instinct is to nominate those that are “stellar” (mostly men) and obviously “white.” It doesn’t occur to you that you are implicitly supporting a logic of meritocracy that is built on this racist assumption that everyone has had the same access and opportunities.
- When it comes to understanding your own white privilege, you get very angry if a faculty member of color points out to you where and how your privilege is operating. You deem such critiques as “uncivil” and as not supporting a collegial environment.
- You are aware of the many wrongs that you see your institution is doing to your marginal faculty and students, and while you sympathize with people of color and marginal students and faculty members behind your closed door, you never openly confront your institution.
- When a professor of color stands up in your faculty meetings and expresses their frustrations about inequity, you go to your trusted colleagues (the next day) and ask, “Why is s/he or them always so angry?”
- When you are on a hiring committee, you think that the writing samples by your white candidates of choice are stellar, while what is “stellar” about the candidates of color is, of course, their ethnicity.
- You never fail to articulate publicly your commitment for increasing diversity within your institution, but when on a hiring committee you express your strong hesitance to let go of your stellar candidate in exchange for a candidate who you perceive as only adding to your institution’s diversity mission.
- When people of color (faculty members and students) complain to you about discrimination and racism, you actively discourage them to report their cases, and often try to convince them that “it must be a misunderstanding.”
- You think of yourself as an ally to your faculty of color colleagues, but cannot understand why your white students are so upset when professors of color teach and critique sites of white privilege.
- In your institutional reviews for tenure and promotion cases, you advise and critique your faculty of color colleagues to be more sensitive and mindful in respecting the viewpoint of our students. By “our students” you really mean “our white students.”
- You benefit so much from the system that you have decided to stay out of all of this “identity politics.”
- You have never thought of yourself as an ally to any of the causes of faculty of color and you never have any time to go to any events that they and other marginal folks have organized (where they express their everyday struggles). But you will happily go to an event if Ta-Nehisi Coates is speaking in town.
- Claudia Rankine, Frantz Fanon, Aimé Césaire and Teju Cole’s “The White-Savior Industrial Complex” — all rub you the wrong way.
If you have made it to this point, you are probably feeling quite hypervisible or fragile and have decided to have some hot chamomile tea from a cup that reads “White Tears” or “Black Lives Matter.”
Actually, I think this list is hilarious in its feeble characterizations – if this is what passes as high brow in the academia, man, how standards have fallen. This is simply wrapped around one simple concept: whites are bad, you are a traitor if you don’t support minorities (and doubleplusungood if you are a minority – how DARE you not stick with identity politics – and know your place in it!
Sorry, but this doesn’t even rise to the low level that Mom could muster on a bad day with the flu and a 102 degree temp and hadn’t eaten for a couple of days. Simply pathetic. Do I feel guilty? Not a whit – and nor should anyone else. Frankly, this is about par for the course of these nitwits – they DEPEND on someone else has already set the stage and punctured “your bubble”. That’s only possible if you are predisposed to be guilty in the first place.
Which, I’m not. I have no reason to feel guilty about things and actions I haven’t done – regardless those silly arguments that I have even if I’m not “aware” that I have. I’m not bowing to nor playing that game in which the SJW linguistics bonds automatically are supposed to have me hanging my head. The dirty little mind tricks they want to brainwash you into believing is:
- you are guilty regardless of what you think
- you are guilty for your entire collective race going back to B.C. times (just for good measure).
Sorry, that’s not how Normal life works – I’ll admit to being guilty for things that *I* have done and not those to which you impugn to me and certainly to nothing that any one or any other group has done (in reality or out of some feverish accusation of some moonbat). Trying to do so will only cause a coughing fit simply because I’ll be laughing so uproarishly. Really, that’s the only tool they have in their box because if they want to ban me from something, well, the only reason I’d want to be there is to send you into a rage simply because of my presence. Well, darlings, you have once again set yourself up to ridicule – well deserved and you only have yourself to blame. I’m betting it goes well within your own clique, but out here, not so much.
Sidenote: PostColonialism? Is this a new thing in the Academy where the politics are so high because the stakes are so low that they reach for any outcropping for any kind of “new” angle? Is this just another grievance arrow in their quiver? Sheesh….
(H/T: Inside Higher Ed)
