Muscatine

Don't laugh, they think the same of you............


From the University of Delaware's Office of Resident Life's Diversity Facilitation Training manual from the session of August 14th and 15th, 2007.

Quote:
Racist - 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. By this definition, people of color cannot be racists, because as peoples within the U.S. system they do not have the power to back up their prejudices, hostilities or acts of discrimination.

So, anyone that is white is by definition a racist according to UD.

Peace

Descent


Let's see...descent; the operative word.

European descent: derivation from an ancestor of Europe. Therefore, the human descent comes from the person that comes from Europe as opposed to Europe geographically.

Knowing this, we can certainly conclude that all those Britains that were born in Africa to British Europeans that moved there during the various British ruling periods, certainly qualify. And some of those will certainly be half-black-to-lesser decendants. So those black would have to qualify as racist under this declaration.

But then again, there are black Europeans too....

Oh; the liberal way of thinking of UD!

Therefore, the UD ''absolute'' agrument becomes moot.

''...people of color cannot be racists, because as peoples within the U.S. system they do not have the power to back up their prejudices, hostilities or acts of discrimination.''

Anybody remember the hostilities and discrimination of the Black Panthers?

''This is the twenty-seventh time I have been arrested and I ain't going to jail no more! The only way we gonna stop them white men from whuppin' us is to take over. What we gonna start sayin' now is Black Power!''

Sort of blows UD's totalitarian declaration out the window.

One thought?



There are lots of ways to disagree with this ''manual.'' The notion on which the definition is based starts with the idea that ''race'' is a cultural construct, not a biological or otherwise meaningful distinction. Further, it contends that ''white race'' is a construct aimed at sequestering privilege and power to a particular group. In other words, according to the writer, the term ''white person'' has no meaning outside an attempt to create a distinction between one person and another in order to give privilege and power to one and deny it to another. Therefore, if one says ''I'm a white guy,'' one is implicitly saying ''I'm a member of the dominant, privileged group.'' The more appropriate construct, according to the writer, is to say ''I'm a member of a race--the human race.''

It's an interesting idea, though it's based on historical research that I'm not sure has been interrogated as well as it might be. If every supporting claim in the document is authenticated, it might be worth considering. One thing is certain, no one understands the nature of privilege less than those who hold it. Being able to analyze one's own privilege is far too rare. If the lecture that goes with this manual can help RA's in dorms examine their own roles as ''white people'' in the US, it's probably not a bad thing--though you'd have to take the workshop as a whole (and not just a paragraph from the manual) to make a judgment about its value.

I dissagree

A racist can have no power and still be a racist.

It is just that his/her racism would not be very important as it would not negatively affect the targets of his/her racism in a material manner.