Posted on 05/28/2017 7:37:50 PM PDT by DeweyCA
Justus Walker was enjoying his Grade 11 class in sociology. Then came the lesson on white privilege. The teacher handed out a checklist with instructions for the students to score themselves on how much of it they had. The questions included things such as: “I can go into a supermarket and find the staple foods which fit with my cultural traditions.” The answers would determine their “privilege points.” After they had completed the exercise, the students were asked to line up in order, from least points to most, and discuss the impact of white privilege on their lives.
Some of the questions were hard to answer, because Justus is multiracial – some Scottish, some Jamaican, some Indian, and so on. Which cultural traditions is he supposed to identify with? He doesn’t self-identify by race, ethnic origin, or skin colour. “I just am Canadian,” he says. As for ethnic food, “I can find Jamaican food in a grocery store but I can’t find haggis.”
White privilege is now a part of the Ontario school curriculum. It is taught in teacher training, and is a routine part of anti-bias education. The idea is that white people benefit from unearned advantages based on race. Canada is depicted as a deeply racialized society where people are automatically advantaged, or disadvantaged, by their skin tone, race and (by extension) gender.
Justus and his mom, Karen, were guests this week on Ontario Today, a CBC Radio call-in show that, to its great credit, dared to tackle this incendiary subject. Among the other guests was Arlo Kempf, who has taught anti-discrimination to teachers at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. “Adding the lens of privilege implicates everyone in the conversation,” he explained. “We have to look at those invisible spaces of whiteness where privilege goes unchecked.”
Karen Walker disagrees. “If you took out the word ‘white’ and used any other race, it would be perceived as racist,” she said. “It’s stereotyping in reverse.”
I spoke with Ms. Walker after the program. Other parents in the school were also uncomfortable, she said, but were reluctant to speak up. As a dark-skinned person, she felt she could stick her neck out. “A lot of people are afraid to say that this is racism,” she told me. “But it is.”
Ms. Walker grew up in a small Ontario town where minorities were rare. Her Jamaican father told her she’d have to work harder and do better because she was a woman of colour. But for her, discrimination wasn’t a problem. “I’ve never really felt outside of the Canadian culture.” She hoped that Canada was becoming “the colour-blind society that Martin Luther King advocated for.” Instead, she says, “we’re trying to force people back into these boxes, to the detriment of our kids.”
Canadian schools have long been preoccupied with social justice. As the schools became secularized, they replaced the old doctrines of morality and Christian duty with the new doctrines of multiculturalism, anti-bullying and environmentalism. The doctrine of white privilege entered the Ontario school system around 2013, according to Mr. Kempf. It is a modern version of original sin, which demands confession and atonement – even from people who are deeply anti-racist. “The term implies that whiteness itself is a problem,” Ms. Walker says. “That’s profoundly hurtful.”
Like many other education fads, this one was imported straight from the United States. The questionnaire, developed by an anti-racism activist named Peggy McIntosh, is known as “Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack,” and is nearly 30 years old. It was not modified for Canada, which, in case you hadn’t noticed, is quite a different country.
Most of the callers to the CBC program were not in an atoning mood. They were angry, defensive and dismayed. They pointed out that not all white people are equally advantaged, and cited their own family histories at length. “I have a labouring job because I don’t have Grade 11,” said one caller. “I don’t have privilege. Professors at OISE have privilege.”
No one would argue that privilege doesn’t exist, or that racism is extinct, or that these things don’t matter. Of course they do. But privilege comes in many forms. One of the most important privileges anyone can have – far more important to life outcomes than skin tone – is an intact two-parent family. Too bad they don’t teach that in school. Maybe they should.
The other day I read a tweet from Sunil Sharma, who manages an elite program for budding entrepreneurs at the Founder Institute in Toronto. “40% of my new class of entrepreneurs are women,” he said. “75% of the entire class are minorities.”
So much for white privilege. Time to rip up that lesson and move on.
I hate the term “reverse racism”. Racism is racism.
let me say it one more time: We shoulda picked our own cotton.
“After they had completed the exercise, the students were asked to line up in order, from least points to most, and discuss the impact of white privilege on their lives.”
Or try this exercise.
If you are white, interrupt the female consultant trainer at the next corporate diversity workshop and ask her to “please bring me a glass of cold tea, honey.”
If she sweetly brings the correct beverage, you have white privilege.
If you are fired by close of business that day, you do not have white privilege.
Caution, do not initiate this exercise unless you are independently wealthy.
I was born a poor, “white-privileged” boy, but I won’t play their stupid game. I feel no guilt or shame in who I am.
Both of my parents worked in cotton mills and lived in mill housing.
All of my grandparents did the same thing.
My great-grandparents were all share-croppers.
How do I score my white privilege?
"Can you find foods at the supermarket that fit your cultural heritage?"
Well, I felt like tacos for dinner, but that would be "cultural appropriation".
So I'm a bad boy no matter how I answer.
Obvious this is the hidden "lesson".
And FFS, does EVERY supermarket HAVE to have each and every "cultural food"?
Good grief, every once in a while I like to have something Asian. And they don't carry what I want at Safeway.
So, psssst... I go to an Asian supermarket to get what I desire.
A radical and probably "racist" action to be sure.
But I cannot find certain products EXCEPT at a specialty market.
And BTW, these ethnic markets often DON'T carry anything besides, well, what those folks enjoy either.
Maybe the Asian and Indian markets should be FORCED to carry hamburger meat and hot dogs.
Otherwise it would make them "culturally insensitive" to MY needs.
Where's my lawyer?
"I can't help it that I'm white, this is how God made me!"
When they start an AA program that favors white people, then I will begin to actually be able to count white privilege. Right now, wight folk got to work twice as hard for twice as long to get half as far.
I saw that. Kind of funny actually.
How should he answer?
He could find good and bad to report.
This is so over the top > IMO.
Yep, that drives me nuts more than anything (look at my tagline). What kind of country are we when someone, anyone is above the law? Whatever happened to “equal justice for all”? As a US citizen it is an OBLIGATION of the government to indict and prosecute this woman in a court of law and to have justice served. This is not something where they pick and choose, no no no, it is EQUAL JUSTICE not “some justice”. And BTW, if conservatives want to fight back against all the attacks on Trump, may I suggest we ALL start a campaign to see this criminal bitch indicted and prosecuted once and for all because SHE is the one behind all this Trump/Russia/impeachment crap. Hillary is the one using her political and media contacts to shove this garbage down the publics throat 24/7 and the only way it’s going to stop is when she is LOCKED UP! That should be the #1 focus right now,
I do not see any organized effort to stop this hate. One day my grandchildren will wake up and wonder what happened. The men before us who paid with their lives the freedoms we enjoy today will forever be forgotten.
And what about those people who happen to like foods that are from other cultures?
Am I allowed to eat Pierogi and blue dumplings but not potstickers?
The mom has it right that liberals are trying to force people into little boxes.
They are pushing for minorities (however they define them) to feel isolated, put upon and oppressed. That way they will turn to the benevolent liberal to guide them.
She's right it is racist and we all have to stand up to the hateful 'progressives' pushing this crap.
How to stop these fascist leftist social-engineers?
Mythology.
I totally agree with you. Take a gander at my profile page Clinton Crime List. And, I haven’t even updated it with all her Secretary of State and 2016 campaign felonies yet.
I had lunch today with a friend that said his 4 year old grandson was denied acceptance to an advanced school because he’s white. He had the highest test scores but they gave the position to a black kid.
The white boy is 4 years old and already being discriminated against. I am sick of it.
Then, it is time to band together and make sure the little guy gets the best education possible.
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