Along with cultural appropriation!
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.
Whiteness ain’t a privilege; it’s a gift from God.
I agree.
Why do other races consider themselves inferior? I feel sad for them if they feel that way but I am not feeling any guilt for being white.
The only solutiin is to isolate whites and keep them away from poisoning all the minorities. Something is needed to make sure they are seperate but equal. But not as equal as blacks.
White privilege is taught by whites full of self hate. Its just another attempt to destroy America and western civilization.
Then, it is time to band together and make sure the little guy gets the best education possible.
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Blacks have been given priority for 30+ years but they just haven’t advanced it much. It’s no one’s fault but their own. They should not be given any advantages any longer.
“Terrible resolve II” now in pre-release
"Reverse racism" it itself racist. It associates racism with whites in particular, implying that whites as a group are inferior to other races in practicing racial tolerance.
Hahahaha. We should have just enslaved the Indians. They were literally everywhere. Hahaha.
We can't really be honest about it, or we would get banned.
Talk about insanely jealous and covetous.
When my white ancestors arrived in Canada they were refugees in a camp near Montreal for several years...
then when the American Revolution ended they were given a hoe and some seeds to start life over...
their white privilege was lost back in the cabins they had built and the land they had cleared from the wilderness back in Pennsylvania....
But they started again...built a cabin, cleared the land...
and managed to build the first grist mill and saw mill in Ontario...parts of which are still standing..(now called Peter Secord’s Mill, in St David’s)
Gee how on Earth did those poor little snowflakes manage to accomplish so much after other big bad white men stole their stuff and drove them out of the US ???
I cant pork chops in a downtown Amman supermarket...
What to do ???
The teacher’s name sounds like he /she is from India. The teacher is not from a family with 200 plus years in Canada. These liberal socialists are into justifying more and more foreigners from countries that neither we nor Canada allowed to immigrate to our countries years ago. I look around Nashville and slowly the Caucasians are becoming the minority. I have never seen so many white girls with black babies. I look back at the wars of this nation and it has been us the white folks who have done the dying in every war at a percentage higher then the so called minorities. In Vietnam the left tried their propaganda about how only poor whites and mostly blacks did the fighting and dying. The truth is that whitey again did more of the dying then his percentage of the population. AA came to the Army in 70, and; I recall by 1973 the black Captain who went to college the same years I did with only one tour in RVN got orders to ROTC from our advanced course class. I had to go to Korea as two one year tours was normal for Infantry CPT’s. I do not recall a single black Infantry officer RIF in late 1972 or in 1975. Perhaps some were. I can state minorities have better odds at getting into nearly every elite college in America with even less then A’s and a 1500 plus SAT score. Something is very wrong with the socialists throwing Christianity out of schools and not only allowing Muslim prayer, but; also teaching that evil prayer to kids. We must take our country back. These liberal activist judges are infecting our nation and the teachers unions are brainwashing kids.
I have to go to the Russian store to find the food I grew up with as a kid whose dad was in a Japanese concentration camp in China when he was a kid. I have some of the same hangups that many second generation kids of parents who were in concentration camps have. This is my white privilege.
Agree.
White privilege is having an IQ over 85.
The white privilege thing is, of course, the natural outcome of a superior intellect and an inborn incentive to achieve. We have to ask, where would Africa or Africans be without western influence? We know the answer and they know the answer. Black Lies Matter, really are lies. Cassius Clay once honestly stated, “I’m sure glad my granddaddy got on that boat.”
Same here. I can get Jamaican meat pies and pigeon peas in the freezer cases at Walmart. No haggis, though ... not even formed, breaded haggis-bits.
I don't think the fact that every store has potatoes reflects Irish (or Incan) "privilege." It's just that potatoes are cheap, travel well, and last a long time.
“In this case the young man pointed out that he had easy access to Jamaican food but no access to Scots food”
McDonald’s?
I find black privilege vexing. Why are there no Popeye’s chicken in my area? I love it but have to go far to get it.
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