Free Republic

The University of Colorado has sent letters to the 400 students signed up to live next year in the Cheyenne Arapaho dorm — saying they must take a 101 course, or move to another hall. The wide-ranging course explores the history of higher education, and touches on topics including diversity, binge-drinking and the psychology of going away to college... But some professors — who say they support a more tolerant campus — are concerned with how the university is rolling the CU 101 course into its curriculum. Hadley Brown, a newly elected CU student-body president, and the others on her...

Officials with the federal Department of Education are set to hold a conference call with representatives of the Seattle School District to determine if the district violated the law in sending students to a White Privilege Conference in Colorado this month. The timing of the district's exchange with the Department of Education hasn't been decided. A diverse group of 20 students, along with two administrative staff members and at least one teacher, attended the four-day conference, said district spokesman David Tucker. The conference, sponsored by, among others, the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, serves as an opportunity to "examine and...

White people, you're privileged, and guilty, guilty, guilty of oppressing disadvantaged minorities. Denial only makes things worse. This is the message currently emanating from the Seattle School District. Never mind that this dubious construct undercuts needed emphasis on minority student achievement. District officials this month are sending students from four high schools to an annual "White Privilege Conference" in Colorado. The conference is billed as an "opportunity to examine and explore difficult issues related to white privilege, white supremacy and oppression" — "a challenging, empowering and educational experience." The conference has little to do with mastering reading, writing, math and...

Equity and Race Relations White Privilege Conference For the first time, Seattle Public Schools are sending students from four high schools to attend the annual White Privilege Conference, sponsored by the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, the University of Denver, Teaching Tolerance, Study Circles Resource Center, The Matrix, Center for Judaic Studies, GLSEN, and many more organizations. Speakers include Geneva Gay, Peggy McIntosh, Joy Leary, John-Paul Chaisson-Cardenas and many others who are actively engaged in anti-racism. This year's conference takes place in Colorado Springs from April 18th through the 21st. There are workshops designed specifically for youth, as...

A 148-year-old Catholic university may be getting a take on Church traditions that it never bargained for when a new Franciscan friar joins them in the fall. “This weekend we offer prayerful good wishes to Fr. Kyle Haden as he departs for his new assignment at St. Bonaventure University,” read the St. Francis of Assisi church bulletin of July 2nd. “Fr. Kyle leaves us grateful for his ministry here at St. Francis.” “He now looks forward to a new challenge: the opportunity to minister in the field of Franciscan higher education at one of our Franciscan colleges in up-state New...

Katie Fleischer, a senior at the University of Colorado, had just started watching an anti-racist documentary in class one day when something on the TV screen seemed all too familiar. The film, “Blue Eyed,” showed an Iowa schoolteacher with blue eyes giving special treatment to those students who also had blue eyes. “That’s basically what classes are like sometimes,” said Fleischer, 26, a white student who said she has had only white professors. “You go into it and you have a certain background and the professor looks like you, thinks like you. It’s kind of like you’re given a free...

White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack Through work to bring materials from women's studies into the rest of the curriculum, I have often noticed men's unwillingness to grant that they are overprivileged, even though they may grant that women are disadvantaged. They may say they will work to women's statues, in the society, the university, or the curriculum, but they can't or won't support the idea of lessening men's. Denials that amount to taboos surround the subject of advantages that men gain from women's disadvantages. These denials protect male privilege from being fully acknowledged, lessened, or ended. Thinking through unacknowledged...

According to white liberals, I'm really missing the boat. As a supposed benefactor of “white privilege,” a topic that reached its pinnacle in the week leading up to MLK Day, white and black liberals keep telling me how much I have benefited from my whiteness. So, I went on a search to find out the truth about my automatic benefits and discover just how evil I am. A Boston Globe columnist obsessed over the “white privilege” of the Justice Alito nomination to the Supreme Court before going on a (highly off-topic) Bush-bash-fest and signaling his support for abortion-on-demand. As far...

Montgomery College in Maryland is offering a course on the unbearable lightness of being white. Whiteness Studies is intended to stimulate reflection and research into how people "become white." Please, no Michael Jackson jokes. Please. "Course participants will look at changing definitions of 'White' or 'Caucasian' over time; examine how people learn the norms, behaviors, and roles of this status; and address tensions of those who feel 'forced to choose' one label or another." The teacher will be the school's program director of diversity management -- Laura M. White. Yes, White. Her training includes "white privilege" conferences and one titled...

Affirmative Action Grading by Mike S. Adams Townall.com | Dec. 27, 2004 First of all, let me apologize for writing you so late in the year after so many of you have gone home for the semester. Most of you thought that the semester was over and that grades had been finalized, so you didn't expect to get this mass email from your (now former) professor. But, nonetheless, I urge you to read this message carefully. It may mean a change in your grade for the semester that we just finished together.I am writing to you because a student recently...

Out of the many lies that attempt to steer and modify us everyday is the myth of "white privilege." I believe that there is nothing so destructive as this prevarication. It implies that all Caucasians are born with a silver spoon in their mouths and that anything they are given is the result of our "racist" society. This misassumption has created a predisposition among many Caucasians to apologize for everything that they do and to act as if they are lucky to have escaped punishment for crimes they never committed. Let me first unequivocally state that this is the least...

http://www.canopyweb.com/racism/ Students Challenging Racism and (White) Privilege Click Here. The Mission of SCRAP: The purpose of SCRAP is two-fold. First of all, we'd like to communicate a better understanding of racism: how it works on many levels (institutionally and individually), how it functions at the level of everyday assumptions and actions, how White people benefit from the disadvantages of racial/ethnic minorities, and how not discussing or confronting racism is the best way to perpetuate it. Instead of taking a colorblind or "multiculturalist" approach to racism, we would like to promote more awareness of the structures of racism and their relation...