Un-Fair: A Guest Post by Ol' Remus of the Woodpile Report

[Ol' Remus, who operates the weekly Woodpile Report, was a valued and popular contributor at Eternity Road. The following is a Guest Appearance, which I can only hope augurs many others -- or perhaps regular status as a Contributor here at Liberty's Torch!]

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A small reference at the Drudge Report entitled "University sponsors race campaign; 'Unfair to be white'..." attracted ol' Remus's attention. He's seen this before.

Some time ago the University of Delaware quietly stepped back from White Privilege when it revealed itself to be a mandatory indoctrination program modeled after the Stalinist self-flagellation sessions of the Soviet gulag. The Maoist notion of Reform Through Labor is also at play, the "labor" being on-campus proselytizing. Walter Williams of George Mason University has a short summary of the outrage at University of Delaware in his 2007 column, Academic Cesspool II, although the depravity of the experience can only be appreciated by investigating it more closely.

There's been another outbreak, this time at the University of Minnesota at Duluth, one of those improbable "normal school-becomes state teachers college-becomes state university" makeovers of the recent era, complete with "halls" and "chairs" to bedazzle its undemanding customers. UMD offers a Doctor of Education program. That's it. Go Bulldogs.

UMD Chancellor Lendley Black's kickoff rhetoric—"a major campus initiative to create an inclusive campus climate for all who learn and work at UMD", and "engaging the UMD community in a growing number of workshops to increase awareness and skills related to equity and diversity"—are an eerie replay of the unlamented University of Delaware debacle. To all appearances Chancellor Black fits the common model of academia, educated beyond their intelligence and promoted beyond their competency, although to be fair he may be suffering the onset of a neurodegenerative disease or have some other exculpatory condition. Chancellor Black has a PhD in "theatre" and sometimes has himself photographed in academic costumery suggesting the regalia of an Aztec priest or Cosimo de' Medici's valet. UMD is truly prepared ground.

At UMD the White Privilege scheme goes by the name Un-Fair. White Privilege, which urges the white race "be abolished", is a project closely identified with Noel Ignatiev who also introduced the slogan "treason to whiteness is loyalty to humanity" in his journal Race Traitor. Mr. Ignatiev starts with the koan-like proposition that race is a social construct with no basis in biology, then he goes on to propose the white race victimizes the black race by the mere fact of its existence. Convoluted contradiction only begins to describe it. White Privilege demands more than little Becky prove her contrition with tangible service, more than affirmative action, more even than reparations. It demands limitless subservience in all things, although it's understood the curse of whiteness will remain unredeemed.

No comparable program to "abolish the black race" is offered nor is "treason to blackness" mentioned, seemingly required if race were but a vile construct. In fact, reciprocity in any form, at any level, is condemned outright. Good will, mutual respect and common decency are specifically rejected by White Privilege so we have to look elsewhere for a motive. Divide and Demoralize comes to mind, and sure enough, Mr. Ignatiev's bona fides confirm it.

Mr. Ignatiev left the Communist Party to form the Provisional Organizing Committee to Reconstitute the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party in the 1960s and was a prominent activist in the SDS and the Maoist New Communist Movement. The Harvard Graduate School of Education accepted Mr. Ignatiev in 1985, presumably on these credentials as he did not have an undergraduate degree, and was awarded—they say earned—a doctorate in 1995. He's currently embedded as a professor of history in the otherwise estimable Massachusetts College of Art.

There will come a time when the University of Minnesota at Duluth will be fumigated as is, apparently, the University of Delaware, but the nasty ill-will of White Privilege ensures an unhappy and contentious campus until the purges begin.

These are the relevant sites:

• Campus Reform UMD site, exposing the campus Un-Fair campaign
• Chancellor Black of UMD, web page endorsement of White Privilege
• Un-Fair, website
• Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, website