June 30, 2003

The Real Meaning Of 'Whiteness Studies'

By Sam Francis

On the same day that the U.S. Supreme Court unbosomed its wisdom on why whites should allow special privileges to less qualified non-whites in admissions to elite law schools, the Washington Post published a huge front-page story on the merits of college courses designed to instigate racial guilt into whatever white students are still permitted to enroll.

If this little double whammy doesn't tell whites that something important is going on that they might want to find out about, it's not clear what will send that message. [“Hue and Cry on 'Whiteness Studies'; An Academic Field's Take on Race Stirs Interest and Anger,” By Darryl Fears, [fearsd@washpost.com] Washington Post, June 20, 2003]

The courses, which the Post says are now taught at "at least 30 institutions—from Princeton University to the University of California at Los Angeles," are known as "whiteness studies," and there's very little pretense as to their true purpose—"to change how white people think about race," as the Post describes it.

The purpose, you understand, is not to instruct with knowledge about race, but to change what people think about race; not to change how whites and non-whites think about race but to change how white people think about race; and (most importantly) to make certain that the white people whose thoughts are laundered come out of the wash thinking what they were told to think about race.

The purported assumption is that whites in general harbor all sorts of stereotypes, prejudices, hatreds and other dark mental cargo about other races and that they fail sufficiently to think of themselves as the "privileged" oppressive oligarchy they really are.

One little classroom activity should suffice to show how the courses work.

The instructor lines up all the students and reads out a statement. If the statement applies to you, you step forward.

The only example the story offers is the statement that "you were certain you could get a bank loan whenever you wanted it." As one pathetic young white girl remarked when she heard it, "Oh my God, here we go again." Forward she stepped. [VDARE.COM note: A full list of “privileges” is here.]

The assumption of course is that only whites can get bank loans and non-whites can't. As a white man who was once turned down for a bank loan, I know that's untrue, but what's interesting is that the young white woman, already brainwashed into accepting the assumption, immediately felt guilty about it.

Even if it were true, why should whites feel guilty? Why shouldn't banks prefer to extend loans to people who statistically are more likely to repay them? What is wrong with being unequal at all?

My bet is the courses never explore such questions. More likely, they proceed with their brainwashing on the basis of the unquestioned assumptions of liberalism that have already been drilled into the white students' minds in high school, at church, on television and in popular culture generally—the assumptions that inequality is evil and unnatural, that race doesn't exist anyway, and that the history of whites is one long dark night of repression and terror against their non-white victims.

And if they don't think that by the time the "whiteness studies" catch them, you can be sure they're made to think so by the end of the course.

When one white student said she and a friend visited "a hall reserved for black student affairs" but "didn't feel comfortable," they got a little lecture from one of the black students in the course.

"‘So what?’ said the black student, who "rolled her eyes." ‘I never feel comfortable here. I'm a student at a school where most people are white. The only time I feel comfortable is when I'm at home.’"

The difference of course is this: When the white student didn't feel comfortable among blacks, she left. When the black student doesn't feel comfortable among whites, whites have to change how they feel.

And that's what "whiteness studies" are really about: Who is and who is not in charge, who adapts to whom.

The biggest error of the curricula is their assumption that whites themselves remain in charge—of the universities, the curricula, the legal system, the banks, the country. If they were, these courses wouldn't even exist.

The people who peddle whiteness studies make no pretense about their real purpose: to change how whites think about race so as to make whites feel guilt about who they are and what they or their ancestors have achieved and thereby to destroy whites' capacity to resist being shoved aside by non-whites.

Once that purpose is achieved, non-whites will find the actual seizure of social and political power much easier than simply trying to grab it at the point of a gun.

This used to be called "subversion." Whatever you call it, it is still revolution.

As with any other revolution, however accomplished, it will eventually wind up with the losers facing the guns of the winners.

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