Over on Joanne Jacob's blog, you'll discover a discussion of the evil inanity that is "whiteness studies". Unlike other ethnic-centered courses, which seek to reassure students of the importance of their race and the pride they should take in it, the field of whiteness studies is determined to teach whites to be ashamed of themselves and their forefathers. Whiteness studies advocates teach that the entire concept of "race" (and thus, racism) was invented by whites, and therefore most of the evils of Western Civilization were created by whites who wanted to remain dominant. Whiteness is not something to be celebrated, nor understood, but something to be destroyed.
Joanne's comments are, as always, concise and insightful ("College is about feeling comfortable?"), and her readers' comments are really good too, on topics ranging from AIDS activists who refuse to study science, to the wonders of "electrophallic chemistry". One of the commenters also links to James Hudnall's excellent essay on how whiteness studies is the new racist idea from the left. The fact that most whiteness studies professors are whites isn't lost on him:
Leave it to white liberals and lefties to be the most racist of all. Except their focus is on self hate. And there is nothing more annoying to me is when self haters try to push their agenda on others...What galls me about these morons is that they preach a new form of hate. A hate yourself kind of hate. And why? Because they can then think they're superior to everyone else, because they see themselves as enlightened....
No one gets to choose their parents or their race. This kind of swill is like that original sin nonsense (sorry if you believe in that hocus pocus), the idea that you are born bad and have to be saved by the dogma of some priestly class.
These leftist professors seem themselves as priests, preaching their new dogma. What they are trying to do is fill people's head with self hatred, like their's, so they will follow along when the marching orders from the party officals are bullhorned in.
My take on it? UCLA is one of the universities offering a whiteness course. Meanwhile, one source claims that half of UCLA's incoming freshmen must take remedial English, and the dropout rate for UCLA's minority students is still much higher than that for white students (although it declined after affirmative action was abolished). Is a course designed to teach UCLA's students to hate white people, filled with historical revisionism and ideological ranting, really what those students need to succeed in the academic world?