How would you feel if you were told that your high school aged child was being forced to attend a White Privilege Conference? Your first reaction might be to ask “what is a White Privilege Conference?” In brief, it’s an indoctrination camp:
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 science; or with graduating from high school and keeping one’s head above water in college. Those are the lessons high-school students should be learning, not that they will be given social promotions in the name of equity and inclusion.
The focus of Seattle Public Schools bureaucracy is clearly political indoctrination, not academics. The district is even planning an “equity summit” in the spring, which White Privilege Conference attendees are to help lead.
What’s the thinking behind this theory of white privilege? For the 2006 conference, a paper by Tobin Miller Shearer (who is white) argued that white people could not enter the kingdom of God unless they confronted the way racism and white privilege shaped their lives and spirituality. He maintained that white people tend to be far too individualistic and need to acknowledge their membership in a group that is unavoidably racist.
If white people are individualistic, then how is it possible that they can be collectively racist? Mr. Shearer can’t have it both ways.
John Hawkins says it’s another reason to support vouchers. I say it’s another reason to homeschool.
