On Halloween a new club formed at Pomona College, one whose purpose is to help white students “own” their racism, “deconstruct” their Whiteness, and assist them in “dismantling White Supremacy.”
The Claremont Independent reports an ad for the group reads “White people at the 5C’s: we’re all racist. we’re all microaggressive. [W]e are all not only complicit in, but actively perpetuating white supremacy.”
Dubbed “We’ve Got Work To Do: White People for Deconstructing Whiteness,” the club adds that “Pretending that we are not racist and hoping that no one will discover our racism really doesn’t cut it. [W]e need to ACTIVELY be doing work to deconstruct our whiteness (and holding our peers accountable in doing the same).”
Pomona is one of the five Claremont Colleges in southern California.
Though the community is meant to be an open space for the discussion of students’ Whiteness and its negative impacts on people of color, students within the group must be “white people who believe white supremacy exists, whether [they] have owned that [they themselves] are racist or not.” The founder of the group clarified that mixed-race students with a White parent would be able to attend, but only if they had the end goal of deconstructing their learned Whiteness. Additionally, White students who do not believe in White supremacy are not welcome.
MORE: Improve your fight for racial justice by cleansing yourself of ‘toxic whiteness’
“The group is trying to address racism in the white community. We’re not racist and we don’t hate white people,” wrote Kate Dolgenos, a senior at Pomona who joined the organization, in an email to the Independent. “I’m really happy this group has formed and I’m excited to see what we’ll do throughout the semester.”
Not all students are as enthusiastic, however. “While I cannot comment on how the group intends to define and ‘deconstruct’ a white identity, as a cisgendered, politically liberal white male,” Dalton Martin, a junior at Pomona, said, “I feel this group may do less for persons of color rather than more. I feel that trying to codify and effectively martyr an image of white culture detracts from attempts to engage and stand in solidarity with marginalized identities.”
Now there’s a mouthful.
The group’s (private) Facebook page includes a quote from UC Berkeley professor Ian F. Haney López, whose specialty is racism in the US post-Civil Rights era:
Recognizing that White identity is a self-fashioned, hierarchical fantasy, Whites should attempt to dismantle Whiteness as it currently exists. Whites should renounce their privileged racial character, though not simply out of guilt or any sense of self-deprecation. Rather, they should dismantle the edifice of Whiteness because this mythological construct stands at the vortex of racial inequality in America.
These words are taken from the book Critical Race Theory: The Cutting Edge. Critical race theory, as College Fix readers may know, questions things like “attachments” to free speech — because that constitutional right can be a way “of imposing the will of the powerful upon the oppressed.”
MORE: Portland CC’s ‘Whiteness History Month’ lets the silly PC all hang out
MORE: White students undergo ‘deconstructing whiteness’ program at Northwestern U.
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