Iowa legislators have worked hard to help eradicate so-called Diversity, Equity and Inclusion rooted in ideas like Critical Race Theory from the state’s universities. Time will tell whether their efforts are successful, but it seems legislators are up against a system that works against them.
For instance, a person called Gregory R. Thompson serves as the Director of Residence Education at the University of Iowa. dissertation at the University of Iowa is titled “How do we get White people to understand, this isn’t a community for you.” The dissertation was intended to provide “critical perspectives on the impact of whiteness on black residential communities.”
The document claims that historically white institutions of higher education are structured on whiteness, thus disadvantaging black students systematically. Black student housing communities are considered necessary “counter-spaces” for survival and success where white culture dominates the environment. Even when white administrators and student affairs professionals see themselves as allies, the dissertation critiques them for reinforcing whiteness.
Thompson’s dissertation states that “whiteness was quite literally property” throughout the era of higher education’s establishment in the United States.
“While the existing literature about the experiences of black students calls attention to a history of exclusion and oppression, it often fails to address that whiteness continues to perpetuate problematic and systemic discrimination in modern times,” the paper states. “Black students experienced the oppression of whiteness while being excluded from higher education; oppression that continued even when access to college was given.”
It also claims that white spaces are hostile.
“Populations of black students who live on-campus at historically white institutions may find integrated residence hall spaces to be an extension of their everyday experiences with racism on campus, a result of institutional failures at confronting legacies of exclusion and modern effects of systemic oppression. Confronting racist systems, enduring racial bias and continually educating white peers on concepts related to racial equity and justice lead to racial battle fatigue and increased mental health concerns, illustrating the need for places students can be free, even if temporarily, of racial oppression perpetuated by whites.”
While communities may be created and designed by black students, because historically white institution campuses are overwhelmingly white and largely staffed by whites, the paper claims that those communities created by black students are supported and administered by professionals who “hold racial biases and underlying conceptions of white supremacy that ultimately reinforce institutional systems of oppression, even when paired with good intent or allyship.”
White student affairs administrators, it states, “unintentionally reinforce whiteness and systems of oppression” even though they may purport to possess awareness or claim identity as racial justice allies.
Black students are “repeatedly burdened” because they have to serve as “teachers and educators for their white peers” and confront and correct racist comments. The paper cites McGee and Stovall as saying “constant racial microaggressions and stereotyping are a form of racial assault on black students, contributing to racialized trauma that influences students’ abilities to persist and succeed in their collegiate experience.”
The dissertation argues that black-only residential spaces are necessary and justified in response to so-called systemic racism.
An argument could be made that, despite the denial, the dissertation actually endorses racial segregation.
You can read the dissertation here.
If there is a problem inherent to alleged whiteness, it stems from, pre-arrival to school, the leftest modus in education of treating blacks as special needs, not having the same standards apply, creating if not a masked inferiority complex a resentment attitude. Leftist has ruined much of the black community. The disertation woukd seem to bring ghettoization to campus.
Good to continually be reminded what is going on. Why anyone would willingly choose to put their student into this anti whiteness and racist system is beyond anything I can imagine. Yes, college age students are of age and can make their own choices. Unfortunately the brain conditioning (not thinking) that has taken place in our government schools since preschool, all but precludes anything that aligns with our “We the People” and American Constitutional values, not to mention Christian principles. The government can declare there will be no Critical Race Theory or practices in our government schools, but unless there is absolute surveillance and consequences for transgressing this order, our students will have Christian parental values and free speech unprotected during every step of their educational process. Schools call it a different name but it is the same thinking processes. DO NOT enroll your students in government schools.