Not Really All My Fault

One of the graduation requirements at my alma mater is successful completion of a Diversity course--unless your field is Education, in which case it's two Diversity courses.

My Diversity in Education course was taught by an older, rather bitter Latina woman. Her lectures taught us in detail about the history of progress in American education, from schools for rich white males in New England to the one-room country schoolhouse to Plessy v. Ferguson to Brown v. Board of Education to IDEA. She made the information clear and easily accessible.

Her lectures, rather predictably, were also liberally seasoned with righteous indignation about the state of minorities in the nation, leftist political diatribes, and thinly-veiled race-baiting, all in the name of making sure we (primarily white) students knew just how good we had it.

The class ended not with a final exam, but with a final paper, in which we were to summarize in 10-15 pages all the key ideas, events, and developments we had learned about that semester. In essence, she wanted us to parrot back to her everything she'd said in the previous 15 weeks.

So that's what I did. I typed and turned in a twelve page paper explaining, in historical and educational terms, what was wrong with our society and why I, as a middle-class straight white Christian male, was responsible for most of it.

I got good grades on the paper and in the class, so I can only assume the professor agreed with my assessment. And that's the problem.

I recognize that we need to have a serious, heartfelt, and effectual conversation about race in America.

But if you're going to start that conversation by saying, "You're white, therefore you're the problem," as so many media outlets and Internet pundits have done in the past several days*, then count me out.

Not all white people are vile oppressors, and not all people of color are innocent, helpless victims. And if we start the conversation with these stereotypes, we're never going to accomplish anything.

So carry on with all the racially-charged assumptions, if you'd like--or if you can't come up with anything better to say. And once you've exhausted all that nonsense, then let's have a serious conversation.

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*Until yesterday's Supreme Court decision changed the subject du jour from race to sexuality, that is. But never fear. I'm sure the racemongers will be back in force in a week or two.