Eric Suwall, Minot

I was intrigued by a recent letter to the editor titled, All Racism is Evil. Could it be that a fellow Minotian was concerned about the continued racism that pervades our nation? Unfortunately, the editorial was a wolf-in sheep’s-clothing, for the racism that the author considered evil is apparently the pervasive racism against white people. White Americans face systemic racism, and our country would be a better place if we were all just treated equally regardless of skin color

The first boogey-man Andrew Allis deploys is the dangerous threat of Cultural Marxist Critical Race Theory (CMCRT). As an academic who has studied and taught political theory and philosophy for over 20 years, it has been news to me that CMCRT is so pervasive in American classrooms. Surely we discuss theory and methodology in college courses (mostly at the graduate level, and then approaches like phenomenology, hermeneutics and positivism), but CMCRT has never been on my or any of my colleagues syllabi. I’ve since investigated state curriculums across the country to see if primary school teachers are instructing students in CMCRT, but so far, no examples have been found beyond unverified tales. It is almost like CRT is not a real thing, but is instead a straw man invented by conservative media to gin up ratings and further pit Americans against one another.

But let’s say CMCRT exists within the public school curriculum, and American children are being taught about entrenched racism in our country. Do conservatives really believe that racism has played no part in America’s history, and that their children are better off being ignorant of our past? Would white people sincerely claim that minorities have had the same opportunities in this country as white Americans? Let’s consider this further. Imagine that 7 generations ago, your white ancestors were removed from their homes, shipped across the ocean, and forced to work to enrich brown people. Your decedents accrued no wealth to pass on to their children. Even after this practice ended, your grandparents and parents faced decades of laws keeping them segregated and confined to 3rd rate facilities. After all that, you would be content to pretend these evils never happened, or that they had any lasting consequences?

All of this aside, let’s look at some of the example Allis provides to demonstrate the evil pervasiveness of anti-white racism. He lists first Coca-Cola’s Human Resources Department’s “Diversity, Inclusion, & Equity” (DIE) program, which supposedly contained an anti-white video employees were forced to watch. Interestingly, there is no actual evidence that Coca-Cola produced the video in question, or mandated that employees watch it. Yes, a video on “confronting racism’ exists, and yes it is accessible through a “DIE” instructor’s LinkdIn profile; but that hardly makes it some sort of forced learning. Moreover, the entire point of this non-mandated video was to help white people understand and be aware of inherent racism. It is beyond naive to believe that (to paraphrase Avenue Q) we aren’t all a little bit racist. Even as a liberal, accepting person, I occasionally find familiar tropes from my youth popping into my mind. I regularly hear people who claim not to be racist saying things like, “I’m not racist, but…” followed by an extremely racist comment. I realize this last bit is anecdotal, but when you live in a country where minorities are disproportionally shot by police, incarcerated, harassed, and ghettoized and then claim that racism does not exist, you are being willfully ignorant.

Let me quickly address some other examples Allis provides: The Smithsonian African American Museum “Whiteness Chart.” This chart highlighted categories where whites had historical dominance in America, things like the narrative of history, proper religious practices, family structure, the size and composition of the nuclear family (2.3 kids!), stereotypes for beauty, etc. Are white people truly oblivious to the fact that these qualities describe white Americans more so than they do minority Americans? When black people engaged in hard work, specifically pre-1960, they were paid less or not paid at all. Their hard work enriched white America. Beauty standards predicated on fair skin and straight hair did not describe black women; rather, it made them feel inferior to whites. I could spend paragraphs on the 14 categories the Whiteness Chart addressed, but the key point is that it was not a malicious document. Rather, it was intended to help us direct our gaze inward, and assess how seemingly small details about how we frame our lives can convey a stigmatization of the other. Also, it was at the Smithsonian African American Museum, an institution intended to help us understand the black experience in America!

I could go on about how Allis’s examples of reverse discrimination are actually examples of fear-mongering by a surprisingly sensitive and easily triggered cohort of conservatives, but in the interest of space I will skip to the last egregious anti-white program he mentions: Pfizer’s prestigious Breakthrough Fellowship. Allis is aggrieved that whites and Asians are barred from applying to a program specifically created for disadvantaged groups — a barrier that should not be surprising given that the entire point of this fellowship is to increase minority representation at Pfizer, specifically for Black, Latino, and Native Americans. Is it so terrible for a private corporation to want to increase diversity within its workforce? Are we really to believe that white people have had it so hard in America that they too need a targeted program to get ahead? The goal of Pfizer’s fellowship is to help 100 young adults succeed through mentoring, scholarships, summer internships, and finally a job after they have proven themselves. I thought these were American values. I also thought that corporate America is free to do what it wants to help their (future) employees, but a diversion in to conservative free-market hypocrisy is a book in itself.

While CRT is not a pervasive curriculum intent on reprogramming white American youth, some of the ideas contained within that blanket term are real and need to be addressed. If white people refuse to even admit that slavery and Jim Crowe-era laws have had pernicious effects on millions of people, then clearly they need a little more exposure to history. Perhaps they would get some insight from reading books by authors like Toni Morrison; however, her work is being banned from secondary schools across the country because it reveals the uncomfortable realty of the black experience in America: slavery and discrimination existed for generations and the legacy of those institutions still lingers, not only on minority bodies, but also on their very sense of self. Imagine if you can that your great, great grandparents were forced to work without compensation and against their will to enrich a different race of people. All the wealth generated from that free labor was denied to you, but given to people who did not work for it. The amount of grievance within the white republican party over just being asked to reflect on the plight of others should tell you what their reaction would be. Not only would conservative white Americans be demanding reparations, they would probably be demanding it with the barrel of a gun.