Oh white people, we really are the problem. Isha
Aran wrote about this for Jezebel. Shannon Gibney, a faculty member at
Minneapolis Community and Technical College was leading a discussion in her
Intro to Mass Communication class, when she was interrupted by two white male
students who wanted to talk about race in 2013. One of the students asked,
“It’s like people are trying to say that white men are always the villains, the
bad guys. Why do we have to say this?”
Probably because they have been historically speaking.
Gibney actually tried explaining to them that she wasn’t referring to them
personally, but instead whiteness as a system of oppression, in our culture,
but they clearly didn’t want to understand. In what a frustration I can only
imagine, she quipped, “If you’re really upset, feel free to go down to legal
affairs and file a racial harassment discrimination complaint.”
Of course, because of the mass discrimination against white
men, that exists only in their heads, they did just that. Soon after, Vice
President of Academic Affairs Lois Bollman sent Gibney a letter which expressed
concern over her teaching methods:
“Shannon, I find it troubling that the manner in which you
led a discussion on the very important topic of structural racism alienated two
students who may have been the most in need of learning about this subject…
While I believe it was your intention to discuss structural
racism generally…it was inappropriate for you to single out white male students
in class. Your actions in [targeting] select students based on their race and
gender caused them embarrassment and created a hostile learning environment.”
And here, I thought they focused attention on themselves
because everything has to center on white dudes. I used to hate classes on this
subject with people like this. I have a great example for below. This isn’t the
first time Gibney (or others) have found themselves in this situation trying to
navigate between personal and systematic expressions of oppression. Gibney and
six other professors plan to file an anti-discrimination lawsuit against the
school, which will hopefully restore their voices and authority as faculty
members.
I took one undergrad sociology course at Carroll, and it was
great except this one guy in the class who was white, hetero, cis, and wealthy.
I swear to god he thought our professor was making shit up to target him as if
racism, sexism, and classism is something the women in class conspired with our
professor about. I actually think he walked out once. Why he didn’t just drop
the damn class, I’ll never understand. While I don’t remember a good specific
example of his imaginary persecution I do have a good example from grad school.
I have a master’s in women’s studies, and it was awesome. I have a second
example from grad school when I took a class that was all about intersectionality
called, Race, Class, and Gender. There was a white, cis, hetero, dude who
actually said in one class, “Everyone doesn’t have to go to college.” To which
I could only reply, “But who doesn’t? The same people who have been excluded
thus far or are we going to stop wealthy white dudes from going so poor black
women can?” He didn’t take it well. I agree everyone doesn’t have to go to
college, but let’s be real about who doesn’t get to go…poor people, poor people
of color. This guy in my class immediately got defensive about not being
racist, which I never said anything close too, but I imagine he recognized some
of his argument was rooted in racism even if he doesn’t mean to. I also want to
note, I wasn’t trying to be fingerpointy…I wanted to engage in his logic, and I
wanted to know how this whole thing to would work without being exclusionary. I
wanted to understand, but in the end I didn’t because we couldn’t have a
conversation about this because he got defensive and then folded. Though, he
never agreed with me or the other people in class who raised questions about
his statements. Another example, comes from my women's studies program. I’m not a huge Andrea Dworkin fan, but anyone studying women’s studies has to
read her. One of her theories is that all heterosexual sex that occurs in the
patriarchy is rape. I don’t subscribe to this theory, but that doesn’t mean it
is without merit or valuable in some ways. My class was about a half and half
split between queer and hetero women (all women of course). Some of the hetero
women in class felt that our professor’s interpretation of Dworkin was in some
way calling out their heteronormativeity. She wasn’t. She was just trying to
get us to understand the materials. I found this all very interesting because
weeks earlier we read McKinnon, who is notoriously exclusionary to women of
color, and no one in class had any trouble disagreeing with her work and not
feeling personally attacked. In this later example, I have to say maybe it hit
too close to home for some of the women in my class. I think specifically of
one classmate who had a pretty bad hetero relationship and maybe didn’t want to
admit how much impact the patriarchy had on that. We’ve all been there, hetero,
queer, gay, bi, etc.
I’ve written about this before people in power feeling
victimized because of protections in place for vulnerable, exploited, and
populations discriminated against. These people feel like they are being
excluded for no reason or being targeted. They are wrong of course, but we need
to have some dialogue around how this fallacy of persecution has developed so
we can educate against it.
