Training: What is going on with white people?

Example #5

ASU’s DEI employee training offers recommended resources. One of these is named “Seeing White.” Below is an image from that web page. It asks, “Just what is going on with white people?” It then has 14 episodes in its second season about “whiteness” and American history. In the introductory video on that page, you hear: “Was this country built on affirmative action for white people? I don’t know what it means to salvage the idea of good whiteness, when was whiteness good? It is all about power.”

This is the social philosophy behind DEI. “Is it all about power?” It reduces all of history, human society, and relationship to power conflicts. “Truth” means the truth about power and oppression. “Good” means the marginalized. “Beauty” means self-expression aimed at taking down the privileged system.

You will see in the second picture below that the series engages in race blame about “whiteness” right from the first episode. Even while teaching that race is a scientifically meaningless category, it then assigns blame based on skin color. What can account for this obvious self-contradiction?

This is what ASU wants its employees to believe as part of working at ASU. It is one thing to hear this perspective on American history. Maybe you agree, maybe you don’t. Hopefully, everyone involved will be mature enough to have an actual discussion about the presuppositions of this social philosophy. However, it is another thing to have a state university that requires employees to be taught this material. It is the only perspective given.

Parents, students, donors, legislators, and pastors, this is the view of American history that is given privileged status at ASU. That means you can expect it to shape how ASU presents many other kinds of events and what ASU thinks is appropriate in the classroom. Why is this view, which is contrary to Arizona law, given this status?  Does this mean that the best-educated university professors still have no way of discussing history without themselves engaging in the very kind of racial blame they would say is wrong? 

As a Christian, I believe there is a bigger problem not being addressed here, and that problem is on display even among the wise of this world.