White Men Are Victims
Shannon Gibney. Her face says so much. A mixture of pleading, fatigue, and “You’ve GOT to be kidding me.”
I ran across this story on Raw Story about how a black woman professor was formally reprimanded by her college employer for the way she handled a discussion on structural racism in her Introduction to Mass Communications course. Two white male students took offense to her discussion and asked why they had to talk about it all the time, and that it seems like white men are made out to be villains and monsters.
So, let me get this straight. These students interrupted the professor during her lecture and put her on the spot, making her defend her case (as the teacher), when their job is to listen and ask questions at the appropriate time. Apparently, they kept interrupting her and tried to silence her coverage of an uncomfortable topic.
WON’T SOMEONE PLEASE THINK OF THE WHITE MEN WHO ARE VICTIMIZED BY ACCUSATIONS OF RACISM?!
If you’re a racist or exhibit racist behavior, and it’s called out, what the prollem is?! If you don’t fit that mold, then it seems to me that you wouldn’t even touch it to try it on, right? This is an example of nothing more than entitlement because they are white men. They cut off the professor and tried to bully her into silence. They took personal blame for something that is institutionalized. Sure, they benefit from it, but they can use their privilege to correct it. But they are young and still have much to learn. It’s a lot of knee-jerk reaction from entitled dudebros, which is hopefully the last defense before racism is dealt a mortal blow in the coming decades.
Everything from re-imagining slavery as a great thing for black people (who had no cares or worries except pleasing their master as they lived on top of each other in squalor and wore tattered rags for clothes, but hey, they were fed, housed, and clothed, no?), to saying that Jim Crow taught black people how to have pride, to saying that black people had no chance in Africa if it wasn’t for the Christian slave traders who forcefully uprooted them from their homes and let them die on the Middle Passage, to suddenly now backtracking all atrocities committed by white people in founding America and splitting up Africa – all of this is part of some sick effort to excuse the sins of a group of people because their present-day members aren’t their ancestors, but every other minority group can’t seem to break away from their past and are still exploited by the dominant group today with roots from the minority group’s past.
“We’re always portrayed as the villains!” “We’re always seen as the monsters!”
No, you’re not. You celebrate your own work as great (Pilgrims, Puritans, Manifest Destiny), but now that the oppressed groups can tell their own stories, we see that there’s that other half of the story. Sorry if it makes you look bad, but we’re here now and we have to get these stories out.
And no matter how much you kick, scream, yell, and fight, we’re not shutting up about it! Racism exists and when it’s discussed, some people might not be portrayed in a positive light if they’re the offending party.
Things that are covered don’t heal well. We’re ripping this band-aid off and cleaning out the wound so that we can heal well. Brace yourselves. It’s going to hurt you more than it hurts us, but you’ll be better off. Trust me.
So, do y’all think we need to heal? Do we need to shut up about it?
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I think she should have just told them if they didn’t like the subject matter, they should drop the class, and find another course that was more their fit.
I agree.