A State Sponsored Racist

I’m not sorry enough that I’m a white man in America, apparently.

But thanks to another professor who works for the Colorado university system- this time in Colorado Springs- I can increase my guilt in a seminar lasting from April 13th through the 16th. And because it’s held at the Sheraton in Minneapolis, MN, I can have a mint put on pillow every night as I fall asleep wrapped in guilt.

Thank goodness for the University of Colorado and the Colorado taxpayer.

Yes, the same state university system that brought us Ward Churchill, brings us the 12th Annual White Privilege Conference.

Wow! They’ve had 11 already. Colorado must be proud.

White Privilege, the conference says, is the concept “that the U.S. was started by white people, for white people.”

According to the conference web site, you too might suffer from White Privilege if you exhibit any of the following symptoms:

•assume that most of the people you or your children study in history classes and textbooks will be of the same race, gender, or sexual orientation as you are

•assume that your failures will not be attributed to your race, or your gender

•assume that if you work hard and follow the rules, you will get what you deserve

•go out in public without fear of being harassed or constantly worried about physical safety

•not have to think about your race, or your gender, or your sexual orientation, or disabilities, on a daily basis

U.K.’s Daily Mail tells us that the conference’s founder, Eddie Moore “wanted… to teach people of colour: 'That White supremacy, White privilege, racism and other forms of oppression are designed for your destruction - designed to kill you.’”

Of course he did.

The conference organizer is Dr. Abby Ferber, the Director of Women’s Studies and Co- Assistant Vice Chancellor for Academic Diversity and Development at University of Colorado at Colorado Springs (UCCS).

The UCCS says that Dr. Ferber “is widely recognized as a leading scholar of the far right.” She has published several works on white supremacists groups and hate crimes.

Of course she has.

But by “far-right,” she means you, too.
Like a lot of left-wing academia delving in radical theories of racial and gender identity, Dr. Ferber seems to loose her grip on reality when it comes to the Tea Party.

Ferber, for example, took up the civility chant right after the Gabby Giffords shooting because, she is, after all “one of the leading scholars of the far right,” and when she says “far-right” she means you too.

Ferber told readers of the HuffPost that the shooting was the result of the “same fundamentalist ideology that has provided the backdrop of previous incidents of domestic, home-grown terrorism, such as the Oklahoma City bombing.”

“Current right-wing fear-mongering about the U.S. moving toward socialism, or tyranny,” she continued “have no empirical grounding. But that doesn't matter -- all that matters is some people have been convinced this is the case.”

And because of that, Tea Partiers- you, me and the rest of us racists- shot Gabrielle Giffords. Ferber argued that “right-wing pundits now ‘must share some portion of moral responsibility for creating a dangerous environment,’" even though the trigger was pulled by a guy who is mentally ill with no political affiliations.

White, male, Christians, it seems, never get blamed for anything in this country, says Ferber. I guess we’re all guilty by insanity though.

“It is time we turn that critical lens,” says Dr. Far Right Wing “on what passes for mainstream America.”

No, Dr. Ferber.

It’s time we called you what you are: A state-sponsored racist.

Of course you are.