As I look back on my past four years at BGSU, I think about all the things I have been exposed to here at this University that have helped me to open-up the way I look at the world. Multiculturalism is one of those things that have helped to open up my world to those cultures and people I knew little about before I came to college. As with any form of education, it can be used maliciously to push a political agenda at the cost of indoctrinating students that have a right to choose what they want to believe.
Sadly, there are still places of higher education in this very country that pursue a program of indoctrination under the guise of “multiculturalism” and “diversity.” One of these institutions is the University of Delaware, where multiculturalism and all that goes with it have been transformed into a runaway program that would make Soviet Commissars proud. Plain and simple, this is ideological re-education.
This program, “Whole New World,” holds the entire white incoming freshmen class captive to an indoctrination program that has horrified the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE). The university claims all meetings are not compulsory, but students have reported that university administrators and faculty have sent e-mails demanding to know a white students whereabouts if absent.
This racist education program talks about how all white people are racist simply because they are white and grew up in America. Walter E. Williams believes this label of racism appears to be given out by “virtue of birth alone, not conduct.” Based upon the definition of stereotype, this does appear to be an over-simplified, uncritical judgment, driven by a prejudicial attitude, but I’ll leave this for you to decide.
What makes this program even more horrifying is the university’s “racism facilitator manual” which lists that the term “RACIST” applies to all white people, “regardless of gender, religion, culture, class, or sexuality” and that all white people are racist scum no matter what. Since when are boundless, blanket statements that attack people on the basis of race, ethnicity, sexual preference, creed or belief admissible as intelligent discourse in the classroom? I thought we were a diverse nation that accepted people for who and what they are. Well, that must not apply to whites – nothing like a double standard to make you feel great about life.
The program even addresses the idea that a white person calling themselves “non-racist” is an “evasion of responsibility for their participation in a system based on supremacy for white people.” So if being racist is bad, what is a person to do when it turns out that trying to be non-racist is just as bad in their eyes? There is no way to appease these people.
The program was described as a “treatment” for whites and forced them to reveal things such as their racial beliefs and sexual identity, experiences and preference to RAs and their “diversity groups.” I thought forcing people to reveal their sexual preferences and experiences was illegal, or at least unethical, but then again it’s in the name of “diversity” so it must be OK. The one thing I will applaud the university is on their successful strategy of suppressing free speech and exercising of free thoughts.
Another part of this Stalinist policy is all white freshmen have to go through interviews with their RA, who then inform administrators of students that do not appear to be adapting to the program. According to FIRE, students who express discomfort with the questioning are met with the disapproval of the RA. The RAs then write reports about these sessions and inform their superiors. One student identified in a write-up as an RA’s “worst” session was a young woman who stated she was tired of having “diversity shoved down her throat.” I guess expressing one’s true thoughts is not the right thing to do at the University of Delaware.
Multiculturalism in this situation has been carried way too far at the University of Delaware. It has been perverted into a program of indoctrination and forced thought where the university line is the only answer. This is a case where the idea of tolerance has bred a totalitarian institution where minority views are suppressed by using the majority to bully them into submission.
An assault on the First Amendment, whether it is 5 miles or 500 miles away, is an outright attack on our right to expression and speech, and needs to be stopped at any and all costs. I thought we are a nation that protects the “inalienable rights” of freedom of conscience, freedom of speech and freedom against compelled speech. I guess these rights do not apply as long the trampling of rights is done in the name of “diversity.”
