First-year university students in Northampton are being asked to complete a race equality course as part of their induction, with requirements to write about “white privilege” and how to “improve anti-racist practice”. The Telegraph has the story.
First-year students at the University of Northampton have been asked to complete the e-learning course as part of their induction for freshers’ week.
The course advertises itself as necessary for participants to “understand race, racism and inequity in higher education” and “explore privilege, advantage and inclusion”.
In one section, called “Whiteness, Privilege and Belonging”, students are told to answer the question: “Were you aware of how White privilege operates and the impact it has on staff and students from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic backgrounds?”
The course also asks students to write down things they can do to “improve anti-racist practice” and “tackle race inequality”.
The university said the course could be completed anonymously and would not impact students being able to move into halls.
However, a spokesman for the Free Speech Union said: “Even though this course isn’t mandatory and the answers aren’t accessible to the university, it still sends a message that Northampton has taken a position on a number of politically contested issues and woe betide the student who disagrees with that position.”
The course is sourced by Advance HE, a university membership organisation that aims to share “best practice”.
A University of Northampton spokesman said: “Inclusivity is one of our core values, and we make no apologies for that. However, we also share a commitment to freedom of speech and respectful dialogue.
“The training offered is an industry standard course that encourages new students to reflect on both their own background and that of their new peers; non-completion would not prevent anyone starting their studies or moving into their university accommodation.”
“Industry standard.” Yes, that is exactly the problem.
Worth reading in full.
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Try talking about white privilege to a white working class lad from a de-industrialised area of the UK where Labour has wrecked the local economy, there are no decent jobs and no prospect of ever getting one.
This kind of anti-white propaganda should be made illegal.
Not white privilege but white hard work and invention. We had wells in most villages hundreds of years ago. Are Africans just too lazy to bother to dig them ? Also farming, are they happy to remain hunter gatherers ? Invention of the steam engine and other power sources such as wind and water mills for grinding corn which led to the industrial revolution and machinefabric weaving, what did they invent ?
I think white people are privileged in so far as we won the evolutionary lottery, including the capacity for hard work. But every human regardless of race is an individual with agency and their own set of talents and defects, and putting people into arbitrary groups is generally not very helpful (though I would favour a strongly ethnonationalist immigration policy). Treating non whites as victims seems to me patronising, insulting and ultimately not helping anyone, and more racist by far than being realistic about how things are and treating people as individuals.
This uni needs a lot less money, if they have enough money to employ people to do this drivel.
White privilege has lifted billions of people of all complexions out of grinding poverty across the globe.
I can’t help thinking 100 years ago, everyone would have had to tip their hat in some way or other to the church. Expected to go to church. Say prayers at meal times. That sort of thing. Basically go along with the belief system of the moment in a ritualistic manner even if without any firm conviction.
If you grew up in the latter part of the 20th century, you might have come to think that all that sort of stuff was behind us. But clearly it isn’t. Humans are humans, and for whatever reason if you strip all religion away, something eventually moves in to take its place.
The woke religion though is pretty awful. It’s racist, it’s vindictive and doesn’t bring out the best in us by any stretch of the imagination. It’s a massive step backwards.
Fair comment.
But protestant christianity, lightly applied, is a powerful force for self improvement.
Woke just destroys all human goodness.
Sort of related, Klopp thinks it’s perfectly ok for him as a football manager to say who he thinks the right kind of people are to wave the German flag, wants to reclaim for all people except of course the horrid Nazis who voted for the AfD.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/articles/cmwyzk6xkrd0o
Looking forward to the German FA sanctioning him for being political
But the Nazis are/were leftwing! Nazi is the short form for National Socialist German Workers Party.
Socialist? Workers? any one who denies left-wing is LYING!
If universities didn’t exist would anyone invent them?
I wonder if this sort of wokery correlates inversely with the career outturns of graduates.
Inclusivity unless you’re white. “White privilege” is clearly a viewpoint and is racist, prejudiced and discriminatory. Anyone who can’t see that is stupid. Who on earth would suspect universities are run by stupid people?
Jason Arday should have given you an almighty clue…
I’m reluctant to speak ill of the dead. White “privilege” is characterised by good manners, although that’s wearing a bit thin under pressure.
“White privilege” is a race-marxist concept built on the idea that white people are “world poisoners”, and responsible for the failure of non-white people. Now, the idea that there is a group of “world poisoners” is one developed and used by the marxo-fascists in the first half of the 20th century. It is an idea used to justify and facilitate mass-murder – because the ideology of mass-murder has to be accepted before mass-murder and genocide can take place.
Thus, when one of our New Dark Age “universities” employs the phrase “white privilege”, what it is attempting is to set our society on the road to mass-murder and genocide.
I certainly think I could write an essay on “white privilege”, but I rather suspect the tone and perspective would not be what the august dons at the University of Northampton are looking for.
If it is indeed optional, anyone objecting can just say “Nah, I think I’ll go and check out the Union bar instead, thanks”.
Which of course would be understood to be a slur on any religion that forswears alcohol.
Oh dear, how sad, never mind.