Racists all

I had the opportunity to see The Western Front embarrass itself a few weeks ago over its hyper-interest in immigration issues--no let me be honest--in its hyper-interest in border insecurity and the promotion thereof.

That's all well and good, but AS Review is the real campus embarrassment. It's almost been a week since their latest piece of idiocy was released on our fine campus. The Review is not only consistently ridiculous in their choice of content, but they insist on embellishing it with boring/haphazard presentation, and poor journalistic standards (oops, did I just imply they have SOME journalism standards?)

You'd be right if you thought, after reading that introduction, that I am reacting to something in particular. But I have yet to decide for sure whether it is just frustration over my momentary lapse in judgment sometime this week, when I picked up the latest edition of the Review, or whether the content was especially repulsive enough for me to physically gag. I hope it was just the former. But don't let me keep you in the dark any longer.

The cover of last Monday's issue (not online yet), is graced by a old picture, dating perhaps (by my best guess) to the 1940s. It is a partial photo of several dozen male *students* (perhaps just graduated, if indeed they are students), posing in front of a giant fireplace, most likely in a hall of some sort. Combed hair, clean shaved faces, and suits and ties...if that wasn't enough to condemn those in the picture, it would be the fact that they are all white--a point subtly alluded to by the bottom caption, which reads: "WHITE PRIVILAGE?" Who are these allegedly privileged young people? Goodness knows. Does it matter? They are obviously rather well to do (why else would someone wear a suit and cut their hair? Photo doesn't provide anything like the information I would prefer under something as "provocative" as this.

The point? Oh...well, it seems the White Student Union is sponsoring "White Privilege Awareness Week this month. Oops...that's the Anti-Racist White Student Union (ARWSU). Goodness, I almost implied they were a racist club! Isn't that amazing: They have to include the explicit "Anti-Racist" tag in their club name in order to avoid sounding racist. I guess I should probably join their group since I am a white anti-racist student. Or would that serve to just deny the fact that I prefer to remain color-blind, as a means to avoiding racism?

Underneath the cover of this issue lie two articles by Kelly Sullivan. One is about the "White Privilege Awareness Week," the other is about how everyone at Western is racist. Think I'm joking?

"I think that every institution in this country is racist, and that includes higher education, and that includes Western Washington University," said David Cahn, co-ordinator of the Social Issues Resource Center…

“Racism exists inside of all the people on campus. We’ve internalized these racist values. Unless we’re really challenging that, we can’t help but perpetuate it,” [said, Becky Renfrow, a member of ARWSU]

The reason?

…the GURs at Western only require two courses in the Comparative, Gender and Multicultural Studies bracket. “That’s basically nothing,” [Ian Morgan said]. “White privilege is in the curriculum, in the GURs that aren’t sufficient [to teach about multiculturalism, and ethnically diverse American experiences.] It’s basically the same at most universities.”

Did you catch that? Don’t teach me what I need to get a job. Teach me the doctrine that will make me an nicer person.

I still want to know who’s in that picture and when it was taken.