OPINION:
Evergreen State College, the Olympia, Washington, place of higher learning — and that phrase “higher learning” is used here loosely — that made mid-2017 national news for its black students’ demands for all whites to leave campus for a much-needed day of time-out on Caucasians is at it again.
The so-called “Day of Absence” has resurfaced. Once again, black students are drawing attention to the whole racism thang by hosting events that require whites to stay outside the door.
“Some [planned] gatherings are advertised as open to all skin colors and others ask that only POC, or People of Color, attend,” The College Fix reported.
And white, as any good physicist knows, is not a color because it is, scientifically speaking, anyway, the sum of all possible colors. (Which, if you really want to get philosophical about the event, wouldn’t it make more sense, anti-racist speaking, to invite all the whites and fewer of the non-whites, because white, by definition, is already, completely and totally, non-biased?)
Just sayin’.
Maybe something to mull for next year, right?
Anyhow: “A poster hung at the school obtained by The College Fix,” The College Fix reports, “declares that the no-whites-allowed self-segregation events will be held off campus. It asks people to RSVP at a website that spells out ’No Nazis Allowed’ in its URL.”
Seriously now, could this college get any more race-baiting in its bite?
The school denies all negatives.
“There is no Day of Absence event this spring at The Evergreen State College,” campus administrators said to Newsweek. “Gross and deliberate mischaracterizations of the event in 2017 provoked violent threats against students, staff and faculty.”
But last year’s “Day of Absence” program really did take an ugly turn.
While the event’s been observed at the college for years as a way of minorities stepping off campus for a day of special workshops, the 2017 affair brought about objections from a white biology professor named Bret Weinstein. Why? Because, as the The College Fix noted, the organizers of that year’s “Day of Absence” flip-flopped on the affair’s normal order of operations and asked all the whites to leave campus so that blacks and other minorities could have a white-free day at college.
Weinstein said no, and that led to an entire student-backed protest movement that turned national media attention toward Evergreen and resulted in a campus closing for a few days. College administrators certainly didn’t want a repeat of all that. Lordy no; there’re tuition dollars to consider.
“Earlier this year,” The College Fix wrote, “officials announced they would revamp the controversial ’Day of Absence’ observance, instead offering an ’equity symposium’” with a theme of “Deinstitutionalize/Decolonize” and course offerings that included people of all skin colors.
How nice.
But that hasn’t stopped students from insisting on a more segregated approach — on an off-campus more covert approach to the “Day of Absence” and its teachings of all the ways whitey is inherently racist.
It’s self-segregation, at its finest.
And as one head-scratching Twitter writer wondered, in a post below the “Day of Absence” agenda: “I’m curious how this is supposed to bridge divides. If anybody knows I would love an explanation.”
Ditto — ditto to that.
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.