Open Letter to the 3 White Students Who Filed a Discrimination Complaint Against Their Black Teacher

[Number23]

36. This letter needs to be pinned to the top of this forum

And every single clueless, ignorant, insensitive and willfully blind cretin that loudly pines for The Good Old Days of days gone or screams "it's not color, it's CLASS1!" by should be forced to recite this segment at will:

I imagine the first lecture on America's legacy of brutality and oppression left you in shock. Maybe you thought that particular professor was just a wayward nut job. But then another class discussed institutional racism, and another. And you began to squirm in your seat because whoa this wasn't just one time where your whiteness -- the thing that you might have squeaked by on for the entirety of your short life; the thing you've unconsciously relied upon to get you out of trouble with the campus police, out of detention and on the honor roll in high school; the thing that might have gotten you your consecutive summer jobs -- that thing, that whiteness, is being criticized, not just once by one random professor who your privilege enables you to ignore, but more than once. You see petitions and articles on the Internet talking about racism and bias and...gasp...white privilege. And you're sick of it, right? Because who wants to sit in a room full of people, people who don't all look and sound like you, and talk about the ways that you are flawed? That's uncomfortable. That's awkward. That doesn't feel good. It feels like being singled out; it feels like being held accountable for things you don't feel responsible for; it feels like being defined by the color of your skin; it feels like being blamed; it feels like being...discriminated against.

But it's not discrimination, boys. And here's why.

Because this is one classroom in your entire life. One speck of discomfort in an ocean that is your life of privilege. Because white supremacy dictates that your skin -- and let's not forget your maleness -- will make things fundamentally easier for you than for a person (and especially a woman) of color. That feeling of being on the spot? Of being defined by the color of your skin? Of being blamed for things that other people of your color do, even if you have not done them yourself? That's not a classroom for people of color. That's life. There's no walking out of class. There's no transferring to a different professor. There is only more of the same, with the hope that dialogue, education, and activism will pull the collective ostrich head from the ground, bit by bit, until that structural racism that you don't like talking about is eradicated.