Source: Jim Steinfeldt / Getty
As conservatives’ war of white fragility and racial resentment against diversity, equity and inclusion continues, presidents from Iowa’s three public universities told the Board of Regents Thursday that they’re overhauling their DEI programs on campus, which is to say they’re shutting them down completely and closing their DEI offices.
According to KCRG, the presidents of Iowa State University, the University of Iowa and the University of Northern Iowa all met to assure the board and the state legislature that they are complying to overhaul DEI programs and enhancing civics education, a demand that reportedly won’t impact DEI positions that are necessary for accreditation or compliance with state and federal law (though, it’s really difficult to see how the mandate wouldn’t affect those positions).
MORE: GOP Lawmakers Take More Steps Toward Trying To Eliminate DEI Nationwide
From KCRG:
University of Iowa President Barbara Wilson says the university is starting a civic dialogue initiative pilot program next fall.
They plan to train Resident Assistants, or RAs, to teach students to talk to each other across differences. “This initiative will really get students to think about how do you come to the table? How do you listen to others who are different from you? How do you find common ground? How do you stay curious instead of judgmental?,” Wilson said.
Also, “We also will be prohibiting anybody from requiring pronouns, and that will be added to all syllabi for all courses as of the fall,” Wilson said.
In a different reality—one that isn’t quickly devolving into a real-life idiocracy—it would be odd for the president of an institution of higher learning to say with a straight face that said institution will be “prohibiting anybody from requiring pronouns.” After all, pronouns represent a pretty important function in the English language, as they include the words he, you, we, him, her, yours, theirs, someone, where, when, yourselves, themselves, oneself, is, hers, when, whom, whose, each other, one another, everyone, nobody, none, each, anywhere, anyone—and so on. But in this reality, Wilson is referring to a requirement to refer to students, particularly trans and non-binary students, by their preferred pronouns, which is an odd position to take for someone who just asked rhetorically: “How do you listen to others who are different from you?”
But arguably the most egregious, and certainly the most telling, remark came from Iowa State President Wendy Wintersteen.
“So one of the first things we did was establish learning communities so that a young man, young white man, from rural Iowa, could come and be in a learning community and find the place where they could belong,” Wintersteen said.
Apparently, in Wintersteen’s caucasity-infused mind, young white men from rural Iowa are having a difficult time finding a place where they comfortably fit in while attending a school that is—*checks notes*—more than 72% white. Actually, all three schools are overwhelmingly Caucasian. The University of Iowa is also 72% white, and the University of Northern Iowa is a whopping 83% white. In fact, no other individual racial group at any of the three schools comes in at more than just over 7%. At both Iowa State and UI, Black students represent less than 1% of the student body.
So, why are these school administrators showing all of this concern for white students, of which there are plenty, while shutting down programs that are meant to aid students of color, of which there are relatively few? Well, once you figure out that there is no practical answer for that question, you will have figured out that the white conservative war on DEI, critical race theory and “wokeness” is really just a modern manifestation of exactly how white supremacy operates.
Mind you, Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds hasn’t yet even signed the bill that lawmakers passed to ban DEI programs at public universities, but the presidents are already falling all over themselves to show that they’re complying with it.
That’s the power of whiteness—simple and plain.
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