George Washington University is hosting a diversity workshop to battle “Christian privilege” on Thursday of Easter Week at the school’s Multicultural Student Services Center.
The training session for students and faculty proposes to educate Christians — especially white ones — concerning their “unmerited perks from institutions and systems all across our country,” according to the ever-attentive folks at The College Fix.
The workshop, titled “Christian Privilege: But Our Founding Fathers Were All Christian, Right?!” will be hosted by Timothy Kane, the “proudly gay” interim associate director for inclusion initiatives at George Washington University.
According to his online biography page, Kane has a master’s degree in divinity and theology and works to expand the diversity and inclusion efforts at GWU, specifically regarding the LGBT community.
The online description of the workshop suggests that Christians in the USA unfairly “experience life in an easier way than non-Christians” and therefore “have built-in advantages over non-Christians.”
Americans “celebrate Christian identities” and therefore Christians should acknowledge that they “receive unmerited perks from institutions and systems all across our country.” The seminar proposes to “reflect upon ways we can live up to our personal and national values that make room for all religious and secular identities on an equal playing field.”
Among the workshop’s learning objectives, participants should be able to “describe what is meant by privilege overall and white privilege specifically,” and should also be able to “describe the role of denial when it comes to white privilege.”
Seminar participants should also be able to “list at least three examples of Christian privilege” after the session, as well as being able to “list at least three ways to be an ally with a non-Christian person.”
Reading between the lines, it appears that a premise of the workshop is that white Christians should feel shame for the privilege that their status accords them and should make atonement for this natural advantage by reaching out to the victims of Christian privilege.
The idea of “privilege” occupies a central place at George Washington University, and other similar workshops offered through the center have addressed “heterosexual privilege,” “cisgender privilege,” “male privilege,” “white privilege,” “socio-economic privilege,” and “unconscious bias.”
One such seminar held in early February dealt with privilege in a more global way, and bore the title “Privilege: Born on Third Base and Thinking We Hit a Triple.” The seminar defined privilege based on identity as “the unmerited advantages some people receive that helps them succeed in life more than their non-privileged peers.”
As Breitbart News reported last month, school administrators in British Columbia hung a series of white-shaming posters on school walls, in a similar effort to educate students on the evils of “white privilege.”
The posters carried messages encouraging students to “confront racism” and to not “be blind to the invisible system I am a part of.”
Caucasian people, the campaign suggested, even if not racists themselves, still benefit from “white privilege,” and therefore need to make reparation for the inherent injustice of race.
“I have unfairly benefited from the colour of my skin,” declared Superintendent of Schools Teresa Downs in one poster. “White privilege is not acceptable.”
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