'The problem of whiteness' course offered at University of Chicago

The University of Chicago, the yearly tuition for which is around $60,000 a year, is offering a class titled "the problem with whiteness" this winter as part of its robust Critical Race and Ethnic Studies area of study, a program defined exclusively by the tenets of Critical Race Theory.

A sophomore at the college, Daniel Schmidt, posted about the class on Twitter and wrote, "EXCLUSIVE: At my college, @UChicago, a class called 'The Problem of Whiteness' will be taught in the Winter. Since I began college a year ago, I've documented all the anti-white hatred I've seen on campus. Without a doubt, this is the most egregious example."

The course will be taught by Rebecca Journey, who, as Schmidt notes, appears to be white.

The course description reads, "Critical race theorists have shown that whiteness has long functioned as an 'unmarked' racial category, saturating a default surround against which non-white or 'not quite' others appear as aberrant. This saturation has had wide-ranging effects, coloring everything from the consolidation of wealth, power and property to the distribution of environmental health hazards."

This opening firmly plants the course's critical race theory lineage in its Marxist roots by falsely ascribing "whiteness" to any oppressive element. Further CRT aligns whiteness with capital in that whitness drew all wealth onto itself throughout history at the expense of non-white peoples.

A degree in this field of study promises that the student will learn to see history through the lens of race while "Focusing on conquest, subjugation, genocide, slavery, segregation, migration, and diasporas, as well as resistance to these historic and contemporary practices of subjugation."

Critical Race Theory is a form of racial essentialism that defines individuals by their racial and ethnic identity groups and then assigns them a place within structures and hierarchies of power. The theory states that this is the most significant defining and limiting principle in human existence.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has noted that CRT at the institutional level is "state-sanctioned racism."

Schmidt writes, "The course description describes whiteness 'as a conspicuous problem within liberal political discourse' with 'worldmaking (and razing) effects.' Anti-white hatred is now mainstream academic inquiry. And you're not even allowed to call that out without being called racist.

The course description explicitly defines whiteness as a "problem" twice, and reads, "Yet in recent years, whiteness has resurfaced as a conspicuous problem within liberal political discourse. This seminar examines the problem of whiteness through an anthropological lens, drawing from classic and contemporary works of critical race theory. Attending to the ways in which various forms of social positioning and historical phenomena intersect in the formation of racial hierarchy, we will approach whiteness as a 'pigment of the imagination' with worldmaking (and razing) effects."

"You have to wonder what the solution to the 'Problem of Whiteness' would be," Schmidt writes. "This is how people who detest white people think and talk. And they have taken over all universities under the guise of “academic freedom.” No sane professor can oppose it without risking their career."

At least five other courses address the problem of "whiteness." Racial Capitalism "will compare racial capitalism as a political economic approach to race and racism to rival 'identarian' approaches including critical whiteness studies and Afropessimism."

Afro Pessimism, as defined by Oxford Bibliographies, is another overtly Marxist doctrine that states that all human history has been defined exclusively by the persecution of black people.

The course The American Scam: Race, Finance, Infrastructure "will explore how aspirations underwritten by whiteness and notions of risk charged with anti-blackness are put into play in the scam's promise." The "scam" in the course is America and capitalism.

Slavery as Metaphor in Latin America, Intersections of Gender and Race Throughout the Modern Middle East, and Music of the Black Radical Tradition are all courses that present "whiteness" as a problem that must be solved as well.

The course Racial Formations declares that "Race is arguably the most significant social category shaping the fabric and trajectory of American life-and yet, it is also one of the most poorly understood and eagerly avoided topics in our public consciousness."

The University of Chicago has an entire wing of study dedicated exclusively to the topic of race with a conspicuous effort to demonize one race of people.