Your link doesn't go anywhere, so I don't know what the original article said. But if I felt anger toward black people, or some other nonwhite group, and I were a student placed in a multiracial group and encouraged to talk about my feelings about being white, I think if I were smart I would not say that my white identity was important to me, or that I felt black people were better treated than I was, or that I resented nonwhite groups . . . because I would anticipate negative consequences from doing so, ranging from hostility and possible retaliation from nonwhites to official condemnation by the people running the school for "racism." In fact, I would be prepared to speculate that white people who do feel such anger overestimate the danger of such harmful consequences. But there could be real consequences even for, say, a white student who innocently did as they were asked.
In prison environments, prisoners learn to tell The Man what he wants to hear, to keep him happy and not get in trouble. And school is a prison environment: you are there under compulsion, under arbitrary authority that can do bad things to you and not be held to account for it, and confined with other people who may hate and abuse you, and from whom the authorities have no obligation to protect you. Expecting accurate and honest self-revelation under such conditions is unrealistic.
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zvi and
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Date: 2009-04-29 10:14 pm (UTC)In prison environments, prisoners learn to tell The Man what he wants to hear, to keep him happy and not get in trouble. And school is a prison environment: you are there under compulsion, under arbitrary authority that can do bad things to you and not be held to account for it, and confined with other people who may hate and abuse you, and from whom the authorities have no obligation to protect you. Expecting accurate and honest self-revelation under such conditions is unrealistic.