White Privilege Conference Wants Less Responsibility, Accountability
“We do see you, Super-Whitey. We’re coming for you.”
“We do see you, Super-Whitey. We’re coming for you.” Those words were spoken by educationalist Heather Hackman (she’s white, by the way) at this weekend’s White Privilege Conference (yes, it’s real, and it’s existed for 17 years now). The Daily Caller was on hand to chronicle the event.
Hackman is a former Minnesota’s St. Cloud State University education professor and current president of the Hackman Consulting Group, self-described as “a cadre of highly experienced teachers, leaders and experts in their fields who are also highly skilled trainers.” Her talk, entitled “No Freedom Unless We Call Out the Wizard Behind The Curtain: Critically Addressing the Corrosive Effects of Whiteness in Teacher Education and Professional Development,” highlighted the supposed unfairness of America’s white-person-controlled education system when it comes to helping minorities. Hackman blathered:
> The racial narrative of White tends to be like this: Rugged individual, honest, hard-working, disciplined, rigorous, successful. And so then, the narrative of U.S. public education: Individual assessments, competition, outcome over process (I care more about your grades than how you’re doing), “discipline,” where we care more about your attendance and making sure you’re not tardy than we care about your relationships … proper English must be spoken (which is just assimilation into standard U.S. dialect), hierarchical power structure, and heavy goal orientation.
What she’s really arguing is that minority children shouldn’t be responsible, shouldn’t be held accountable and shouldn’t be expected to assimilate. It’s true, America’s education system needs to be reformed (school choice, anyone?), but it starts with getting activism out of the classroom. What Hackman wants is to further promote if-it-feels-good-do-it liberal values on gullible children who already suffer under the increasingly “progressive” education system. For anyone wondering why the state takeover of education and school choice are gaining steam, the White Privilege Conference explains it all.
