UW Madison's Bascom Hall - Photo by Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's Mark Hoffman
MADISON, WI (WSAU) – First-year University of Wisconsin Law School students were required to attend an orientation last week, which reportedly attacked “whiteness” and “colorblindness” as racist tropes.
According to the New York Post, those who have finished their first semester of classes at the esteemed school received the racially divisive orientation that included handouts that claimed that “there are no exceptional white people.”
Titled “Common Racist Attitudes and Behaviors that Indicate a Detour or Wrong Turn into White Guilt, Denial, or Defensiveness,” the handout presented identified 28 potential dangers for what was described as well-meaning white people on their path to redemption.
Students who wished to remain anonymous when speaking to the Federalist about the orientation revealed through photos that the handout stated, “You may have attended many anti-racism workshops; you may not be shouting racist epithets or actively discriminating against people of color, but you still experience privilege based on your white skin color,” and that “‘colorblindness negates the cultural values, norms, expectations, and life experiences of people of color. By saying we are not different and that you don’t see the color, you are also saying you don’t see your whiteness. This denies the people of color’s experience of racism and your experience of privilege.”
However, one of the most controversial moments of the orientation came when students were asked to list “words, phrases, stereotypes, slurs, words of bias, etc.,” according to the Federalist. An anonymous student told the outlet that “when it came to slurs about Black people, Native Americans, Asians, and Middle Eastern people, it was a very serious moment. When it got to White people and the derogatory terms used for White people, the speaker was implying that it was OK to laugh at white slurs because White people don’t have any problems.”
UW Spokesman John Lucas informed the Federalist that the orientation “was held in partial fulfillment of ABA (American Bar Association) Standard 303’s requirement that law schools provide education to their students on ‘bias, cross-cultural competency, and racism,” but did not respond to the outlet’s requests for comment on who funded the orientation, and how much the speaker was paid for the appearance.
This orientation follows a recent Young America’s Foundation report that found that Milwaukee Public School staff were given training on “Understanding Whiteness,” which stated that the staff needed to point out elements of “whiteness they see in education, which they participate in, and which elements they can work to dismantle.”
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