‘INSANE’: Indiana University teaches students they are inherently ‘oppressors’ because of their race, sex, religion
The class ‘addresses self-socialization and analyses the working relationship and interrelationship of race, class, age, ethnicity, and gender.’
‘I have to suppress myself because I'm presumed to be some privileged, horrible human being that didn't grow up without food. That's insane to me,’ one student said.
A class at Indiana University teaches students that they are inherently part of “oppressor” classes on the basis of certain immutable characteristics and life choices.
The class, “Understanding Diversity in a Pluralistic Society,” examines “theories and models, which enhance understanding of our diverse society” and “addresses self-socialization and analyses the working relationship and interrelationship of race, class, age, ethnicity, and gender and how these factors influence social values regarding economic and social justice.”
The class instructor, Colleen Rose, told students to compose an “in-depth reflection of two parts of [their] identity: one subordinate identity and one dominant identity,” according to The Washington Free Beacon.
A chart obtained by the Beacon that was given to students in the class listed certain “dominant groups” guilty of “social oppression,” such as “Heterosexual,” “Able-Bodied People,” “White,” “Christian,” and “Men.”
The “subordinate groups” who are alleged victims of “social oppression” were “LGBTQ”-identifying individuals,” religious and ethnic minorities, and “women.”
“I’m being punished through an assignment for my identity as a person,” one student told the Beacon. “It’s very rich that in a class where we are supposed to be talking about identity and not suppressing identity, I’m forced to suppress my own identity. . . . I have to suppress myself because I’m presumed to be some privileged, horrible human being that didn’t grow up without food. That’s insane to me.”
The ideology of intersectionality is pervasive on American campuses.
The University of Utah, for example, has a “Feminist Cannabis Studies” in which participants rely upon “intersectional feminist frameworks.”
The University of Maryland is also planning to debut a “Fat Studies” class that “[e]xamines fatness as an area of human difference subject to privilege and discrimination that intersects with other systems of oppression based on gender, race, class, sexual orientation, and ability.”
Campus Reform reached out to Indiana University for comment. This article will be updated accordingly.
