A sociology professor at Penn State University picked one student out of hundreds of undergraduates to instruct the class on how his white skin benefits him, a recently published video lecture shows.
The lecture, uploaded to YouTube on June 30 and assigned to students taking a summer introductory sociology course, shows professor Sam Richards single out a student named Russell during a discussion on the extent of racism in the United States. Richards is seen explaining to the class that the student “has a benefit of having white skin” that his black classmates lack.
“Dude, this guy here. Stand up, bro. What’s your name, bro?” said Richards to the student, who offered his name, in the January 2019 lecture.
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“Look at Russell, right here, it doesn’t matter what he does,” Richards said. “If I match him up with a black guy in class, or a brown guy even … who’s just like him, has the same GPA, looks like him, walks like him, talks like him, acts in a similar way, has been involved in the same groups on campus, takes the same leadership positions, does whatever it is, if I match him up with that person and we send them into the same jobs, upon graduation … Russell has a benefit of having white skin.”
“Russell is going to go apply for a job, and he’s going to get the job or not get the job, and it’s never going to enter his mind that he got the job because he’s white,” he added later.
“Whereas, you’re going to be thinking about it,” Richards says to a black student, “but you still won’t know.”
The professor went on to point at another white student’s skin, asserting that “this is affirmative action.”
“I want to say, look, I don’t know how much [racism] is happening, although this is pretty serious, because when you start talking about people’s jobs and people’s livelihoods and so on, this is serious,” Richards said.
Richards “purposefully teaches in a manner designed to promote discussion across a spectrum of opinions,” a university spokesperson told the Washington Examiner, adding that hundreds of students sign up for his courses each semester.
“Our hope is that our students during their time at Penn State will be exposed to many new ideas that will help them to form, evaluate and even question what they know,” the spokesperson said.
Richards did not immediately respond to the Washington Examiner’s request for comment.
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The recently published lecture adds fodder to a battle in Congress, local school districts, and other institutions about the nature of racial discrimination and how to combat it. Republican lawmakers in Washington and individual states have been organizing against educational curricula in schools and company diversity trainings, some of which impress that white people have an inherent societal privilege over minorities due to historical racial injustice.
One recent high-profile incident demonstrated the debate about race and employment in particular. ESPN reporter Rachel Nichols, who is white, was pulled from coverage of the NBA finals this month after a leaked private conversation revealed her suggesting that the company elevated black colleague Maria Taylor to a position hosting the finals due to her race. ESPN made the move in order to do something about its “crappy, longtime record on diversity,” Nichols suggested.
