A small story from a small town grew legs and got around last week. A local essay contest prompting high school students in and around Westport, Connecticut to consider the role “white privilege” has played in their lives didn’t sit right with a handful of parents and a mob of Internet hecklers, according to the Associated Press and the New York Times. The Christian Science Monitor, Independent, New York Post, Glenn Beck’s The Blaze, and The Onion joined the pile.

The setting for the entirely optional prompt (wealthy suburb of New York City, overwhelmingly white) and the uppity spin on what mild pushback it incurred (the Times, ever hip, contrasts backward parents with enlightened high schoolers: “students were largely fine with the question… adults had much more to say”) together make the best-imaginable justification for a “discourse on intersectional diversity,” what progressive educators often aim for.