Brandeis University Assistant Dean Kate Slater, who is white, has some interesting thoughts about “whiteness.” The assistant dean, who identifies as a “racial justice scholar and educator,” proclaimed this week that “all white people are racist.”
Her remarks came amid a broader defense of critical race theory.
“‘Debates’ about critical race theory are often straw men for debates about whether or not systemic racism is real,” said Slater, who demands white people “Divest from Whiteness.” “And no number of statistics or facts that I could offer up are going to convince people to ‘see’ systemic racism if they don’t want to.”
“Yes,” said the woman who lists her pronouns in her social media bio, “all White people are racist in that all White people have been conditioned in a society where one’s racial identity determines life experiences/outcomes and Whiteness is the norm and the default.”
Slater adds, “That includes me! I don’t hate White people. I hate Whiteness.”
I don’t know about you, but it sounds to me like Brandeis students are maybe not getting their money’s worth.
“Fifteen percent of students enrolled at Brandeis identified as minorities as of 2019,” Mediaite reports. “The Massachusetts-based university hired Slater in 2020 to serve as an assistant dean for graduate student affairs.”
The report adds, “The role is typically administrative, though a personal website for the iconoclastic dean notes her previous work included acting as a ‘White anti-racist scholar and educator’ who investigated ‘White racial identity formation and how racism operates individually, organizationally, and systemically.’”
OK, but what about, you know, actual education, not just racial psycho-babble? Are they actually learning anything at Brandeis — aside from hating “whiteness,” whatever that’s supposed to mean?
“Critical race theory,” Slater concludes in her online rant, “does not create oppression. It names oppression that already exists.”
Uh, yeah. We all know what this means. There’s only one thing for her to do: She must resign immediately and make her position at the university available to a non-racist. Surely, there are thousands of persons of color who can do her unskilled administrative job, no?
Slater is also duty-bound to donate whatever salary she has drawn from Brandeis to charities exclusively benefiting people of color. Her white privilege got her into her current role, and now it’s time for her to take a stand against the systemic oppression that made her employment at Brandeis possible in the first place.
If she’s serious about anything she says, then it’s the least she can do to “divest from whiteness.”
