College Holds Class Only White People Can Attend To Learn How To Stop Being Racist

Loyola University Chicago is revamping a program that teaches white people how to rid themselves of their racism.

Ramblers Analyzing Whiteness, the program, launched three years ago for students who identified as white and wanted to cure themselves of their “white privilege,” the College Fix reported Thursday.

“The Committee members who lead the workshops are identified as R.A.W Guides who work with each cohort of students to create brave, affinity spaces for students to engage in meaningful dialogue about anti-racist, anti-supremacist efforts, racial justice, and allyship,” the R.A.W website explains.

R.A.W. confirmed to the College Fix that the program would start up again for the 2017-2018 school year, due to a renewed interest.

This year’s program will consist of groups of six to 10 students who will meet for two hours seven times over the year to discuss topics like analyzing white privilege, the cycle of oppression and how to be an ally. Participants are only allowed to miss two meetings.

Only students who self-identify as white are allowed to attend, including multi-racial and bi-racial students. “Whiteness” is hard to define, R.A.W. says, so they rely on a definition of whiteness as a “socially constructed category.”

“The R.A.W. program draws on Barbara Applebaum’s scholarship to understand Whiteness: ‘While the definition of whiteness is difficult to pin down, there is a widespread agreement that whiteness is a socially constructed category that is normalized within a system of privilege so that it is taken for granted by those who benefit from it,’” the group states.