The endgame for the University of South Florida’s radical re-education plan

Editor’s note: The following article was first published in city ​​newspaper.

The University of South Florida has enacted a radical “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” (DEI) program that claims America is a force for “white supremacy” and encourages students to participate in racially segregated counseling programs to protect their “privileges.” and to address “oppression,”” and touts a variety of left-wing causes, including “reparations,” “police reparations,” and “abolition of prison.”

I have received a wealth of public documents exposing the university’s DEI programming, many of which the university attempted to delete from its website after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis recently solicited information about DEI, according to the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine had asked the state’s public universities.

Taken together, these materials paint a disturbing picture. The USF’s sprawling diversity bureaucracy has transformed leftist racism into a new orthodoxy and instituted administrative policies of racial preferences and discrimination. It divides individuals into categories of oppressor and oppressed, presents “anti-racism” as a solution, and proposes “racial identity development” – which in practice resembles a form of cult programming – as a necessary method of atonement.

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The first step in this programming is the condemnation of American society. After the death of George Floyd in 2020, almost every USF adherent condemned the United States as fundamentally racist. Then-President Steven Currall released a statement denouncing the “systemic racism that continues to plague our nation.”

The English division attacked the United States for “centuries of normalized violence, structural oppression, and dehumanizing rhetoric targeting Black, Brown, and Indigenous peoples”.

The School of Interdisciplinary Global Studies has slammed America for its “institutionalised, structural racism and white supremacy.” The Department of Anthropology accused its own discipline of being “rooted in racism”.

The Department of Sociology commented on the “interlocking systems of oppression found throughout our nation’s institutions.” Literacy studies, women’s and gender studies, engineering, medicine, nursing, pharmacy, public health and other departments released similar statements.

Then the DEI administrators offered the university the solution: racial re-education.

After the ensuing George Floyd riots, the USF Counseling Center offered racially segregated counseling sessions for “Black and African American,” “People of Color,” and “White” students, offering POC a “healing space to discuss unique implications of systemic racism.” and a “connecting space for allies to share experiences and find ways to take action against racism”.

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The goal of these psychological conditioning sessions, according to organizers, was to address “COVID-19, xenophobia, killings of unarmed black people, systemic racism, privilege, oppression and institutional challenges.” This type of programming subordinates individuals to racial categories; Ideology serves as a substitute for mental health.

The end point of USF’s DEI programming is leftist political activism. As part of the university’s official “anti-racist” guide, diversity officials added materials promoting “redress,” “police defunding,” and “prison abolition.”

Meanwhile, university DEI officials reinforced the narrative and offered a range of resources for racial reconditioning. The Bureau of Multicultural Affairs published an official handbook, Anti-Racist Resources: The Unlearning of Racism and White Supremacy, which promoted psychological approaches to “white identity development.”

The premise of these programs is simple: whites suffer from “white privilege,” “white guilt,” and “white fragility.” And the solution is clear: Whites must atone for their oppression through the process of “developing racial identity” and “becoming an active anti-racist.”

According to one such program, entitled Scaffolding Anti-Racist Resources, whites must first admit their complicity with racism, which includes “being confronted with active racism from real-world experiences that highlight their whiteness.” Whites will then enter the process of “disintegration,” experiencing “white guilt,” and thinking, “I feel bad for being white.”

Next, after their racial identity has been destroyed, they will enter a period of “reintegration,” thinking “it’s not my fault I’m white,” and begin engaging in left-wing political activism.

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Finally, as whites progress through the “pseudo-independence” and “immersion” stages, they will begin to “work against” and “exploit” systems of oppression. [their] Privilege to support anti-racist work.”

By the end of the program, their psychology should fully conform to political ideology. As a final step, whites must pass various loyalty tests.

“Does your solidarity last longer than a news program?” The training asks. “Does your solidarity keep you from sleeping at night? Does your solidarity endanger you? Does your solidarity cost you relationships?”

The end point of USF’s DEI programming is leftist political activism. As part of the university’s official “anti-racist” guide, diversity officials added materials promoting “redress,” “police defunding,” and “prison abolition.”

One resource, “97 Things Whites Can Do for Racial Justice,” instructs whites to “join a local ‘white space'” to “donate to.” [their] local BLM chapter”, “participate in reparations” and “decolonize [their] Bookshelf.”

Another, For Our White Friends Desiring to Be Allies, calls for whites to “stop talking about color blindness” and stop oppressing those “who don’t believe in a white, capitalist Jesus.”

Overall, USF DEI initiatives resemble cult initiation practices. The path of “racial identity development” does not end in individual mental health, but in the individual’s immersion in political ideology.

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Whites are characterized as an oppressive class, born with racial guilt that can only be atoned for through elaborate rituals and commitments to left-wing activism, to the point where they feel alienated from previous relationships and feel compelled to “give their way to change”. [they] vote”, “denounce [President Trump],” and “how to change [they] read [their] Bible.”

On a more practical level, the implementation of DEI ideology at USF has already created a system of widespread racial preferences and discrimination. The university openly promotes racial quotas on hiring and requires prospective teachers to make “diversity statements” — best understood as a pledge of loyalty to leftist racism — in order to be considered for employment.

The university’s Office of Supplier Diversity maintains a system of racial and sexual preferences in contracting and directs its “Diversity Champions” to hire vendors and suppliers based on their identity rather than purely commercial reasons. The university also sponsors a series of racially segregated scholarships that specifically exclude white students — the only racial group receiving such treatment.

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These “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” programs are a farce. In practice, they encourage ideological conformity, racial and sexual discrimination, and the exclusion of any group found on the wrong side of the identity hierarchy.

Governor DeSantis, who recently pledged to abolish DEI programs at Florida public universities, should not hesitate to tear down those offices, terminate the appointment of their commissioners, and restore color-blind equality, individual merit, and scholarly excellence as the Academy’s guiding principles.

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