The War Room

QUEEN'S UNIVERSITY AND WHITENESS

In Saturday's Toronto Star, Louise Brown wrote an article which commented on the lack of diversity at Queen's University and its surrounding culture of 'whiteness'. Of course, the article never really get's to the core of what that culture is.

I wrote a letter in to the editorial department of The Toronto Star to comment on the article. Needless to say, not only was it not published, but the subsequent letters that were, certainly did not reflect my views, nor my experiences there.

Here, unedited, is the letter that I wrote to The Toronto Star, that was not chosen for publication.

"As a Queen’s University Alumni who attended the institution from 1989-1993, I read the article on how ‘white’ and ‘elite’ Queen’s University is with irony. Coming from a working class, ethnic background, I looked forward to entering Queen’s having worked hard in high-school to achieve various scholarships to help pay for my tuition there.

What I was exposed to was four years of well-to-do white people obsessed with Marxist inspired oppression theory, radical feminist gender identity politics and hating America. I must say, there is nothing more ironic than seeing a wealthy, white Queen’s student saying how ‘oppressed’ they are by the ‘white, patriarchal, Judeo-Christian, capitalist, power structure’.

The hypocrisy was astounding.

During my time there, I saw anyone who disagreed with this way of thinking accused of the most horrific acts. People who stood up for free speech in academia against the growing culture of political correctness were threatened and many had their careers/lives destroyed based on the most flimsy of accusations.

Innocence or guilt was never an issue; any indictment of faculty or student could be justified with the mantra of 'someone has to pay for 2000 years of oppression’. A Sri Lankan friend of mine could not get over how these pampered, white kids from Toronto, Vancouver etc. could justify calling themselves ‘oppressed’ while others in the world had to deal with the horrors of apartheid or communism.

I have no idea of how prevalent these attitudes are on other university campuses. Based on stories that I have heard from friends of mine at other academic institutions, I suspect this culture runs across more shores of academia than polite society would care to admit."

posted by Nicol DuMoulin @ 4:05 PM