Florida university’s White Racism course sparks debate

Sociology professor Ted Thornhill will teach the course starting in January 2018

A new course titled White Racism has sparked controversy and debate at a Florida University.

Sociology professor Ted Thornhill will teach the course at Florida Gulf Coast University starting in January, and has defended its premise against critics who say it targets white students. 

‘Much evidence, both historical and sociological, shows the U.S. has been and remains a white supremacist society,’ Thornhill said in a statement regarding the course. 

‘That is, a racially stratified society where whiteness is more highly valued and therefore associated with greater life chances.’

Thornhill said the course would cover scholarship documenting that state of affairs.

‘My White Racism course is not anti-white; it is anti-white racism. Clearly, not all white people are racists; some are even anti-racist,’ he said. 

The course name has sparked debate at Florida Gulf Coast University, but Thornhill has defended the premise against critics who say it singles out white students for scorn

The course name has sparked debate at Florida Gulf Coast University, but Thornhill has defended the premise against critics who say it singles out white students for scorn

‘However, all people racialized as white derive, in some measure, material and psychological benefits by virtue of being racialized as white.’

Though many students came forward to praise Thornhill as a professor, some were uneasy with the title of the course. 

‘I would have preferred a name more like ‘Systemic Racism’ because giving it ‘White Racism’ as the name of the class I feel like it’s intentional that you are trying to make white people look at the class a certain way,’ Alex Pilkington, an accounting major who is treasurer for the FGCU College Republicans, told the News Press.

The course is not the first to bear the name – at the University of Connecticut, a White Racism course has been taught since the mid-1990s. 

Sociology professor Noël Cazenave, who teaches that course, argues that the name can’t be offensive because ‘the concept of race is bogus, so there are no white people to offend’.

At the Florida school, Thornhill argued that white students, inasmuch as they exist, stood especially to benefit from his course.

‘Too many Americans, especially whites, are cocooned in a “bubble of unreality” as it concerns racial matters,’ he said. ‘My job as a sociology professor is, in part, to facilitate students’ learning toward a data-informed understanding of the social world. And that it the goal of my White Racism course.’

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