Here’s That Wonderful ‘White Privilege’ Course US Army Soldiers Had to Take

On Wednesday, Judicial Watch unveiled the details of a “white privilege” course that hundreds of U.S. Army soldiers were forced to take in April 2015. The class instructed the soldiers on one of the social justice movement’s pet themes: that American society is “organized according to race,” with the “white and male and heterosexual” citizens given special “privileges.”

The white privilege slideshow-based course was presented to 400 soldiers in the 67th Signal Battalion at Fort Gordon, Georgia, on April 2, 2015. Judicial Watch obtained a copy of it in response to a Freedom of Information Act request they sent out after word of the reportedly “unsanctioned” course leaked out last year. Judicial Watch posted the contents of that “Equal Opportunity” slideshow course Wednesday (full text below).

“Race privilege gives whites little reason to pay a lot of attention to African Americans,” reads one slide, followed by an anonymous quote: “To be white in American [sic] means not having to think about it.”

Another moment that Judicial Watch highlights is the use of a hypothetical African woman who comes to the U.S. to learn for the first time that she is a “black woman” and to find that in America “privilege is organized according to race”:

Consider the “black woman” in Africa who has not experienced white racism and does not identify herself as a “black woman”. African, a woman, but not black.

She only became “black” when she came to the U.S. where privilege is organized according to race, where she is assigned to a social category that bears that name and she is treated differently as a result.

Judicial Watch has exposed politically and ideologically charged government material in the past, including Defense Department “equal opportunity” training materials portraying conservative organizations as “hate groups” and warning that “many extremists will talk of individual liberties, states’ rights, and how to make the world a better place.” Another government sanctioned incident involved using the funds from chapel tithes and offering “to pay for cadets to participate in worship services featuring witchcraft, ‘Faery Magick,’ and voodoo.”

Here’s the full text of the Equal Opportunity/”white privilege” course:

Privilege exists when one group has something of value that is denied to others simply because of the groups they belong to, rather than because of anything they’ve done or failed to do.

Privilege has become one of those loaded words we need to reclaim so that we can use it to name and illuminate the truth

***

Race privilege gives whites little reason to pay a lot of attention to African Americans or to how white privilege affects them. “To be white in American [sic] means not having to think about it” [Quotation not attributed]

***

Our society attaches privilege to being white and male and heterosexual regardless of your social class.

***

Imagine a school or a workplace where all kinds of people feel comfortable showing up. [sic] valued, accepted, supported, appreciated, respected, belonging. [sic] Something very powerful keeps this from us.

The truth of this powerful forces [sic] is everywhere, but we don’t know how to talk about it and so we act as though it doesn’t exist

The trouble we’re in privileges [sic] some groups at the expense of others.

It creates a yawning divide in levels of income, wealth, dignity, safety, health and quality of life.

It promotes fear, suspicion, discrimination, harassment, and violence.

***

Consider the “black woman” in Africa who has not experienced white racism and does not identify herself as a “black woman”. African, a woman, but not black.

She only became “black” when she came to the U.S. where privilege is organized according to race, where she is assigned to a social category that bears that name and she is treated differently as a result. [Emphasis added]

***

The trouble we’re in can’t be solved unless the “privileged” make the problem of privilege their problem and do something about it.

The fact that it’s so easy for me and other people in dominant groups not to do this is the single most powerful barrier to change.