Community College to Host 'Whiteness Originates Racism' 'Whiteness History Month'
A community college in Oregon has declared that April will be "Whiteness History Month," a project that is designed to explore how the "construct of whiteness" has created racial inequality in the United States.
Portland Community College, which is attended by nearly 90,000 students each year, announced on its website that the initiative that was launched by a subcommittee of the college's Cascade Campus Diversity Council.
According to a website created by the college to explain the project, Whiteness History Month will be unlike most heritage months since it will not be a "celebratory endeavor." The website states that "whiteness originates racism" and explains that the purpose behind the project is to foster solutions for community and social issues that stem from racism.
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"Whiteness is a socially and politically constructed behavior. It has a long history in European imperialism and epistemologies. Whiteness does not simply refer to skin color but an ideology based on beliefs, values, behaviors, habits and attitudes, which result in the unequal distribution of power and privilege based on skin color," the website's statement of purpose reads. "Whiteness represents a position of power where the power holder defines social categories and reality — the master narrator. Whiteness originates racism. It is relational. 'White' only exists in relation/opposition to other categories in the racial hierarchy produced by whiteness."
A PCC.edu subpage devoted to broadly defining what whiteness is lists whiteness as a construct that provides "material, political, economic, and structural benefits for those socially deemed white." The subpage also argues that those "material benefits are accrued at the expense of people of color, namely in how people of color are systemically and prejudicially denied equal access to those material benefits."
As the project aims to create a new racial climate on PCC's four campuses, the organizers wrote that hiring data, student research, surveys, focus groups and other resources indicate that PCC has also been victimized by the "underlying reality of whiteness embedded in the overall college climate."
"The project seeks to challenge the master narrative of race and racism through an exploration of the social construction of whiteness," the website states. "Challenging the master narrative of traditional curriculum is a strategy within higher education that promotes multicultural education and equity."
The website explains that all in the PCC community are welcome to participate in Whiteness History Month and added that PCC's Whiteness History Month committee is looking for people to give presentations and lectures, participate in panel discussion or create works of art that teach people what whiteness is, how it emerged from from a "legacy of imperialism, conquest, colonialism" and its societal consequences.
School officials told The Oregonian that the call for PCC to host a Whiteness History Month began in December 2014 thanks to the inspiration of Black Lives Matter protests that were held on a number of college campuses across the country.
Although there has not been an official project agenda yet, school officials expect a Whiteness History Month event schedule to be announced in the coming weeks.
PCC spokeswoman Kate Chester told Oregon Live that Whiteness History Month should not be seen as an attempt at "whiteness-shaming," like some conservative news blogs have concluded. Chester added that project will focus on "whiteness as a social construct," not white people.
"There's a difference between white and whiteness," Chester argued, "And that might be what some of the conservative bloggers don't understand."
