© Shannon Stapleton / ReutersFlyers on a college noticeboard on campus at Yale University.
Yale University has launched a new course entitled 'Constructions of Whiteness,' which explores ideas of 'whiteness.' The Ivy League school's initiative has not been met with universal approval, however.
The undergraduate course at Yale aims to instill "
an interdisciplinary approach to the understanding of whiteness." It is taught by Claudine Rankine, an award-winning Jamaican-born poet.
The spring 2018 semester class offers students a "
discussion of whiteness as a culturally constructed and economic incorporated entity, which touches upon and assigns value to nearly every aspect of American life and culture," according to its
website.
The class is divided into eight topics about "whiteness," including property, masculinity, femininity, speech, prosperity, spaces and imagination, according to
College Fix, which claims to have obtained the syllabus.
Required reading includes Michael Kimmel's '
Angry White Men: American Masculinity at the End of an Era,' Richard Dyer's '
White: Essays on Race and Culture,' and Richard Delgado and Jean Stefanic's '
Critical White Studies: Looking Behind the Mirror.'
Comment: Despite the bias for equality of outcome that underlies the article, the author at least considers the possibility of what is most likely the correct conclusion: if a society allows people to live a decent enough life in a broad range of professions, individuals will tend to follow their intrinsic interests.