White students don’t need their own student unions

Hannah Luk | Daily Trojan

A group of students at the University of California, Berkeley created a White Student Union Facebook page Nov. 21, initially promoted to serve as a “safe space” for white students to voice their opinions and stories regarding “the challenges that European-American students on college campuses face,” according to the page. The page has since been deleted due to overwhelming backlash.

With recent conversations surrounding race on college campuses — such as the football strike sparked by racial tension at University of Missouri, as well as similar issues that gained media attention at Yale University and Claremont McKenna College — students of all racial backgrounds seem to have an opinion as to what constitutes racism. And though it is people of color who have endured the harshest discrimination in this country, it seems that white Americans can’t handle the criticism they’ve faced within the last few years.

The UC Berkeley White Student Union was not a sanctioned group that obtained university approval; in fact, university officials condemned the creation of this group. The university issued a statement written by UC Berkeley Chancellor Nicholas Dirks and Vice Chancellor for Equity and Inclusion Na’ilah Suad Nassir, which stated, “While UC Berkeley honors First Amendment rights, we do not endorse this attempt to create conflict and make light of the efforts of activists, locally and nationally, who have worked hard to hold us all accountable for providing a campus climate where every student is safe, welcomed and respected.”

Though it is surprising that this group emerges from one of the most liberal college campuses in America, the UC Berkeley White Student Union isn’t the only white student group that has been established on a college campus; White Student Unions were also created at Stanford University, Penn State, UCLA and University of Missouri, among others across the country. However, most of these pages have since been erased. And while the UC Berkeley White Student Union was still active, the group stated on its Facebook page that any language deemed derogatory, prejudiced or racially insensitive would be automatically deleted. However, regardless of the creators’ intentions to ensure that discussions would remain diplomatic, the entire principle of creating a White Student Union is racist in itself.

There is a strange contradiction that accompanies the ideologies of white privilege; white Americans who don’t believe white privilege exists think so because they’ve never had to face the struggles of Americans of color. In general, white Americans do not have to think about how their race affects their social, political and economic status because most Western societies have deemed Caucasians to be the preferred race. For centuries, this country has been led by white politicians, so it is confusing how white Americans can experience racial injustice.

There is a difference between racism and prejudice. Though the two often go together, white privilege disables the implication of racism among white Americans. America was built on the principles of colonialism and racism from white Europeans; prior to the establishment of slavery in the 17th century, it was indigenous Americans who faced the bloodshed of Anglo-Saxon immigrants in the 15th century. If one were to express negative generalizations toward all the European-American citizens, though these comments would be in bad taste, it would, fundamentally, not be racist — because the United States was built from a Eurocentric perspective, and because the United States is still predominantly run by white men. One technically cannot be racist against white Americans, for they still maintain power in the country.

It would, however, be incorrect and rather critical to assume that all white Americans hold racist beliefs. There are, of course, many white Americans who advocate for equality among all races and have joined the frontier to eliminate all racial prejudices. However, those who believe in the principles of true racial equality yet choose to stay silent in situations of discrimination or microaggressions are contributing to the problem. Silence does not always equal neutrality; in the case of racism in America, silence is, in fact, violently detrimental to progress.

If white Americans are tired of enduring the anger of Americans of color, they must first acknowledge their social, economic and political privilege and actively strive to achieve equality between all races by speaking up in situations of racial injustice. One cannot change history, but one can change where the future is headed. It is up to millennials to change the norms of racial perception and create justice for racial minorities in America.