by Eric Lendrum
In a recent livestream, a Virginia state official gave a presentation on why the far-left and anti-White teachings of Critical Race Theory should be encouraged at the oldest military academy in the United States, the Daily Caller reports.
Janice Underwood, who holds the title of Virginia’s “Chief Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Officer,” spoke before a virtual gathering of the Board of Visitors at the Virginia Military Institute (VMI). In the lecture, Underwood promoted the racist writings of Robin DiAngelo, the author of the book “White Fragility.” She explicitly called for such “uncomfortable” ideas to be promoted at VMI, and said that such race-based thinking should be incorporated into “every single course” at the academy.
“Discomfort is to be expected,” Underwood continued, but encouraged the faculty to “lean into that discomfort. Walk towards the discomfort, not away.” She added that students at the academy must “engage in self-reflection and engage their own racial engagement and biases.”
In her speech, Underwood discussed the false notion of “microaggressions,” the concept that minor details of everyday life can be “triggering” to individuals who feel they are suffering from racism, and backed up this assertion with a video of Air Force veterans who allegedly experience such “microaggressions” in their life. She then claimed that racism starts as “a simple thought fueled by our narrow lived experience,” which can then turn into “bias…that can transform into microaggressive behavior.”
Underwood also encouraged the faculty to force students to have such discussions, saying that “I guarantee you in every single course, there are class discussions. I encourage the board…to think about these conversations not as icing on cake to be scraped off if you don’t feel like eating the icing, but embedding them across content, across curriculum, and really thinking about building cadets’ capacity and their emotional intelligence to have these very complicated nuanced conversations.”
The book promoted by Underwood, “White Fragility,” includes numerous outright racist stereotypes and false declarations about White people. Among other things, DiAngelo claims that “common White responses [to Critical Race Theory] include anger, withdrawal, emotional incapacitation, guilt, argumentation, and cognitive dissonance.” DiAngelo also claims that “White identity is inherently racist. White people do not exist outside of the system of White supremacy.”
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Eric Lendrum reports for American Greatness.
