Posted on August 23, 2019

NY School’s ‘White Ally Checklist’: ‘I Can Debrief with People of Color to Give and Receive ‘Reality Checks”

Celine Ryan, Campus Reform, August 21, 2019

A New York college hosts and maintains a guide for educators who seek to incorporate “Whiteness Studies” into their education, linking to another school’s “white ally checklist,” which contains statements like “I can debrief with people of color to give and receive ‘reality checks’” and “I have joking relationships with individual people of color.”

Ithaca College hosts a website called “WISE: Working to Improve Schools and Education,” with a mission to “provide anyone interested in improving U.S. schools with valuable information and resources about important issues in education in teaching.” {snip}

One section, titled “Whiteness Studies,” provides a comprehensive list of links and resources surrounding “whiteness.” Although the section lists no description, the links it provides focus largely on topics like racism, white privilege, and being a “white ally.”

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Ithaca’s website directly links to a similar, but more detailed checklist hosted by the State University of New York, Cortland. SUNY Cortland’s “White Ally Checklist” encourages whites “to get a feel for what constitutes ‘ally behavior’ on the part of white anti-racists” and to grade themselves according to how definitively they can agree with statements like “I use my privilege to communicate information from the dominant group to people of color,” “I can debrief with people of color to give and receive ‘reality checks’ and affirmations after meetings, events, and actions,” and “I have joking relationships with individual people of color.”

The same document also encourages “white allies” to identify “problematic” areas where they may “get stuck,” such as relying on people of color to teach them about their own racism, pointing out “reverse racism,” and knowing “fewer than five” non-white individuals.

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The organization’s website describes its mission as being to “build an equitable society” by “decentering white culture and centering an anti-racist multiracial culture free of white supremacy.”

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