University of Wisconsin Law School Mandates ‘Re-Orientation’ DEI Training for First-Year Students

‘University of Wisconsin Law students were taught during a mandatory “Re-Orientation” training on Friday that believing in “colorblindness” and rugged individualism, or saying that “people of color can be racist,” are all forms of racism that should be challenged.

The diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) workshop was part of the larger Re-Orientation program for first-year law students who just completed their first semester.

Documents obtained by the conservative legal firm Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, or WILL, show that in the lead-up to the DEI session, students were asked to read a document that suggests: “28 common racist attitudes and behaviors that indicate a detour or wrong turn into white guilt, denial, or defensiveness.” The document often turns to broad generalizations of things that “whites tend to” do. It includes things like apologizing for the behavior of other whites without taking “antiracist action” {snip}

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According to the document obtained by WILL, believing in colorblindness, or trying to see beyond race, is actually racist, because “you are also saying you don’t see your whiteness. This denies the people of colors’ experience of racism and your experience of privilege.”

It is also racist to say that people of color “are just as racist as white people,” according to the document. While “people of color can be and are prejudiced against white people,” the document says, “as a social group, [people of color] do not have the societal institutional power to oppress white people as a group.”

The document, authored by antiracist organizer Debra Leigh, calls out the late conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh for once saying that the civil rights movement has “gone to the extreme” and that the movement is “no longer working for equality but for revenge.” Limbaugh’s comment and other “reverse racism” claims “are loaded with white people’s fear of people of color and what would happen if they gained ‘control,’” the document states.

It says it is racist to believe in the fairness of the judicial system {snip}

Suggesting that minorities are at fault for any struggles they have in the workplace is a “blame the victim” behavior that avoids “the real problem: racism,” the document states. “Blame the victim” behaviors also “take away from the picture the agents of racism, white people and institutions, who either intentionally perpetuate or unintentionally collude with racism.”

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Racism in the United States “won’t end because people of color demand it,” the document concludes. “Racism will only end with a significant number of white people of conscience, the people who can wield systemic privilege and power with integrity, find the will and take the action to dismantle it. This won’t happen until white people find racism in their daily consciousness as often as people of color do.”

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