Education

America Is Now Besieged By Pathological ‘White Fragility,’ Taxpayer-Funded Professor Claims

white privilege at a clinic in Appalachia Getty Images/John Moore

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A taxpayer-funded education professor at the University of Iowa has published an article declaring that “white neurosis and white fragility” have become “widespread phenomena” in the United States in the wake of the 2016 election.

The professor is Leslie Ann Locke.

The article, titled “What’s in your wallet? Not much green, but a whole lotta white,” appears in the academic journal Whiteness and Education.

Also, there is an academic journal called Whiteness and Education. It focuses on advancing “critical understandings of the construction and deployment of Whiteness in educational contexts.”

Locke questions “white norms and values” in the article, according to Campus Reform.

The “white neurosis” Locke believes is gripping America is a disorder which causes white people to behave “defensively, aggressively, or defectively” when someone brings up “white privilege.” (RELATED: Not Being Stupid Is ‘Cognitive Privilege’ Now, Which Is Just Like White Privilege)

“White neurosis” resembles “white fragility,” Locke explains. “White fragility” is a term which describes the way white people “freak out” when someone like Locke suggests they benefit from “white privilege.”

White people who grew up poor are especially prone to manic episodes of “white fragility,” Locke says. Also, poor white people try to “compete” with minority groups with different skin colors for victimhood. Such competition is bad, Locke writes, because any oppression poor white people experience is not “equivalent” to the oppression suffered by members of minority groups.

“With the dog whistle call to ‘make America great again,’ competition for marginality is real, being critical is a threat and race and racism remain too easy for whites to willfully ignore,” the taxpayer-funded professor claims, according to Campus Reform.

The privilege experienced by white people “creates a pathology.” This “pathology” is like a disease, Locke says, and it makes “the ignorance, protection, and tolerance of white supremacy” possible.

“Whites must work to make sense of their unearned advantages,” Locke urges.

Also, Locke, who is white, explains that she is able to make judgments about white people because she claims to have grown up poor.

According to her faculty webpage at the University of Iowa website, Locke’s other scholarly works include “‘If you show them who you are, then they are going to try to fix you’: The capitals and costs of schooling for high achieving Latina students,” and “‘You don’t come to this school to show off your hoodies’: Latinas, Community Cultural Wealth, and an Early College High School.”

The concept of “white privilege” was popularized in academic circles by a 1987 essay entitled “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack.” The author was Peggy McIntosh, an inconsequential white feminist. (RELATED: TEST YOUR KNOWLEDGE: Are These Workshops From A Klan Rally Or A White Privilege Conference?)

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