Additionally, the “reorientation” DEI lecture asserted that minorities could not harbor racism toward White people.
At the University of Wisconsin Law School, first-year students were required to attend a “re-orientation” course that included racial slurs and the assertion that “there are no exceptional White people.”
Prior to the Friday lecture, students were required to read brochures, one of which stated that “colorblindness” can invalidate the norms, life experiences, and cultural values of people of color.
“You are also implying that you are unaware of your whiteness by claiming that we are not different and that you don’t see the color. The booklet stated, “This denies your experience of privilege and the experience of racism experienced by people of color.”
Assistant Dean for Student Affairs Lauren L. Devine stated that Joey Oteng, who describes herself as a “social justice educator,” gave a two-hour lecture that served as a “follow-up to the DEI session” that students attended at the start of the fall semester.
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In an email to students, Devine stated, “Re-orientation is intended to do just that – reorient you now that you have your first semester of law school behind you and a new semester ahead.” In addition, she instructed students to complete a “Race Timeline Worksheet” and read an article on “28 Common Racist Attitudes and Behaviors” before the seminar.
People of color cannot be racist, according to a portion of the article “The 28 Common Racist Attitudes and Behaviors”.
“First, let’s use this definition of racism: racism is the product of racial prejudice and institutionalized, systemic power. The handout stated, “To say that people of color can be racist is to deny the inherent power imbalance in racism.”
No matter what they do, White people benefit from racial discrimination, according to another section of the pre-activity materials, which asserted that “there are no exceptional White people.”
Oteng employed a real-time interactive survey, according to anonymous sources who talked with The Federalist, asking students to rate their level of understanding of institutional and systematic racism on a scale from “unsure” to “confident.”
The session “was held in partial compliance of ABA (American Bar Association) Standard 303’s requirement that law schools provide education to their students on “bias, cross-cultural competency, and racism,” the law school’s spokesperson, John Lucas, told the source.
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Many of the events felt, according to one observer, like a “confessional” for the White law students in the audience.
Additionally, it was purportedly requested of the students present to provide any “words, phrases, stereotypes, slurs, words of bias, etc.” that could be connected to minority groups.
Someone in the audience allegedly called White folks “boring as f—k” in response to Oteng’s request for a racial epithet.
It was a really serious moment when it came to disparaging remarks made regarding Black people, Native Americans, Asians, and Middle Easterners. One participant claimed, “[Oteng] was implying that it was okay to laugh at White slurs because White people don’t have any problems when it came to White people and the derogatory terms used for White people.”
Later, General Counsel Rick Eisenberg of the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty and President Rick Eisenberg denounced the program.
“The student body is being subject to nonsense that ignores the rule of law and true equality in favor of a racialized way of seeing the world,” he stated in a statement.