{"id":286380,"date":"2016-12-20T17:21:05","date_gmt":"2016-12-20T16:21:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/university-offers-class-on-the-problem-of-whiteness\/"},"modified":"2016-12-20T17:21:05","modified_gmt":"2016-12-20T16:21:05","slug":"university-offers-class-on-the-problem-of-whiteness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/university-offers-class-on-the-problem-of-whiteness\/","title":{"rendered":"University Offers Class on \u2018The Problem of Whiteness\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"\">\n<p>A class to be taught next semester at the University of Wisconsin Madison called \u201cThe Problem of Whiteness\u201d aims to \u201cunderstand how whiteness is socially constructed and experienced in order to help dismantle white supremacy,\u201d the course description <a href=\"http:\/\/african.wisc.edu\/content\/problem-whiteness\" target=\"_blank\">states<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhites rarely or never questioned what it is to be white,\u201d <a href=\"http:\/\/african.wisc.edu\/faculty\/sajnani\" target=\"_blank\">Assistant Professor Damon Sajnani<\/a>, who will teach the course, told <em>The College Fix<\/em> in a telephone interview last week. \u201cSo you go through life taking it for granted without ever questioning or critically interrogating it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>For Sajnani, one way to solve this is to offer \u201cThe Problem of Whiteness,\u201d an analysis of what it means to be white and how to deal with it as a \u201cproblem.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe idea of talking about the problem of whiteness is to turn the question back to where it belongs,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>One of the main goals in the class will be to understand race and identity and how it impacts lives on a daily basis, he said. One of the talking points is juxtaposing white privilege and white power, and how the two can be intertwined and similar to each other, the scholar\u00a0said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe problem of racism is the problem of whites being racist towards blacks,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>The class will also theorize what white students can do with their \u201cwhiteness\u201d and how to mobilize their identities as a mode for social justice as opposed to racial injustices, he added.<\/p>\n<p>When asked what he might say to those who oppose the course topic, Sanjani said they have no&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/redice.tv\/news\/university-offers-class-on-the-problem-of-whiteness\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A class to be taught next semester at the University of Wisconsin Madison called \u201cThe Problem of Whiteness\u201d aims to \u201cunderstand how whiteness is socially constructed and experienced in order to help dismantle white supremacy,\u201d the course description states. \u201cWhites rarely or never questioned what it is to be white,\u201d Assistant Professor Damon Sajnani, who [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2520,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-286380","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286380","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2520"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=286380"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286380\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=286380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=286380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=286380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}