White Privilege Conference: Being Punctual is White Supremacist; Lauds Cop-killer; Blames Christianity for Every Bad Thing in the World

Founded in 2000, the White Privilege Conference is a yearly conference held to discuss a hodgepodge of leftwing hobbyhorses — those of alleged white privilege, racism, race, sexism, black oppression, racial justice; lesbian, gay and transgender rights; and Islam and Islamophobia. As of 2016, many New York private schools had students and faculty attending the conference.

This year’s White Privilege Conference (WPC), its 17th, was held from April 15 to 17 in Philadelphia.

As reported by The Daily Caller (here, here, and here), the conference this year was an exhibition of every variety of leftwing lunacy, including:

(1) Grades and being on time are white supremacy

On April 15, Heather Hackman, an “education consultant” (Hackman Consulting Group) and former St. Cloud State University professor of multicultural education who taught future teachers, gave a workshop on “Critically Addressing the Corrosive Effects of Whiteness in Teacher Education and Professional Development.”

Hackman, who is “white,” asserted that modern education is hopelessly tainted by white supremacy and the “white imperial gaze,” and that school grades and being on time are features of that white supremacy. She harangued teachers that to be “great teachers,” they must be liberal activists in order to destroy the “white supremacist” nature of modern education. In fact, teachers shouldn’t even bother to teach if they aren’t committed to promoting social justice in school.

(2) Praise for cop-killer

On April 17, the second day of the conference, a member of MOVE named Pam Africa praised and demanded justice for convicted cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal.

MOVE is an activist Philadelphia organization best known for all of its members having the surname “Africa,” and for being bombed by Philadelphia police in 1985 during a gunfight, which resulted in dozens of houses being burnt, and the deaths of 11 MOVE members, including several children.

Mumia Abu-Jamal has been in prison since 1981, when he was arrested and subsequently convicted for the murder of Philadelphia policeman Daniel Faulkner. Identified as the shooter by multiple witnesses, Abu-Jamal was arrested at the scene wearing a shoulder holster and lying next to a gun of the same type that was used to shoot Faulkner. Originally sentenced to death, his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in 2011.

Abu-Jamal claimed to be a victim of racism and wrongfully railroaded through the justice system. A cause célèbre of the Left, he has been given several awards and named an honorary citizen of over two dozen cities around the world. Abu-Jamal even has a street in St. Denis, France named after him.

Pam Africa concluded her remarks by calling for the overthrow of the U.S. government — “Long live revolution, and let’s take this motherfucker down!” — to huge applause from the audience.

(3) Christianity blamed for everything bad in the world

Another conference lecturer, activist and author Paul Kivel, declared that almost every dysfunction in society can be traced to the core ideas of Christianity, which “colonize our mind.”

Kivel said, “In the United States, there’s seven to ten thousand predominantly white, Christian men, who run the major institutions in our society: The corporations, the political parties, the think tanks, the foundations, universities, [and] cultural institutions.” Christianity has a “hegemony” on Americans’ daily lives, such as making Sunday the normative “day of rest,” and is to be blamed for just about everything toxic in the world: racism; sexism; ableism; a weak economy; a flawed capitalist system; global warming (because Christianity preaches human dominion over the Earth, rather than requiring that humans treat the Earth as “sacred”); as well as notions of good and bad.

Kivel complained Christian “dualism” makes people keep seeing good and bad in everything and forces a “with us or against us” mentality. He said, “Think about how often during the day we say things are good or bad. It’s a rainy day, so we say it’s bad weather … There’s nothing inherently good or bad about the weather, or about people.” (Ironically, one quote featured on the conference website is South African bishop Desmond Tutu’s statement that “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”)

Kivel also slammed Christianity for having a “hierarchical” view towards love — placing “God over people, men over women, parents over children, white people over people of color” — which inevitably creates systems that justify and even glorify oppression.

Kivel ended his talk by hectoring his audience to “value all forms of diversity,” “recognize multiple truths,” and “don’t proselytize,” oblivious to the fact that in his talk, he precisely failed to do what he himself commanded, by proselytizing, insisting on his version of truth, and devaluing and condemning Christianity.

H/t FOTM’s maziel