Students Rake in Extra Credit After Taking Quiz on Their White Privilege
Rob Shimshock /
Students at San Diego State University can earn extra credit by taking a quiz that gauges their level of “white privilege,” according to a Tuesday report.
Professor Dae Elliott offers this extra credit in a sociology class, reported The College Fix. Her “White Privilege Checklist” asks students to peruse a list of 20 statements and check the ones that they think apply to them.
“The following are examples of ways white individuals have privilege because they are white,” states the quiz, which goes on to assert that white people have privilege because they can be around people of their race the majority of the time, can see people of their race “widely represented” in the newspaper or on TV, and can find “music of [their] race” in a music shop.
“I can be pretty sure that if I ask to talk with the ‘person in charge,’ I will be facing a person of my race” reads one statement on the quiz. Another says, “I can take a job or enroll in a college with an affirmative action policy without having my co-workers or peers assume I got it because of my race.”
After responding to the statements, the quiz informed students of other alleged privileges of class, religion, sexual orientation, and gender and asked students to respond to a series of reflection questions.
“[The quiz] asks my students to step out of their subjectivity, extend their understanding, and begin to be a conscious part of understanding and hence gaining more power and agency to effect change,” Elliott told The College Fix. “In a society that values fairness, our injustices that are institutionalized are often made invisible.”
“This is another attempt by the left, and professor Elliott, to divide America,” Brandon Jones, president of the university’s College Republicans, told The College Fix. “The left’s political goal is to ensure that minorities in America perpetuate that their primary problem is white racism.”
Racial curriculum at San Diego State University also came under scrutiny earlier in September with media discovery of the school’s “Black Minds Matter” course, which trained future educators to teach Black Lives Matter ideology.
“[The quiz] is an excellent prompt to get the students discussing issues around how institutions work,” Elliott told The Daily Caller News Foundation. She noted that the seemingly objective, authoritative phrasing of the concept of “white privilege” “is for the students to broach in the discussion.”
“[My class] is actually listed as one of the favorites as the ensuing discussions do exactly as intended and help my students see things from multiple perspectives,” said the professor. “I have no intention of censoring liberal or conservative thought in my class but encouraging engagement using reason and evidence.”
San Diego State University did not respond to a request for comment from The Daily Caller News Foundation in time for publication.
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