This spring semester, the University of Cincinnati will be hosting a workshop to educate students on the concepts of “white tears” and “white fragility.”
The “White Fragility, White Tears, and White Allies: Learning to Manage Emotion in Difficult Conversations About Race and Racism” is one of 21 “inclusive excellence workshops” sponsored by the University, according to the Daily Caller. While the University is not revealing what exactly the white tears workshop sets out to achieve, “white tears” is a phrase that’s used by progressive academics to refer to “defensive moves” white people make when confronted by difficult racial issues that supposedly cause them emotional stress.
(An academic article on the term “white fragility” says it refers to “a state in which even a minimum amount of racial stress becomes intolerable, triggering a range of defensive moves,” which include feelings of anger, fear, and guilt. People who suffer from “white fragility” in turn argue or leave the situation. “These behaviors, in turn, function to reinstate white racial equilibrium,” the article states.)
The white tears workshop is being headed by Ainsley Lambert-Swain, a PhD student who teaches sociology at the University. According to her official web page, her background is in critical race theory, racial inequality, race in interaction, and racial microaggressions. She published an academic paper on “Racial Microaggressions and the Reconstruction of Racial Hierarchies,” pending peer review.
Other “inclusive excellence” workshops at the prestigious University include “Microaggressions and Unconscious Bias in the Classroom and Beyond,” and “35 Dumb Things Well-Intended People Say,” a class on microaggressions.
The phrase “white tears” has recently become popular among social justice warriors as a means to insult white people in a condescending fashion. Recently a black Rhodes Scholar at Oxford made headlines when he refused to tip a white waitress (because of the legacy of slavery) and mocked her “white tears” when she became upset. The Rhodes Scholar later said of the waitress that “frankly her feelings are irrelevant”.
Ian Miles Cheong is a journalist and outspoken media critic. You can reach him through social media at @stillgray on Twitter and on Facebook.
