Buffalo High School Freshmen Quizzed on Their ‘White Privilege’
Cassandra Fairbanks
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A Buffalo-based news radio show posted a photograph of a “checklist” quizzing students on their “white privilege” to their Twitter feed on Tuesday and alleged that the assignment was given to freshmen at City Honors public high school.
The assignment titled “White Privilege Checklist” provided “examples of ways white individuals have privilege because they are white” and asked students to check each line that applied to themselves or that they have encountered.
The assignment was sent to Big League Politics by a disgusted liberal after seeing it posted by the radio show Bauerle and Bellavia, an afternoon news show on WBEN that is hosted by Iraq War veteran David Bellavia and long-time radio personality Tom Bauerle.
https://twitter.com/BauerleBellavia/status/915306950371549186
The assignment began with a paragraph quoting Peggy McIntosh, the Associate Director at the Wellesley College Center for Research on Women, describing “white privilege” as “an invisible package of unearned assets, which I can count on cashing in each day, but about which I was ‘meant’ to remain oblivious. White privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes, tools, and blank checks.”
Students were then asked to read through a series of examples and mark those which were applicable. Examples included, “I can arrange to be in the company of people of my race most of the time,” and “when I am told about our national heritage or about ‘civilization,’ I am shown that people of my color made it what it is.”
Interestingly, the same day that this assignment was made public, an article was published in the Buffalo News complaining about the lack of diversity at the school.
“City Honors’ website claims that the school continues to fulfill its mission of ‘challenging students in an environment that is a racial and economic crossroads unique to our region and nation.’ But how can it do this if City Honors is now overwhelmingly white?” the author of the article asked, noting that 16.4% of the students enrolled this year are black.
The author, an alumna of the high school, concluded their piece by implying that the school is on it’s way to becoming a “perfectly efficient funnel shunting mostly white kids into top-tier colleges.”
Big League Politics has reached out to City Honors Principal William A. Kresse, as well as several other members of the faculty, for comment. One was not provided by time of publishing, but we will update this article if one is provided.
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