It’s always interesting when white men attempt to write off things like historical (and current) racism in America. It’s very hard to do that without sounding racist yourself, or extremely insensitive at the least. Breitbart editor Ben Shapiro manages to sound spectacularly ignorant by saying that the only purposes for ethnic studies courses at colleges are to “meet girls” and get an “easy A.” Not only that, but he also implies that there is no longer any such thing as racism in America and that saying so is, in itself, racist (seems a tad bit contradictory).





Here’s the video:

This idiotic attitude is one of the reasons the Republican Party is stuck in the past. America has an extremely long history of racism, starting with Native American genocide and continuing now with nearly every minority. To say otherwise is to ignore a major problem in our country, and one that’s been around for quite some time.

This Breitbrat’s opinion (see what I did there?) reflects a sadly popular attitude in America; it is saying that, “if it doesn’t affect me, it doesn’t exist.” That’s not true, and the millions of minority citizens across the nation can tell you that racism is alive and well in America today.

With regard to the college courses, as a white American male I can tell you that it is important for us to know our history. Not because we should feel bad for it because we’re white, but because it’s necessary to see the evil that those in power — no matter which group — are capable of. We need to learn from past mistakes, and a huge part of that is inclusiveness. Teaching the cultural and racial history of our nation is an integral part higher education.

My favorite part is that he doesn’t like the class because it teaches what happened; his remark that it’s for “meeting girls” and an “easy A” show that that’s what he thinks it should be for; it doesn’t demonstrate that’s the way it is.