Dear White Male Students: You Are Trash

This photo, initially posted on Reddit, has quickly become viral. An unnamed teacher in Massachusetts, believing that her students were as shocked by Trump’s election as she was, posted these equality-enforcement proclamations on the classroom wall:

Dear Black Students, In this classroom your life matters.
Dear Muslim Students, You are not terrorists.
Dear LGBTQ+ Students, Your life is beautiful and allowed to expand past fake social rules.
Dear Female Students, Men cannot grab you.
Dear Latino(a) Students, You are not rapists or drug dealers.
Dear Undocumented Students, In this classroom there are no walls.

One couldn’t think of a better lesson in condescension, stereotypes, and identity politics.

It must be very reassuring for “Latino(a)” students to see a daily reminder that they are not rapists or drug dealers. The same goes for Muslim students who supposedly need to be reminded that they are not terrorists, in case they forget. Black students are probably expected to feel grateful for being sheltered from certain death that lurks outside — paranoia is always good for morale.

Some girls will surely find the idea that male classmates are just molesters-in-waiting but for their teacher reassuring. A student or two may have also wondered: “Does everyone really think I’m undocumented because I’m Hispanic?” Others probably gasped: “How did the teacher know?” “Who else knows?”

It remains unclear if LGBTQ students are the only ones exempted from “fake social rules,” or everyone gets the same deal as well. And what exactly are “fake social rules”? Could the teacher’s rules on the wall be fake? How about a “thou shalt not out gay students” rule? Teenagers are a curious bunch; if before they were only wondering whether someone among them was gay, the teacher’s proclamation made it official: everyone is under suspicion now.

The teacher’s pipe dream, perhaps, is best expressed by the image of the brick wall with a piece of paper that says “there are no walls,” which looks as surrealistic as René Magritte’s painting of a pipe with the words “this is not a pipe.”

Progressive attempts at social engineering always have unintended consequences.

In order to enforce equality, one must first formalize inequality by hording individuals into artificially defined groups and dictating them to accept a stereotypical, one-size-fits-all classification of themselves as victims (or oppressors), until prefabricated stereotypes solidify as identities.

This is when society really begins to live by “fake social rules” of political correctness.

Such a scenario will only perpetuate inequality, because it is much harder to change something that is set in stone than when it remains dynamic and fluid, as it should be in a free society.

A quick internet search reveals that even though the teacher addresses six various victim groups, her message was mostly picked up by LGBT websites, whose writers invariably give it a teary-eyed praise. For example:

Thousands of people in America are now living in fear, wondering what waits ahead of them in the wake of the 2016 election. However one Massachusetts teacher has proven that hope still exists after going viral on Reddit for spreading love and equality in their classroom.

Who is the source of such an extraordinary fear? Let’s extrapolate it from the teacher’s message:

Builders of walls
Grabbers of females
Enforcers of fake social rules
Haters of terrorists
Oppressors of rapists and drug dealers
Black lives matter agnostics

And who are the good boys and girls? Those who submit to minority stereotypes designated for them by their teacher and join the following broadly defined victim groups:

Blacks
Muslims
Gays
Females
Latinos
Undocumented

Now, we all know that rapists, terrorists, drug dealers, racists, etc. do exist because we see them on TV. But according to the teacher, none of them can possibly be Muslim, Hispanic, black, female, gay, or undocumented.

By way of elimination, one can deduce that these miscreants can only be white cisgendered Christian males, who are also most likely to be Trump supporters.

People who fit this profile are not welcome on that wonderful carousel of diversity. Still, students must be made aware of their menacing presence. The villains are out there, waiting for the carousel to stop spinning, so they can inflict unspeakable harm on their victims. That is why the spinning must never stop.

No word on how many students in that classroom have been made to feel stereotyped or excluded, let alone guilty, for being who they are by virtue of their birth.

The teacher might as well have told the students:

Trump supporters are out to get you in the most deplorable ways. Stay away, they are dangerous. You have nothing in common with them. Your only safe space is here, where you are protected from the outside world. Forget assimilation. Your only chance is to stick to your group identity, and to think and act within the limits of your assigned stereotype. Together we shall weave the empowering narrative of your collective victimhood, preparing you for your future as destroyers of white cisgendered America.

But even if you grow up to be incompetent failures, at least you will be prepared to blame others for it — and we all know exactly who that is.

It wouldn’t have made much difference if the teacher were to post a seventh proclamation saying:

Dear white male students, while not all of you are necessarily rapists, racists, sexists, haters, and bigots, it’s in your DNA, so we expect you to demonstrate a proper amount of conspicuous self-loathing and self-shaming at all times. You are being watched. Thank you for your cooperation.

It would only be appropriate if one of the stereotyped students, no matter what color or gender, would post the following note next to the existing display: