Students of Color Conference Results in 'Oppression Olympics'

For those of us opposed to the social justice warriors and their desire to pretend everything is the fault of white men, it’s easy to look at the opposition as a near monolithic group focused on destroying anything we hold dear simply because we hold it dear.  If you’re like that, take heart.  A recent “Student of Color Conference” within the University of California system illustrates just how dysfunctional the social justice brigade can be.

The conference is usually without a theme, which puts anything on the table for discussion.  This year, however, organizers sought to tighten the focus just a bit by making the conference about combating “anti-blackness.”

Non-black “students of color” were less than impressed.

This year’s University of California Students of Color Conference unproductively devolved into something of an “oppression Olympics” between different minority groups, prompting arguments between participants and ultimately leading to some canceled sessions at the annual event.

UCLA student Jacqueline Alvarez told The College Fix as much in a recent telephone interview, standing behind an op-ed she wrote in the Daily Bruin campus newspaper detailing the same.

She described the conference not only as an “oppression Olympics” but also “a safe space gone wrong” in her opinion article.

But does a safe space ever really go right?

The amusing part, however, was when various minority groups decided to jockey for most aggrieved status among the conference attendees.

The crux of the debate centered around the conference theme: “Fighting Anti-Blackness.” Apparently it was not communicated to students that the conference would have a particular theme this year. At the event, held at UC Irvine, students of different minority groups began arguing when it became known that the conference would focus almost exclusively on discrimination against the African American community.

In one of the larger workshops, one of the students raised a question about why the only issues being discussed were those involving anti-blackness, prompting an African-American student to respond that black students are the most oppressed, to which a Muslim student made a comment about her people being bombed in the Middle East, according to Alvarez.

The conflicts resulted in the second day of the conference being canceled.

While these groups seem to identify white folks as the source of so many ills, they can’t seem to agree on whom white folks are mistreating more.

Of course, they all ignore that there are laws explicitly protecting minorities in this country.  Kind of like how that one student ignores that Islamists aren’t being bombed because they’re Muslim but because they’re barbarians who are cutting people’s heads off and throwing gay people off buildings.

Not that any of that matters when you spend so much of your time trying to figure out all the ways your problems are someone else’s fault.

It’s unlikely the conference will create an official theme going forward, but if they want one that is less contentious, might I suggest they go with “white people suck” next year?  That one seems to be a perennial favorite that unites everyone at these events.