In Fox News' alternative reality, white privilege is a "racist" concept concocted by minorities who have only themselves to blame for their problems! Any discussion of white privilege is also considered racist. The Black Lives Matter movement is also a sore subject on Fox. This morning, Fox & Friends combined both memes in a report on a college honors program that includes a course on, yes, white privilege and Black Lives Matter.
On this morning's Fox & Friends, perhaps the least diverse show on Fox, Heather Childers began the "headline" segment by stoking patented Fox outrage: "A college is sparking outrage by paying students to learn about this." She showed video of a 2015 Black Lives Matter rally during which the participants shouted anti-police statements - a clip that Fox has used to, as Newshounds Ellen reported, "suggest that the entire group is waging a war on police" despite the group's Facebook statement that they are not targeting police.
Childers informed us that Sam Houston State University is "offering students a scholarship to take courses on Black Lives and white privilege." She noted that "the honors program, worth up to $3,000, also gives students access to sign up for early courses and a special computer center." She added, "The school says it promotes community engagement." And that was it, end of outrage.
So within less that a minute, Fox was able to pack in a solid wallop of right-wing, racist propaganda that appears to have been sourced from the right-wing Daily Caller which seems to have broken the "news' yesterday. But let's take a look at the facts, shall we?
Childers is referring to the Elliott T. Bowers Scholarship program, which is for students currently in the Bowers Honors Program, and worth up to $2800. Students have the opportunity to take a variety of specialized courses and access a private computer lab. So apart from her $3,000 figures, Childers' description of the course is essentially correct.
But she veers off into agitprop land with her suggestion that the courses, part of a wide range of topics, are controversial. In "Understanding Whiteness," students examine "the role of race in one’s life; examination of white racial identity; the social construction of whiteness; how whiteness operates within institutional structures; systemic privilege and oppression; intersectionality; key historic events and movements advancing white privilege (eugenics, global colonization, holocaust); and current dialogues about whiteness in the US. Students."
Childers is also being disingenuous in not providing context to the "outrage" over the Black Lives Matter course which, as the catalog states, seeks "to examine the Long Civil Rights Movement, the specific events that led to the founding of Black Lives Matter, and the role that social media, public figures, and recent events have played in the evolution of the movement."
So of all the courses that this honors program offers, Fox foments outrage over those that raise questions about white America. But as white America's newsroom, I guess that's their job?
Be so shocked when you watch this Fox & Friends clip from Monday, March 6th, 2017:
This segment reminds me of the outrage against women’s studies. Different group, same claims, which are clearly striking a chord in their typical viewer (angry, white, elderly and male).