The University of South Florida (USF) adopted a "diversity, equity and inclusion" (DEI) plan that argues that a portion of the nation's population supports "white supremacy," encourages students to attend "racial reeducation" programs, and promotes initiatives such as "defund the police" and "prison abolition."
Usf Dei Documents on Scribd
An article by Christopher F. Rufo in City Journal states that the materials taught in the DEI program "paint a troubling picture."
USF’s sprawling diversity bureaucracy has turned left-wing racialism into a new orthodoxy and implemented an administrative policy of racial preferences and discrimination. It divides individuals into categories of oppressor and oppressed, presents “anti-racism” as the solution, and proposes “racial identity development”—which, in practice, resembles a form of cult programming—as the necessary method of atonement.
"Systemic racism that continues to plague our nation"
Rufo pointed out that after the death of George Floyd, USF leaders "condemned the United States as fundamentally racist" and denounced a "systemic racism" that they said "continues to plague our nation." Various departments at the university issued statements asserting that a portion of the country has supported "centuries of normalized violence, structural oppression, and dehumanizing rhetorics that target Black, Brown, and Indigenous people."
In reference to the "systemic racism" within the university, the DEI administrators offer a solution called "racial reeducation." It offers "counseling sessions" that provide a "healing space for POC to discuss unique impacts of systemic racism" and a "connecting space for [white] allies to share experiences and identify ways to take action against racism."
The goal of these sessions is, according to the organizers, to address "xenophobia, killings of unarmed Black people, systemic racism, privilege, oppression, and institutional challenges."
"Anti-Racist Resources: Unlearning Racism and White Supremacy"
The USF Office of Multicultural Affairs published an official guidebook called "Anti-Racist Resources: Unlearning Racism and White Supremacy." It promotes materials for "white identity development." White people are portrayed as suffering from "white privilege," "white guilt" and "white fragility." It is argued that they must make up for oppression by "becoming an active anti-racist":
Whites must admit their complicity in racism. ... Whites will then enter the process of “disintegration,” experiencing “white guilt” and thinking, “I feel bad for being white.”
After this process, with their racial identity already disintegrated, they will enter a phase of "reintegration," thinking "it's not my fault I'm white" and begin to engage in progressive political activism,“work[ing] against systems of oppression” and “us[ing] [their] privilege to support anti-racist work.”
The DEI program also includes materials promoting initiatives such as defunding the police and the abolition of prisons.
The purpose: "anti-racist" political activism
"The endpoint of USF's DEI programming is left-wing political activism," as "whites are designated as an oppressor class, born with racial guilt that can only be expiated through elaborate rituals and commitments to left-wing activism." According to Rufo:
These “diversity, equity, and inclusion” programs are a farce. In practice, they promote ideological conformity, racial and sexual discrimination, and the exclusion of any group that finds itself on the wrong side of the identity hierarchy.
