(The Federalist) A mandatory “re-orientation” for first-year University of Wisconsin Law School students last week included a survey prompting participants to share racial slurs and instruction that colorblindness is bad and that racial minorities cannot be racist, according to a source who attended Friday’s session.
Like other euphemistically-titled “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) programming, the presentation on Friday preached the usual dogmas of Marxist-steeped critical race theory and “anti-racism” that have infiltrated U.S. college campuses, the source said. These doctrines teach that the United States — particularly its legal system — is systemically racist, that “whiteness” must be “dismantled,” and that the only solution to past racism is reverse racism.
“‘Colorblindness’ negates the cultural values, norms, expectations and life experiences of people of color,” declared one of the pamphlets that students were asked to review before the session. “By saying we are not different, that you don’t see the color, you are also saying you don’t see your whiteness. This denies the people of colors’ experience of racism and your experience of privilege.”
Students were lectured by Joey Oteng, who bills himself as a “social justice educator/PhD student, lawyer, blogger,” and “Educational Consultant” on his Instagram page. Oteng became the dean’s fellow for inclusive excellence at the Ohio State University Moritz College of Law in 2022, according to the school’s website.
Sources say the DEI session, part of a “re-orientation” for freshman law school students, was mandatory.
UW-Madison spokesman John Lucas told The Federalist the session “was held in partial fulfillment of ABA (American Bar Association) Standard 303’s requirement that law schools provide education to their students on ‘bias, cross-cultural competency, and racism.’”
Critics such as University of Chicago law professor Brian Leiter have pointed out that the ABA’s updated standards are, as The Federalist Society paraphrased Leiter, “ambiguous, costly, burdensome, ineffective, risky, and counter-productive.”
Students Prompted to Confess ‘How Deep Racism Goes in My Life’
An official from the University of Wisconsin Law School did not return The Federalist’s multiple requests for comment on Friday.
“Re-Orientation is intended to do just that – reorient you now that you have your first semester of law school behind you and a new semester ahead,” wrote Lauren L. Devine, Assistant Dean for Student Affairs at the law school, in an email to students. Students were instructed to review an article about “28 Common Racist Attitudes and Behaviors” and complete a “Race Timeline Worksheet” before the two-hour-plus sessions.
According to Devine, Oteng’s presentation was a “follow-up to the DEI session” the would-be law practitioners attended during law school orientation at the beginning of the fall semester.
My favorite and most tangible resource has been “28 Common Racist Attitudes & Behaviors.” It outlines the things that white folx say, do, or believe; their meaning; their impact; and how to reframe for racial justice. https://t.co/hx4WjGC3wY
I literally carry copies to hand out. pic.twitter.com/uFgmQerL4f
— Joseph Oteng (@drjotengii) February 28, 2018
The source, who spoke to The Federalist on condition of anonymity, said Oteng used a Mentimeter interactive survey to gather real-time feedback from participants about race, racism, and societal biases. Under the prompt “I understand institutional and systemic racism,” the survey asks respondents to answer on a scale that ranges from “unsure” to “confidently.”
The source said it felt more like a confessional than an educational session.
One section of the survey bizarrely asked students to share “words, phrases, stereotypes, slurs, words of bias, etc.” associated with racial groups such as “Black folks,” “Middle Eastern communities,” “Latin/e/o/a/x communities,” “Native/indigenous communities,” and “white communities.”
When students were asked to provide slurs and other words for black people, the “N-word” came up quite a bit, according to the session attendee — as did the term “cracker” when Oteng asked for slurs used to describe white people. One respondent described white people as “boring as f-ck.”
The source said there was a lot of chuckling, from the facilitator and some in the crowd, during the section on stereotypes about white people.
“When it came to slurs about black people, Native Americans, Asians and Middle Eastern people, it was a very serious moment. When it got to white people and the derogatory terms used for white people, [Oteng] was implying that it was OK to laugh at white slurs because white people don’t have any problems,” the participant said.
Some questions were just weird. One asked participants to answer if “People find me attractive because of my race,” on a scale from “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree.”
The survey also asked respondents to answer whether they “think people of color can be racist.” But the session’s literature made it clear there was only one right answer.
“Let’s first define racism with this formula: Racism =racial prejudice + systemic, institutional power. To say people of color can be racist, denies the power imbalance inherent in racism,” the “28 Common Racist Attitudes” handout insists, adding:
