Chris Powell: What next? A course in oppression?

At the University of Connecticut campus, in Storrs.

MANCHESTER, Conn.

Thanks to President Trump, Connecticut now knows a little more about the politically correct nuttiness that afflicts the state's public higher education.

In response to the Trump administration's directive to colleges to get rid of “diversity, equity, and inclusion" stuff or risk losing federal funding, the University of Connecticut said the other day it is suspending a one-credit course on “anti-Black racism" -- a course that seems not to have gotten statewide publicity before.

The Hartford Courant reports that the University Senate voted in 2023 to make completion of the course a requirement for graduation but university administrators didn't get around to doing so. They hope to reinstate the course eventually somehow.

It's not that racism isn't an important subject in United States and world history. It's that separating a course on racism from the teaching of U.S. history and world history -- subjects of which most college students are largely ignorant -- is obviously an exercise in political correctness, guilt mongering, and inflicting a mentality of victimization and entitlement on minority students.

After all, how can one graduate from a high school in Connecticut without knowing that tribalism and racism are basic in history and that the history of the United States in particular is largely a matter of the long and sometimes bloody struggle to overcome them and expand democracy?

But then educational proficiency tests long have suggested that most Connecticut high-school graduates never master high school English and math. If they haven't mastered English, they haven't mastered history. Indeed, they may not even be able to spell it. So for many students a college course requirement in anti-Black racism is probably crowding out basic learning.

The Courant also reports that when the University Senate approved the anti-Black racism course it envisioned adding similar courses about the mistreatment of other groups -- people with darker complexions, Jews, Asians, Muslims, and members of sexual minorities. So maybe, if not for Trump, in another year or two UConn might be offering not just a course in anti-Black racism but entire undergraduate, master's, and doctoral degrees in oppression suffered in the United States, even as the country has been overwhelmed by millions of immigrants who somehow see refuge and opportunity here.

Nowhere has what used to be called the ascent of man been hastened more than in the United States. Land-grant institutions of higher education such as UConn have been a big part of that ascent.

Students admitted to UConn today are amazingly diverse in race, ethnicity, and other backgrounds and are among the luckiest people in the world. UConn should stop using political correctness to turn them into victims.

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Connecticut's ascent was not accomplished by giving the store away as state government long has been doing, a practice exposed again lately by one of the Yankee Institute's journalists, Meghan Portfolio.

Last month Portfolio detailed the case of Shellye Davis, who is nominally a paraeducator in the Hartford school system -- you know, the system that happily advances illiterates and gives them high school diplomas. Davis is president of the Hartford Federation of Paraeducators and secretary-treasurer of the Connecticut AFL-CIO, and Portfolio reported that she doesn't show up for work much even though she is paid as if she does.

Davis was absent from work with pay for 152 days in less than three years -- 55 sick days, 38 “professional development" days, 33 union leave days, and 26 personal days. Some of these days were spent lobbying the General Assembly and participating in political events.

Extreme paid absences like those of Davis are actually authorized for union leaders by the Hartford school system's contract with its unions. State government has a similar practice. In Connecticut the public pays many government employees not to do the jobs they were hired for but instead to work politically against the public interest.  

Given their dismal performance, how can Hartford's schools afford to spend money this way? It's probably easier when you don't really care much about education.

Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years (CPowell@cox.net).