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Wise is scheduled to give the keynote address at the upcoming Decade of Dialogue event at Harvard University. The College Fix pointed out this week the irony in Wise, a straight white man, giving the keynote address at a conference on diversity. But it is perhaps more significant to note that Wise has made several disparaging remarks about Christians in his career as an activist and writer.

In a tweet from 2017, Wise called Christians Jeezoids. In 2012, he tweeted that people who believe in a God of hell/ damnation deserve to be mocked viciously and run out of public square.

@udnore @timjacobwise sorry but people who believe in a God of hell/ damnation deserve to be mocked viciously and run out of public square

— Tim Wise (@timjacobwise) November 26, 2012

In a Facebook post in 2015, Tim Wise argued that Christians should be locked up for basing their morality on a fairy tale. The post was written in reference to comments Michele Bachmann had made against the legalization of gay marriage.

If you are basing your morality on a fairy tale written thousands of years ago, you deserve to be locked updetained for your utter inability to deal with realityNO, we are not obligated to indulge your irrationality in the name of your religious freedombut we will provide you a very comfortable room, against which walls you may hurl yourself hourly if your choose. Knock yourself out.seriously, knock yourself out, completely, for weeks at a timeIm sorta kidding but not by much.

Wise has spoken on over 600 college campuses about racial issues such as white privilege.

Stay tuned to Breitbart News for more updates on this story.

Originally posted here:
Campus Lecturer Tim Wise: Christians Should Be Locked Up

Christians deserve to be mocked viciously and run out of the public square

To celebrate a Decade of Dialogue in its annual diversity conference, Harvard Universitys Faculty of Arts & Sciences invited a straight white man to give the keynote lecture.

But not just any straight white man.

Tim Wise, an anti-racism writer, educator and activist, has denigrated Christians as Jeezoids and fascists and called Pope Francis evil. He has tweeted that people who believe in a God of hell/damnation deserve to be mocked viciously and run out of the public square.

Those who base their morality on the Hebrew Scriptures deserve to be locked up, he said in 2015, claiming to be sorta kidding but not by much.

The Diversity Dialogue Series provides a retrospective look at diversity and inclusion, a discussion of current issues, and practical guidance on how we can move toward greater inclusion and belonging at Harvard, according to the event description.

The event also featured a panel discussion on moving from diversity to inclusion and belonging. Panelists broke down the obligations of what it means to be an ally, as well as the role of privilege and gender in the workplace.

Attributes his success to multiple forms of privilege

Wise avoided inflammatory anti-religious language in his keynote, perhaps mindful that the Christians he wants to incarcerate are a racially diverse lot.

The author of White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son and Dear White America: Letter to a New Minority instead emphasized his own wokeness.

Wise boasted that he had never been invited to speak by ICE, distinguishing himself from a biracial consultant on the panel discussion before his keynote.

He described his teenage daughter as militant, straight and cis-gendered ally to the struggle against transphobia, cisnormativity, and heterosexism and heteronormativity. He jokingly asked the audience to pray for him and his wife as their daughter applies to colleges.

The activist emphasized the importance of identifying institutional barriers to diversity and inclusion.

White supremacy does not only exist on a case-by-case basis, but more broadly serves to shape the superstructure of society, Wise told the audience.

MORE: Anti-racist Tim Wise keynotes College of New Jersey orientation

Wises motif of American history is rich white men telling not rich white people that their enemies are black and brown. Due to this, white people take for granted their advantage of horizontal [economic] mobility, he said.

Moderator Renee Graham, associate editor and columnist at The Boston Globe, admitted she was skeptical of Wise when she first saw him speak a decade ago at a Martin Luther King Jr. celebration at another university.

The black columnist thought to herself it is just like these universitiesto [pick] a white person [to speak] at a MLK celebration, Graham told the audience.

Wise replied that was a perfectly understandable attitude. The antiracist educator credited his own career success to his white privilege, male privilege, straight privilege, cisgender privilege and age privilege.

Reparations must be on the scale of the Marshall Plan

Transitioning to current events, Wise emphasized his longstanding support for reparations for African Americans. He contributed a chapter to the 2003 book Should America Pay? Slavery and the Raging Debate on Reparations.

But he never specified exactly whom should be compensated or what they should receive.

Weve got a lot of work to do, but the fact that the conversation is being had is fabulous, he said. It is a victory that prominent Democratic presidential candidates are being asked to establish their stance on reparations.

Another win is that colleges are considering reparations, Wise said. He cited a recent vote by Georgetown University students to tax themselves with a new student fee to pay the descendants of slaves sold by the university nearly 200 years ago.

MORE: University offers class on The Problem of Whiteness

There is moral rightness in this necessary discussion, and something morally redeeming about forcing this conversation, Wise said.

The most specific Wise got on his reparations plan was calling for a systemic, institutional massive investment, like the stuff we did to rebuild our enemies after WWII with the Marshall Plan. Reparations cannot be simply a bill in the mail.

President Donald Trump is and always was racist, Wise said. His election shows that this country is more sexist and more racist than I realized.

Thats why it is important to educate individuals on their privilege in this political moment, Wise told the audience. Dominant group members had never been asked to think about their identity throughout American history.

Dont let students graduate unless they demonstrate solidarity

Wise sought to clear up purported misconceptions about educating people on equity, inclusion and solidarity. It is not about shaming people, its asking [them] to be responsible, responsive and accountable for their advantages, Wise said.

Racism, sexism and classism, among others, become default positions when we do not interrogate our reality, he added.

But educating people on their privilege can be a double-edged sword, the activist said:

If I convince you that your identity provides you with advantages, if I do my job well, which is to prove that white privilege is real and that male privilege is real and that straight privilege is real and that able-bodied privilege is real and theres lots of them Why would anyone want to get rid of them?

Higher education has actually been too successful in this regard, prompting white people to hoard their privileges upon realizing they exist, Wise said. In other words, white people are inclined to internalize superiority.

Academic institutions have an obligation to embrace the struggle for social justice and solidarity, not just at the level of rhetoric but policy as well, Wise said.

Schools must make mission statements up to date, and be willing to say what it means to operationalize the implementation of inclusive ideals.

He set out vague admission and graduation requirements in order to achieve this mission. Admissions offices must consider applicants under the mind-set that if youre not down with this mission, then you dont actually fit in with us as an institution.

Current students should pay their dues by proving that theyre committed to this mission by way of community service requirements relevant to solidarity. If they dont meet this standard, then you dont graduate, he advocated.

Wise attempted to debunk what he calls the building block of American ideology, the cornerstone of our secular gospel the activists first mention of religion all day except for his prayer joke about his college-bound daughter.

Genesis 1:1 in the Bible of Americanism is the idea that anybody can make it in America if you are just willing to work hard, he said. We all know this is not true.

MORE:Harvard afraid of being seen as waging war on Christianity

Eyerolls for diversity consultant who gave ICE presentation

In the conference panel of diversity consultants, human resources consultant Allison Manswell said the nature of white privilege is to deny that it exists, but benefit from it nonetheless. The fact that American currency features white American leaders proves that white privilege exists, she said.

Speaking on gender in professional environments, LGBTQ inclusion consultant Stephanie Huckel said co-workers should avoid assumptions about others sexuality entirely.

Just because I have a husband and a four-year-old, people might assume that Im straight when I am very queer, said Huckel, who leads the global diversity and inclusion initiative at gambling technology provider IGT. She didnt explain how she is very queer.

To achieve inclusion, we must get comfortable being uncomfortable, said author and activist Michael Fosberg, whose one-man autobiographical play Incognito tells the story of Fosberg learning hes half-black.

The diversity consultant made the room uncomfortable when he admitted that his flourishing career since Trumps election which led him to delete his social media accounts included a presentation for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. That provoked eyerolls and gasps on the panel and among the audience.

MORE: U. Arizona protesters face criminal charges for ICE harassment

IMAGE: FAS Human Resources/YouTube

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Keynote speaker at Harvard diversity conference says ...

As revealed last week in a federal indictment, at least 33 affluent individuals, including television actors, corporate executives and bankers, allegedly engaged in crimes such as bribery and fraud in an effort to buy admission for their children into America's most prestigious universities. These included Yale, Georgetown, Stanford, Wake Forest and other schools.

At a press conference last Tuesday, Andrew Lelling, the U.S. attorney for Massachusetts, described the defendants as "a catalog of wealth and privilege. ... They include, for example, the CEOs of private and public companies, successful securities and real estate investors, two well-known actresses, a famous fashion designer and the co-chairman of a global law firm."

For those unfamiliar with the great lengths that well-resourced families will go to secure unearned and undeserved opportunities, the details of the "Varsity Blues" conspiracymight seem outlandish. The ringleader and organizer was allegedly paid tens of millions of dollars to ensure admission for his clients' children. This involved bribing athletic coaches to secure a place at these elite schools for students who did not even play the sport in question. Standardized exams were altered, "corrected", and taken by people other than the students. The consulting firm at the center of the "Varsity Blues" scandal falsified other records as well.

In fact, this scandal offers only an amplified version of the broken system of American higher education, where well-resourced individuals, families and communities can place their children in elite private and public schools and pay for educational counselors, tutors and test preparation, as well as other opportunities which are not generally available for most people. "Opportunity hoarding" -- the means whereby social and economic capital and all the opportunities which come from it are held almost exclusively in the hands of the rich or upper middle class and rich -- is one of the main day-to-day methods through which intergenerational economic inequality is perpetuated in the United States.

Because race and class are inseparably intertwined in American society, the "Varsity Blues" bribery and fraud conspiracy is also a gross example of white privilege and unearned advantages. In the United States the average white family has at least 15 times more wealth than the average black or Latino family. (Some estimates suggest that this difference is closer to 30 times if vehicles are removed as an asset in these calculations.) This disparity in wealth remains even when comparing white and black families who earn similar incomes.

Ultimately, this extreme disparity in wealth is a human story about how certain individuals and groups are able to expand their affluence and opportunities across generations while others are weighed down with the twin societal disadvantages of not being white and not having access to even modest amounts of intergenerational wealth.

How does America's educational system amplify both white privilege and class privilege? What does the "Varsity Blues" scandal reveal about the cultural pathologies of the rich and powerful? How should the students implicated in the "Varsity Blues" scandal be punished? How does standardized testing perpetuate racial and economic inequality? How is this scandal being twisted by white conservatives into another way of blaming black and brown Americans for the bad behavior of white elites?

In an effort to answer these questions I recently spoke with Tim Wise, one of the nation's leading anti-racism activists and a frequent guest on MSNBC and other news outlets. Wise is the author of numerous books, including Dear White America: Letter to a New Minority and Under the Affluence: Shaming the Poor, Praising the Rich and Sacrificing the Future of America. This is the second part of a two-part conversation. The first installment can be read here.

This transcript has been edited for clarity and length.You can hear our full conversationon my podcast, "The Chauncey DeVega Show."

What does the "Varsity Blues" cheating and bribery scandal reveal about white privilege and its intersection with income inequality and class privilege? The whole story is both funny and damning: There are so many legal ways for the rich to manipulate college admissions that to go to such great lengths seems unnecessary -- unless the students involved are really that dim and unqualified.

Either their kids are incredibly unintelligent and incompetent or at least these parents must think that is the case. Otherwise all these young people would need to get into college, given their parents' money, would be a ACT or SAT prep course or maybe just have mom and dad write a check to the school as a "donation" -- which is completely legal, whether or not it's ethical. But apparently that was not enough to guarantee admission for their kid.

Beyond the 50 or so examples we know of from this alleged college bribery case, what this really shows is a bigger problem with our culture that is rarely discussed. We're very quick in the United States to call out the so-called "culture of poverty" to disparage poor people -- especially those who are black -- or to say that poor people have bad values and poor impulse control. But what could be a better example of short-term thinking than a parent who breaks the law and cheats to get their kid into a college that they are really not qualified to be in?

When rich people make these types of bad decisions they are not generally discussed and criticized as representing a "culture of affluence" or a "culture of wealth." When Wall Street grifters tanked the economy that was not broadly attributed to a "culture of affluence." I hope that we can use this moment to flip the script on this cultural critique that we have put on the people at the bottom for so long, and examine the corruption and bad behavior of the country's elites.

We are seeing the standard deflections and denials of responsibility, which are central to how white privilege and other unearned white advantages function in American society. These are nonsense claims like, "These students didn't know what was happening" or "How will they be hurt emotionally by discovering that they are frauds?" The excuse-making is really sickening and pathetic.

I don't care. Look, I'm the parent of a high school junior right now who is looking at colleges. She's in the process of trying to winnow down where she wants to go.. As a parent of a child in that situation, the idea that she would not know if we interfered is absurd. She doesn't even like it when we look up stuff online. She doesn't want even that level of interference, and that's the norm. First of all, if you didn't take the test, how can you possibly not know that? If there was someone next to you correcting your answers and giving you help, how can you not know that? If you got to take the SAT or ACT. test home at night or got all sorts of extra time, how can you not know that is abnormal?

How can these children of the rich who were apparently admitted to these schools through fraud not know that lies were told on their behalf about them being elite high school athletes? They were also magically diagnosed with learning disabilities right before they had to take a standardized test. Again, this is absurd. There is this other defense that the parents mailed in the applications for some of the students and they might not have known their parents altered them. If you can't figure out how to submit an application, then you just don't need to go to college, period. Just stay home.

There was even a segment on Tucker Carlson's show about how this scandal is really an example of a broken admissions system where affirmative action creates all this corruption and unfairness -- for white people. In this especially broken logic, somehow when rich white people do something wrong it is really black and brown people's fault.

This is coming from a guy, Tucker Carlson, who has also amplified the racist "white genocide" concept on his show. Carlson also talks repeatedly about immigration replacing "our culture." Ultimately, what Carlson and his guest are saying is that if we get rid of these programs that offer opportunities to people of color who've actually faced systemic and interpersonal hardship and inequality in their lives and overcome it enough to be qualified to go to these elite schools, then rich white people will somehow stop gaming the system.

This is putting the cart before the horse. It's precisely because the system of education in America specifically, and higher education more generally, has been so tilted towards white people that affirmative action was originally created and is still needed. That's the whole point. If the system had not been rigged from the start, affirmative action would not have been necessary. And beyond the super-rich who are being implicated in this "Varsity Blues" criminal case there is a whole system where the likes of Jared Kushner's dad can write a $2.5 million check to get his incompetent, pathetic son into Harvard University, where he did not belong.

It's also a system of K-12 education whereby black kids and Latino kids are in schools that are approximately 10 to 12 times more likely to be places of concentrated poverty. Racial preferences for whites in America have existed for almost 400-years in the United States. Only willful ignorance prevents people from seeing that fact.

There is also the narrative of presumed inferiority of black and brown folks, regardless of their academic and professional accomplishment. This is the whole "You took a white person's place" cultural script. The soft bigotry of low expectations.

Well, this cheating scandal by rich white people should blow that narrative out of the water, because we have the data in terms of legacy admissions at Harvard, for example -- never mind the Abigail Fisher case at the University of Texas --that it is really mediocre white folks who benefit from the system far more than black and brown folks, who have to be 10 times as good to get half as far.

Admission involves many variables. You cannot blame one factor on why you did not get into the school that you preferred. Moreover, at the most selective colleges in America, black and brown folks combined are about 14 percent of all students. By definition, they did not bump a white person to get that spot. For example, at Harvard, they have enough people applying who have perfect SATs and perfect GPAs that they could fill out their entire freshman class two or three times over most years.

Is it frustrating when one does not get into the school they wanted to? Sure. But again, it is not black and brown folks who "took" a white student's "rightful place." There also needs to be more discussion of the role of geography in how universities decide who to admit. Potential students from rural white communities are viewed as much more desirable for purposes of "geographic diversity" in an entering first-year college class than are those from more populated regions. That is a type of built-in "affirmative action" for white students.

There are serious proposals to make college admissions at elite schools into a lottery system where a minimum set of criteria -- albeit still very competitive -- are used. But ultimately what this all points to is a need to completely overhaul college admissions for the betterment of all these kids and families. We don't need a generation of neurotic kids and neurotic parents who are fighting over the pieces of these small pies known as the admissions process. We need kids to be healthy and just live their lives and realize that where they go to college is not going to define who they are. Unfortunately, we have a lot of parents who have raised them to believe that is the end-all and be-all of their existence.

This "Varsity Blues" cheating scandal also exposes other fictions about meritocracy and the rigor of these elite institutions. There are many examples of students matriculating into these elite colleges and universities -- doing well and graduating -- and then it is discovered that their credentials were falsified. Moreover, we also know that standardized tests do not predict success in college.

That is correct. Why then are these standardized tests still being used? Why are we using them in private prep schools? Why are we using them in colleges? Very simply, standardized tests are still used because they produce the biggest benefit for the people who have always had the largest amount of privilege in America. The scores on these tests correlate first and foremost with zip code. If you ask any college administrator or any college president, in private, when there are no funders or cameras around, "Do you believe that the SAT, the ACT, the GRE, MCAT, LSAT have any real importance in terms of predicting a person's ability?" They will tell you "no".

But these administrators and university officers cannot allow themselves to say such things publicly because the people who do the best with the current testing regime are the people who write the checks, and they are the people who count in this world.

As you said, SATs and ACTs really only predict how well a student will do during the first semester or year of college. The fact that students are chosen based on tests with such little predictive power is fundamentally absurd.

This cheating scandal also came to light while we are awaiting the Supreme Court decision about Harvard University and "affirmative action."

First, I would encourage the Asian-American folks who are being used, and perhaps are vulnerable to the siren song of this right-wing argument that they go and study the history of Ed Blum, the guy who is the driving force behind this Harvard affirmative action case. For years Blum has been trying to get rid of affirmative action and he's always picked supposedly aggrieved white people who he claims have been harmed, such as Abigail Fisher -- who certainly was not qualified to go to the University of Texas, by the way.

Bloom got tired of losing, and I think he decided that one of the ways he could do better with public opinion and the courts would be to find a nonwhite face to be his new face of victimization.

The second thing I would suggest is that Asian brothers and sisters who may not know this information -- it was actually Asian folks who alerted me to this fact -- go back and look at the history of the "model minority' myth. People like Ed Blum and other right-wingers are using that myth to make it seem as though their opposition to affirmative action programs for black and brown folks is not racist at its core.

The history of the "model minority" concept in which Asians are stereotyped as all being hard-working, studious people who deserve our support, and that we should all be more like them, has its origins in the early 1960s. As that concept started to get circulated in print and elsewhere the subtext was, "Why can't minorities just keep their noses clean and their heads down like these folks?"

What's going on in 1961? The United States is in the middle of the civil rights rebellion. What better way to throw cold water on the civil rights uprising than to essentially argue with the model-minority myth that, "Hey, you know? Those black folks over there, if they would just be more like these hard-working Asians, they wouldn't have all these problems."

Context is key here in another way: The model-minority myth was created by white people when the United States still had immigration restrictions on Asians. The United States is getting ready to start bombing Southeast Asia into oblivion. More than 100,000 Japanese-Americans had been locked up in internment camps only two decades earlier. America has a long history of anti-Asian bias but all of a sudden there is this new right-wing narrative where we love Asians -- but only so far as we can use them as a weapon against black and brown folks.

The good news from this Harvard trial is that there are many Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders who have been pushing back against the model-minority myth and the efforts to use their group as a wedge and tool against black Americans and other nonwhite groups. Blum and other conservatives are not really interested in helping Asian folks. It is about hurting black and brown folks with the goal of ultimately helping whites.

What do you think should happen to the students who are implicated in this college admission bribery scandal?

They have to be put out of school. Again, I do not believe that any of them are innocent. But for the sake of the conversation, let us assume the possibility that a few of them may have been innocent in terms of knowing the particulars of what happened with the cheating and bribery. But these students have still received ill-gotten gains. Here is an analogy. If a person who stole $1 million put the money in my bank account, I know that I didn't earn it. I am not entitled to keep it just because I'm not the one who stole it.

If it could be shown that any of these young people truly and honestly did not know what was happening, then they should reapply. If they can apply and get in through the normal means, fine, give them a shot. But if these rich white kids knew, as I suspect they did, that strings had been pulled and the scam had been run on their behalf, they should be expelled. Put their property out on the street. Clean out their dorms. I also think students who benefited from this scam should be permanently blackballed from higher education -- at least at any of those elite institutions.

I have very little sympathy for them at this particular moment unless they can demonstrate some significant restitution. Perhaps if they want to publicly admit It: "You know what? This was horrible. We'd like to donate X million dollars to set up scholarship funds for folks who are marginalized to get into these schools and then be able to afford it."

Maybe if these rich white students did something like that with their money, then I might say, "All right, give them another chance. Let them apply through the normal means." But if they're not willing to do that -- and I suspect absolutely zero of them will be -- then let the chips fall where they may and they can struggle like the rest of the students.

This political and social moment in the United States is an example of a particularly malignant type of white entitlement. How are we doing as a society in terms of confronting this problem?

White entitlement is baked into the DNA of the United States of America. But there is value in repetition. There is value in reminding people of that fact over and over again. Sometimes it feels like we're banging our heads against the wall and we're not getting anywhere. But I think as much as things are coming off the rails at this particular moment in American history, it is also the case that you have more people talking about and actually naming concepts, facts, social problems and realities such as "white privilege." "white fragility," "white entitlement" and "institutional racism."

This language has now entered the mainstream of American public discourse. Now that we have the language being used, that is another step in confronting racial inequality and injustice and deploying those concepts to do the work of real social and political change to make American society better and healthier.

Read the rest here:
Anti-racism activist Tim Wise: How white privilege shaped ...

Tim Wise is among the most prominent anti-racist writers and educators in the United States. Named one of 25 Visionaries Who are Changing Your World, by Utne Reader, Wise has spoken in all 50 states, on over 800 college and high school campuses, and to community groups across the nation.

He has also lectured internationally in Canada and Bermuda on issues of comparative racism, race and education, racism and religion, and racism in the labor market.

Wise is the author of six books, including his latest,Dear White America: Letter to a New Minority; his highly acclaimed memoir,White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son;Affirmative Action: Racial Preference in Black and White;Speaking Treason Fluently: Anti-Racist Reflections From an Angry White Male;Between Barack and a Hard Place: Racism and White Denial in the Age of Obama; andColorblind: The Rise of Post-Racial Politics and the Retreat from Racial Equity.

His forthcoming book,Under the Affluence: Shaming the Poor, Praising the Rich and Jeopardizing the Future of America*, was released in September 2015.

Wise has contributed essays to twenty-five books, and is one of several persons featured inWhite Men Challenging Racism: Thirty-Five Personal Stories. He received the 2001 British Diversity Award for best feature essay on race issues, and his writings have appeared in dozens of popular, professional and scholarly journals.

Wise has provided anti-racism training to teachers nationwide, and has conducted trainings with physicians and medical industry professionals on how to combat racial inequities in health care. He has also trained corporate, government, entertainment, military and law enforcement officials on methods for dismantling racism in their institutions, and has served as a consultant for plaintiffs attorneys in federal discrimination cases in New York and Washington State.

In Summer 2005, Wise served as an adjunct faculty member at the Smith College School for Social Work, in Northampton, Massachusetts, where he co-taught a Masters level class on Racism in the U.S. In 2001, Wise trained journalists to eliminate racial bias in reporting, as a visiting faculty-in-residence at the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Florida.

From 1999-2003, Wise was an advisor to the Fisk University Race Relations Institute, in Nashville, and in the early 90s he was Youth Coordinator and Associate Director of the Louisiana Coalition Against Racism and Nazism: the largest of the many groups organized for the purpose of defeating neo-Nazi political candidate, David Duke.

Wise has been featured in several documentaries, including the 2013 Media Education Foundation release,White Like Me: Race, Racism and White Privilege in America. The film, which he co-wrote and co-produced, has been called A phenomenal educational tool in the struggle against racism, and One of the best films made on the unfinished quest for racial justice, by Eduardo Bonilla-Silva of Duke University, and Robert Jensen of the University of Texas, respectively. He also appeared alongside legendary scholar and activist, Angela Davis, in the 2011 documentary,Vocabulary of Change. In this public dialogue between the two activists, Davis and Wise discussed the connections between issues of race, class, gender, sexuality and militarism, as well as inter-generational movement building and the prospects for social change.

Wise has appeared on hundreds of radio and television programs, is a regular contributor to discussions about race on CNN, and has been featured on ABCs 20/20.

He graduated from Tulane University in 1990 and received anti-racism training from the Peoples Institute for Survival and Beyond, in New Orleans.

See more here:
Tim Wise's Booking Agent and Speaking Fee - Speaker ...

White privilege can sometimes be obvious. The racist harassment of a Native American man named Nathan Phillips by a group of MAGA hat-wearing white teenagers at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington is one prominent recent example.

Yet white privilege operates in plain sight while also being invisible to those who choose not to see it. "Don't believe your lying eyes" is one of Donald Trump's key directives to his followers and also a rule of white privilege in America and other parts of the world.

In its most powerful and enduring form, white privilege works through social and political institutions. It is hegemonic and omnipresent while still allowing its beneficiaries to claim plausible deniability and innocence, and to hide behind disingenuous claims of ignorance.

But in its most immediate and interpersonal form, white privilege is made real by how it acts through -- and on -- different types of bodies. In this way, white privilege relies on a bargain, both tacit and active, on the part of white society and white individuals.

How is the Covington Catholic High School MAGA mob an example of white racial innocence and white privilege? Why do so many white Americans, especially white conservatives, feel obligated to make excuses for the behavior of one group of teenage boys? What does the harassment and taunting of Nathan Phillips reveal about the lessons America's schools and American culture have taught young people about racism? How do hypocrisy and double standards give white people permission for bad behavior, while punishing and condemning the same behavior by others?

In an effort to answer these questions I recently spoke with Tim Wise, one of the nation'sleading anti-racism activists and a frequent guest on MSNBC and other news outlets. Wise is the author of numerous books, including Dear White America: Letter to a New Minority, as well as Under the Affluence: Shaming the Poor, Praising the Rich and Sacrificing the Future of America.

This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

Why has the video of the Covington Catholic High School students become such a national controversy? It is almost like the Zapruder film for the age of Trump and all that he represents.

The Zapruder film is a great analogy, because it seems that people are seeing what they want to see. But having said that, no one looks at the video of the Trump MAGA teenagers from Kentucky and Native American elder Nathan Phillips with purely objective eyes.

I think that when you step back for a second and look at what happened in that video it is obvious that there are lots of elements at work.

Many white Americans -- at least white Americans on the right, but also many white Americans more generally -- either cant see the problem with the way the Covington teenagers behaved, or they want to make excuses by mentioning the Black Hebrew Israelites.

The Black Hebrew Israelites are literally a cult. They dont represent anyone. Their whole shtick is to stand on the corner in New York or D.C. or wherever and berate everybody. Thats what they do. Its like Fred Phelps or any other street preacher. They just yell at people.

The idea that the Black Hebrew Israelites would therefore be a reason for these white kids to stare down an indigenous elder and do "tomahawk chops" and "war whoops" and caricatured impersonations of indigenous people is an inherently racist argument. Why? Because it suggests that people of color are transferable and interchangeable. So if a black person says some mean stuff to you then you can take it out on a Native American person.

Interestingly, the white Covington teens did not step to the Black Hebrew Israelites. I find that fascinating. I wonder why? Probably because they also bought into the stereotype that theyd get their butts kicked: "We dont want to mess with the black guys, theyre dangerous." Even their willingness to transfer their anger to a Native American man speaks to raises on a number of different levels.

The level of denial that people will bathe and marinade in is great. A bunch of white kids descended on Washington in MAGA gear, clothing which by definition is a provocation to people of color.

Im not going to say that you necessarily are a racist in a conscious sense if you wear Trump's MAGA regalia. I am going to be as generous as I can possibly be. But at the very least, if you wear Trump's uniform you are indifferent to the feelings of people of color. Because if you were not indifferent you would think to yourself, "Wait a minute, hold on. For people of color America wasnt really that great. Maybe I shouldnt wear this."

When you wear that hat, you are basically saying that the lived realities of marginalized people just doesnt matter to me. At that point, whether youre a racist in a conscious sense or not is irrelevant. You are obviously contributing to a larger problem.

I wont be as generous. The core of racism is collective narcissism, double standards, and hypocrisy. At this point, MAGA gear are the colors of a political gang. The Covington Catholic High School students were wearing that Trump regalia to be intentionally provocative, as many entitled young white people are. They wanted negative attention. MAGA clothing is an implied if not explicit threat.

If you go to a private Catholic school and then go to an anti-choice rally, that is not surprising. I get it. Thats the official position of the Catholic Church.

But you know what else is the official position of the Catholic Church? Well, the Catholic Church is against the death penalty. It is also in favor of social programs that fight poverty. The Catholic Church is also against militarism and war.

But I cant imagine any of these white teenagers from Covington Catholic showing up at a rally against the death penalty. Or showing up at a rally in favor of social programs for poor people. Or showing up at a rally against war. Theyre not going to do that.

When they put on the MAGA gear, what they are basically saying is, we identify with Donald Trump's hyper-nationalistic, xenophobic, racist agenda. So even if one is being the most generous to the Covington Catholic teens and other people who wear Trump's hats and the like, it is still pretty horrible.

By definition, Trump supporters who wear MAGA gear -- including the Covington Catholic teens -- have demonstrated a horrible indifference to the experiences of other people. Thats the best you can say about them. If thats the best you can say, then what you can say is that their school has failed, their parents have failed and they have failed as human beings.

White privilege and white racial innocence are important here as well.

This is a very good example of how in America there is a much higher standard on the marginalized and the oppressed than there is on the marginalizer and the oppressor.

We ask of black and brown folks, people of color, that they be kinder to the white folks who are giving them a hard time, than we do of the white folks who are giving them a hard time. We expect better behavior from protesters of injustice than we do the perpetrators of injustice.

We are talking on Martin Luther King's holiday. So much of Dr. King's work and vision has been understood in a really inaccurate way. There is this idea that we should all remember that Dr. King wanted to be better than his tormentors.

Dr. Kings message was far more complicated than that. The problem is that such a misreading of Dr. King's philosophy can devolve into letting the oppressor off the hook. It ends up sounding like we want to be better than them, but were not going to ask them to change. Were not going to ask them to be better. Were just going to be more high-minded. Were going to be more moral.

That can be a very dangerous approach. While being strategic, we do not want to ask of protest movements that they be better behaved than oppressive individuals. At some point we need to hold oppressors and those who benefit from that system to at least as high a standard, if not a higher standard, than the standard to which we hold the marginalized.

Is there any clear example of racism in recent memory where conservatives have been on the right side of history?

I cant think of a single example of anti-black racism, anti-Latino racism, anti-Muslim Islamophobia or bigotry where conservatives have said, Oh my God, this crosses the line. Meanwhile, these are the same people who said during the Obama administration that Barack Obama was a racist simply because he criticized the white cop who profiled Henry Louis Gates.

Or these are the same white people who said that Barack Obama was racist because in one of the bills that was passed while he was president there was a small tax that was assessed on tanning bed visits. Obviously, tanning bed visits are correlated with cancer and this just adds to the cost of health care.

There were actually white conservatives on talk radio who said this was racist, because white people are the ones who go to tanning beds and Obama was clearly attacking white people.

There was a very interesting rhetorical move made by the defenders and apologists for the Covington teens. It is very much White Victimology 101. In this logic the Black Israelites are somehow responsible for the bad behavior of the white teens.This deflection says so much about racial authoritarianism and a certain cultural logic in America: How dare any black or brown person make a white person uncomfortable?

Look, I have been in New York City and been accosted by the Black Israelites and called a "cracker" and all kinds of other stuff. To be honest, I find it sort of comical. First of all, it has literally no impact on my life. Is it sort of obnoxious? Yes, but its also sort of comical. I just sit there and say to myself, Wow, really?

I do not take it seriously because I know that the least powerful people on that corner are the Black Hebrew Israelites. Who has power? Me or them? Not them. What are they really going to do? Theyre going to make me feel bad. Their whole job is to make me feel bad. I cannot take that seriously.

On the other hand, white people have the power to wreck the lives of those Black Hebrew Israelites. White people, whether its cops or whomever, could come along, sweep them up and throw them in jail for harassment or whatever else. So ultimately it is kind of absurd to get your feelings hurt by rude comments from the Black Hebrew Israelites.

Is it nice for them to call the Covington Catholic students and other white people "incest babies" and "crackers"? I guess not. But what is the history of black people calling white people incest babies and crackers and then stringing them from trees? Is there any history of such happenings that I somehow missed? No. It did not happen.

On the other hand, white folks, like those kids in Kentucky with their MAGA gear -- or white folks in earlier generations -- did in fact do significant harm to people of color and continue to do so.

Then, of course, to project that anger at the Black Hebrew Israelites onto Native people is even more absurd and more indicative of the larger disease in which people of color are interchangeable. If one of them insults us white people, then we can take out our anger and aggression on everybody else.

This is the real problem. If black and brown folks thought that oppression was being made "uncomfortable" -- which is the excuse being made for and by the Covington kids -- then there would be literally no second of the day when a person of color would say that they werent being actively oppressed.

Because discomfort is a moment by moment reality in black and brown life. For white folks, its like "Oh my God, you made me think about things I didnt want to think about and therefore Im oppressed!" That is evidence of privilege. That is evidence of entitlement.

Then there is the photo of white students at Covington Catholic High School painting themselves in black and even having white paint around their eyes and mouths--the essence of blackface--at a basketball game.

There is nothing ambiguous about wearing blackface. They were playing against a team which had African-American players.

No. 1, you are in some sense mocking the team youre playing. No. 2, youre obviously oblivious to the history of blackface as a racist performance. Even if you want to read it in the most generous way, these are people who are utterly ignorant and indifferent to the history of racism in America.

Again, the school is failing in its obligations. The parents are utter failures as parents. The children are not being challenged at all to understand or think about the history and the legacy of racism in America.

Going back to the hypocrisy and double standard, if it was a mob of 50 to 70 black or Hispanic or Muslim young people -- hell, Ill even say Democrats or gays and lesbians -- who acted out against a white older Trump supporter, there would be a moral panic led by Fox News and Donald Trump.

But by comparison, questions are never asked about "what is going on in the white community" or "what is wrong with white homes" or "where are the white leaders" or "what is being taught in 'white' schools" when there is bad behavior by white young people or adults.

The vast majority of white families really do not think about, connect to or spend any significant amount of time worrying about racial inequity and the legacy of racism in America. That is the sad, pathetic truth.

I have no doubt that if you are growing up in Covington, Kentucky, -- or anywhere in America, not just Kentucky -- and youre white, the odds are pretty good you dont know much about the realities of racism. Why would you? Your school probably didnt cover it. Your parents probably didnt teach you.

At some point we have to demand better of our educators. We have to demand better of schools, whether public or private, parochial or whatever it is, to say, well, you have an obligation to prepare your young people for the world as it is.

For these young white people in Covington, the reality is the world looks very different than them. Even this country looks very different than they do. I gather that they have grown up in a world where they thought they were the norm, and theyre having a really hard time coming to grips with the fact that they are not.

They are not the typical person on this planet. They are not even, increasingly, the typical person in America, and they are going to have to learn to deal with that. So the schools are going have to do a better job. Its not that I don't blame the Covington teenagers supporters for their behavior. Its that I believe the institutions and the structures in which they find themselves are obviously incredibly flawed, and I want them to do better.

I am willing to say to the students, "Yes, youve been badly served by your institutional leaders. But that doesnt free you from the obligation of learning the things that you need to learn in order to be a functional human being." The Covington students who acted out in D.C. clearly have not learned those lessons yet.

Racism is learned behavior. These are cultural scripts and codes. The Covington teenagers used the narratives of racism, and mocked Nathan Phillips using racial signifiers. Everything they did to him was an example of white supremacy and racial animus. It wasnt neutral. They focused on his race and ethnicity. They knew exactly what they were doing.

When you start doing "tomahawk chops" and "war whoops," its obvious that you have a clear understanding of the way to marginalize and signify against indigenous people. You did not just use some random taunt. You used a taunt that you know has been the source of significant controversy for some years now. You cannot make a genuine and honest claim that you do not know what those "tomahawk chops" and "war whoops" mean.

If that young man had not wanted to smirk and intimidate this indigenous man he could have said, Hey, can we go talk? Nick Sandmann could have extended his hand and shaken Nathan Phillips' hand.

Maybe they wouldnt have agreed on things, but that would have been a respectful way to engage, and he didnt. He just sat there with that obnoxious grin on his face, a grin that is really sort of the modern equivalent of the smirks that were on the faces of the white men who surrounded the sit-in protesters in 1960 in Greensboro or Nashville.

Or were smirking in lynching photographs, or participating in ethnic cleansing and racial pogroms. Theyre all smirking and smiling because its fun for them.

Or the defendants who killed Goodman, Chaney, and Schwerner sitting back chewing tobacco in the courtroom, thinking how great it was that they had been acquitted. That may or may not have been the intention. Again, Im willing to pretend for the sake of argument that their intentions are not evil.

But the point is, your intentions do not acquit you. The fact that you did not wake up that morning in whatever hotel you stayed in on your high school trip to the "pro-life" march and say to yourself, God, I really hope I get to offend some people of color today. That is not the point.

The point is, when you were there, instead of saying, Wait a minute, yes we are being berated by this handful of Black Hebrew Israelites, whatever, who cares. This indigenous man wades into the group as a peacekeeper. It is obvious that is Nathan Phillips' obvious intent. It is clear hes trying to interrupt the dynamic of tension and hostility.

Instead of having what could have been a productive conversation with Mr. Phillips, these white teenagers wanted to stare down this Native man and diminish him. They wanted to make Mr. Phillips into a racist cartoon.

White conservatives, especially Christian conservatives, love to have a narrative about "family values." Respect for tradition, respect for our elders, deference and politeness. Those values seemed to go out the window with the Covington Catholic teenagers.

Because if they actually believed those things, these young white boys would say, "Heres someone who is obviously older than we are. How about we show some respect? How about we show some deference? How about we shut our mouths and listen, even if we disagree with the man?" Again, that shows you the deep levels of hypocrisy.

In my opinion they are just liars. By his own admission, Nick Sandmann and his family met with a public relations firm.

I would love for Tamir Rices family to have a PR firm. I would love for John Crawfords family or Eric Garners family to have a PR firm. I would love for other people of color such as Rekia Boyd, Aiyanna Stanley-Jones or Trayvon Martins family to have a PR firm at their disposal who can come and write these beautiful statements and make everyone love them.

Sandmann's family got a PR firm almost immediately to write a really pretty statement. If anyone actually read Sandmann's statement and believes it, they could not be more nave.

As you said, if the Covington Catholic High School boys were a group of black kids who had come to D.C. on a high school tour, and confronted five or six white people giving them a hard time, and then acted in a boisterous way in response, would they be given the amount of slack and generosity being shown these white boys?

What if Covington Catholic High School reached out to you and said, Tim Wise, we want you to come down here and give a talk, and also perhaps do a private workshop and talk to these young white boys who accosted Nathan Phillips. Would you take the invitation? What would you tell them? What would your approach be?

I would gladly take the invitation. I would say to them, lets start from the beginning. What did you know? When did you know it? If you didnt know it, why didnt you know it? I would try to approach the Covington students as people who, having invited me, were clearly interested in more than a superficial conversation. Because if youre going to invite me, I assume youre prepared to be challenged, so I would say lets have a real conversation about why you had such blind spots around your behavior in D.C.

Again, Im willing to take you in the most favorable light. But only if youre willing to do the work. If youre willing to actually explain to me how you can make these comments and not be horrible human beings, I will gladly have that conversation with you. Im willing to say, look, man, people do stupid stuff. Good people can find themselves in bad systems. It happens. We all have found ourselves in bad systems, including bad systems of thought and behavior.

But my challenge to them would be: Are you prepared to acknowledge your error, to make amends for the error, and to move to a different place? If the answer to that is yes, then Im totally down to have that conversation with you. Because who else is going to do it? Its not brother Phillips job to do that work. Its not black folks job to do that work.

If anybody is going to do that work with these white folks in Kentucky, it is white folks like me and others. That is our job. Thats what we need to be doing. But Im not going to do it if youre not down to have the conversation.

Now, if you show me that youre down to have the conversation, I will go anywhere at any time and I will have the conversation. I will be genuine with you and honest with you and I wont be hateful and judgmental towards you. I will be as real with you as I can be.

But you have to admit in the process of that how you have been ill-served by your parents, by your schools and by the society at large. If youre willing to do that, then Ill meet you halfway and well go from there.

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Anti-racist activist Tim Wise: Here's what I'd tell the ...