Chicago City Wire

The University of Chicago has cancelled a controversial class questioning “whiteness.”

The move came days after University of Chicago sophomore Daniel Schmidt criticized the university for the course – “The Problem of Whiteness,” CRES (Critical Race and Ethnic Studies) 25030 – aimed at revealing what is wrong with the white race. 

“UPDATE: @UChicago has just CANCELLED 'The Problem of Whiteness' class. Thank you to everyone who shared my thread. We are obviously fighting an uphill battle, but this is a huge victory. Students need to call out anti-white hatred whenever they see it. Just the beginning,“ Schmidt said in tweet. 

The class is part of the school’s controversial Critical Race and Ethnic Studies coursework, in which it offers a bachelor’s degree, Chicago City Wire reported. “The Problem of Whiteness” CRES 25030 had no one enrolled for Spring 2023. Schmidt called out the course in a tweet. 

“The course description describes whiteness 'as a conspicuous problem within liberal political discourse' with 'worldmaking (and razing) effects.' Anti-white hatred is now mainstream academic inquiry. And you're not even allowed to call that out without being called racist,” Schmidt said in a tweet.

The catalog entry for the course discusses the course in the lens of “critical race theory.” 

“Critical race theorists have shown that whiteness has long functioned as an 'unmarked' racial category, saturating a default surround against which non-white or 'not quite' others appear as aberrant,” the entry reads. “This saturation has had wide-ranging effects, coloring everything from the consolidation of wealth, power and property to the distribution of environmental health hazards. Yet in recent years, whiteness has resurfaced as a conspicuous problem within liberal political discourse. This seminar examines the problem of whiteness through an anthropological lens, drawing from classic and contemporary works of critical race theory. Attending to the ways in which various forms of social positioning and historical phenomena intersect in the formation of racial hierarchy, we will approach whiteness as a 'pigment of the imagination' with worldmaking (and razing) effects.”

A “cultural anthropologist” – Rebecca Journey – who appears to be white, was scheduled to teach the course. 

“Rebecca Journey is a cultural anthropologist who earned her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 2021. Her work examines how the evolutionary and reformist logics of eugenic ideology animate the aesthetics of green urbanism in contemporary Denmark. She has special interests in the techno- and ethnopolitics of climate change; histories of Scandinavian design; and the semiotics of social difference,” an archived version of her profile reads.