Loyola Academy Stirs Up an Unexpected Lesson in What Race, Privilege and Education Really Mean

Clarence Page, Tribune Content Agency on May 28, 2021

Students who were not white also were asked to focus on whatever privileges they might have and reflect on the topic in alternative ways.

Unfortunately missing from these thought-provoking questions, in my view, is the possibility that the student does not feel he or she has benefited from “white privilege” — or even believes that it exists.

Regardless of color, acknowledging that you have been privileged by anything — race, complexion, ancestry, a wealthy uncle who remembers you generously in his will — goes up against the populist American bootstrap ideal.

That’s why bestselling books such as Robin DiAngelo’s controversial “White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism,” from which the class assignment appears to be drawn, became bigger bestsellers after George Floyd’s death last year.

DiAngelo’s book has the distinction of being criticized from the right as racially divisive and from center-liberal Black thinkers such as author John McWhorter — for “talking down” to Black folks.

The whole debate also proved to be a bit much for the Loyola Academy president, the Rev. Patrick McGrath. In an apologetic letter to parents he declared that the “inappropriate” questions were no longer being used in the ethics curriculum. “Let me be clear,” he declared, “We have never — and will never — ask students to apologize for their race.”

Yet, he also assured that “a structured study of racism has been part of the academy’s curriculum for more than two decades and will continue to be the case on some level.”

In a telephone interview, he told me that he did not recall any similar backlash like this, which includes a webpage posted by disgruntled parents, in the past, but added, “These are hard conversations. I get it.”

Still, citing church officials as high up as the pope, he insisted that the school’s mission to push back against the “sin” of racism will remain unchanged.

So will dedication to “critical thinking,” he said, which he defined in a more recent letter as “supporting a climate of investigation and intellectual curiosity that honors genuine inquiry and debate” and “learning how to think, not what to think.”

That’s the difference between education and indoctrination. I’m not Catholic but, regardless of faith, I agree that learning how to think is what education should be all about.

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(E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@chicagotribune.com.)