Politics

Florida prof. penalizes students for using term ‘melting pot,’ claims racism

University of Florida prof says "melting pot" is racist.According to a report at the Daily Wire, Pamela Brekka, an art professor at the University of Florida, views the term “melting pot” as racist and warned students to never use it unless they want to risk getting a hit on their grades.

“DO NOT EVER USE THE PHRASE ‘MELTING POT’ IN THIS CLASS. IN THIS CLASS WE CELEBRATE DIVERSITY, NOT SAMENESS,” she wrote in all-caps in the introduction to several online assignments.

Campus Reform posted images of her syllabus, including this one:

melting potAccording to Campus Reform:

Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?

One student in the course, who wishes to remain anonymous, told Campus Reform that he noticed the warning and discussed it with friends who are also taking the course online for summer credit, reporting that “I haven’t been penalized personally because I kind of go with the flow, but I have talked to [a friend] and I’m pretty sure he has used some terms…and I think he has been penalized.”

The student says being unable to use certain phrases “changes the way I learn,” and makes him feel compelled to “go with the biased system.”

Brekka told Campus Reform that she doesn’t want students to use the phrase “melting pot” because it is not an accurate description of diversity in the United States, asserting that “the reason we put less emphasis on the way cultural groups are alike is because of the historical disadvantages minorities have had compared to the white majority.”

Campus Reform said Brekka prefers a “salad” metaphor instead of the “melting pot.”

“It’s the difference between a soup and a salad…in the salad, the flavors remain distinct,” she told Campus Reform. “Your romaine lettuce retains its flavor, the tomatoes retain their flavor, and so on. They are all living happily in one bowl.”

The Daily Wire added:

Of course, defining the term “melting pot” as racist takes some serious mental gymnastics, even for a leftist. But, interestingly enough, the same leftists occupying American universities don’t seem to view overtly racists things as racist at all.

Take, for example, “black only healing spaces” at the University of Missouri; white “allies” of the Black Lives Matter movement were kicked out of such areas solely for the color of their skin. This “space,” which is by definition racist, was somehow okayed by the leftists who created it.

Remember: the term “melting pot”: racist; segregated areas based on race: not racist.

Exit question: Does Brekka think the name of this restaurant chain is also racist?

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Joe Newby

A 10-year veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps, Joe ran for a city council position in Riverside, Calif., in 1991 and managed successful campaigns for the Idaho state legislature. Co-author of "Banned: How Facebook enables militant Islamic jihad," Joe wrote for Examiner.com from 2010 until it closed in 2016 and his work has been published at Newsbusters, Spokane Faith and Values and other sites. He now runs the Conservative Firing Line.

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