At Michigan State University, the College of Natural Science hosts a “Self-Education” page on its website with a list of online guides and articles that address White supremacy and racism.
“Bro culture” is one of the factors contributing to racism, according to this site.
One Chronicle of Higher Education article listed in the site’s “racism on campus” section, titled “Hate Crimes Won’t End Until Toxic ‘Bro’ Culture Is Reformed,” states that “hate acts” are “primarily committed by white, straight men against those who are not white, straight, Christian, or male.”
Furthermore, the article states that the “toxicity of white masculinity” feeds into the “cultural problem” of “mass shooters.”
“Pundits ignore the obvious connection between mass shootings and white masculinity. We mark white mass shooters as suffering from ‘mental illness’ rather than a cultural problem,” Laurie Essig, director and professor of Gender, Sexuality and Feminist Studies at Middlebury College, writes in the 2018 article.
Using sociologist Michael Kimmel’s term “guyland” to describe the space that “bro culture” inhabits, Essig defines “guyland” as:
“[W]here boys want to be men but have only each other to follow and so they teach one another the ‘guy code.’ The guy code says might makes right, bros before hos, and the only acceptable emotional response is anger (unless it’s about sports, and then it’s OK to feel sad and even cry). Guyland also teaches these young men a sense of entitlement — that they deserve women, jobs, and to dominate the campus space.”
“Even if an individual bro is not caught perpetrating an act of hate, he is trapped in an ugly parallel universe,” Essig writes. “There he is taught not to care about school, about women, about people of color, about LGBTQ people, about anyone who is different from him and his bros.”
Other resources “Self-Education” website encompass topics such as “anti-Asian bias and violence,” “Understanding the Summer 2020 Protests for Black Lives,” and progressive and “social justice terminology guides.”
Additionally, the document “28 common racist attitudes or behaviors,” written by Community Anti-Racism Education Initiative Organizer Debra Leigh, appears on the website.
Concepts or phrases such as “lighten up,” “the rugged individual,” and “straightening up” indicate a person’s racist attitude, according to Leigh.
Campus Reform reached out to Michigan State University, the MSU College of Natural Science, Essig, and Leigh for comment; this article will be updated accordingly.
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