University Of Minnesota Pushes Critical Race Theory As Public Health With ‘Anti-Racism’ Trainings

The University of Minnesota is instructing students on how to be “anti-racists” through its public health department, according to training material obtained by The Daily Wire through an open records request.

The public university is putting students through “Anti Racism 101,” the records show, with the School of Public Health instructing students that “racism” is the combination of “prejudice” with “power,” and “a system of advantages based on race,” rather than simply hatred or prejudice against someone because of their race. It also claims that there are four different types of racism, including “internalized,” “interpersonal,” “systemic,” and “institutional.”

The slideshow presentation also included a video on “white fragility” that claims “racism is the status quo” of “all white settler colonialist societies” and features Critical Race Theorist Robin DiAngelo, who coined the term and uses it to describe “a type of everyday white racial control.”

That was all included in a November 9 workshop which began with a land acknowledgment, apologizing that, “The School of Public Health at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities — and, in fact, most of our homes — are situated on the ancestral land of the Dakota people,” it said. “We acknowledge the ongoing debt that is owed to the Dakota people.”

Medical experts say this illustrates how Critical Race Theory is being injected into the realm of public health, which needlessly politicizes medicine by labeling racial groups as “oppressors” and “oppressed.” Dr. Stanley Goldfarb, a former dean at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, says that the entire idea of “health equity” derived from Critical Race Theory can have dangerous consequences for patients.

“The health equity component of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion is one of the tactics derived from Critical Race Theory,” said Dr. Goldfarb, who now operates Do No Harm, a nonprofit that opposes the politicization of medical care. “‘Health equity’ means that the way to overcome the oppression in the health arena is to guarantee equal outcomes between the oppressor class, primarily white males, and the oppressed class, primarily blacks.”

“The problem with this construct is that it denies agency to black individuals and denies free will to white individuals” while erroneously arguing that “disparity of health outcomes is due to the efforts of an oppressor class,” Dr. Goldfarb explained, adding that it will “undermine the physician/patient relationship by emphasizing racial characteristics rather than individual characteristics.”

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But the University of Minnesota’s “Anti Racism 102” training even takes the conversation beyond race, delving into “Intersectionality and Compounding Oppression,” listing off “ableism,” “heterosexism,” “Islamophobia,” and even “fatphobia.”

It’s followed by a video in which blind people discuss their understandings of racism, with one person stating “I am racist, because I think every white person is racist” and “I benefit from capitalism, which was built on slavery and racism.”

A slide in the presentation titled “racism and public health” goes on to claim that racism is a “public health emergency,” before going on to discuss “antiracism” more broadly, seemingly encouraging participants to identify “your own role in racism and racist systems” and to create “race conscious/equity focused policies and practices.”

A separate training for the broader university, titled “Teaching and Learning at a Predominantly White Institution” and held on October 27th, warned that “colorblindness” and “objectivity” are assumptions of “whiteness.” It also defined predominantly white institutions as a school where the majority of students are white, as well as an environment where “embedded institutional practices that are based in whiteness.”

A slide on intersectionality calls the concept “a theory of multiple marginalization drawn from the experiences and expertise of women of color.”

A representative of the University of Minnesota told The Daily Wire that the training sessions are voluntary, and that “views and perspectives expressed in educational settings on campus are not necessarily those of the institution.” But the University of Minnesota has a history of pushing the DEI agenda in its academic curriculum, research opportunities, and training sessions, both in the School of Public Health and throughout the university.

The School of Public Health also has a Health Equity minor where graduate students can “specialize in studying health disparities and inequalities,” as well as the “structural factors that cause health inequalities.” Enrollment in the program has consistently spiked since 2020, surging from 11 to 26 students.

While students are being taught about health disparities through the lens of Critical Race Theory and health equity, Goldfarb contends that “Virtually all the studies of health disparities attribute a component to racism without providing any specific evidence to support those contentions.”

“The evidence for these assertions however is simply not there,” Goldfarb stated, pointing out that the origin of health disparities is “much more complex than simply the results of poor housing or bias on the part of physicians,” ranging from “behavioral factors such as smoking, alcohol use, diets leading to obesity, and failure to access available health services” to “certain genetic determinants of health outcomes.”

Meanwhile, the School of Public Health appears to have adopted the “antiracism” agenda wholesale, publishing a “Strategic Plan for Antiracism” that seeks to “create an actionable plan grounded in our deep commitment to social justice” with a “specific antiracist focus that centers the experiences of Black, Indigenous, and people of color.”

It goes on to state “BIPOC groups are forced to assimilate and navigate a system that centers whiteness,” also arguing, “consistent, tireless antiracism is and must always be the foundation of our DEI work.”

But the institution has also injected Critical Race Theory throughout the broader university community. The University of Minnesota was even hit with a civil rights complaint earlier this year over a “multicultural” research program that offered applicants a $6,000 stipend and was open to those “who identify as a student of color of Native American” but not white students.

The university’s School of Social Work also hosted a webinar series on “deconstructing and decentralizing whiteness,” complete with a 12-step program on “Recovery from White Conditioning.”

“We admitted that we had been socially conditioned by the ideology of white supremacy,” one of the steps reads, while another states. “We committed ourselves to ongoing study of our racial biases, conscious or unconscious, and our maladaptive patterns of white supremacist thinking.”