If any of your kids are enrolled at Arizona State University and you’re worried that they’ve been acting a bit too white lately, fear not. A much derided course which was offered there last year is returning and should see all the students sorted out shortly. We’re speaking, of course, of The Problem of Whiteness. And yes… it’s back.

At some universities, there are classes dedicated to understanding the notions of whiteness, white supremacy and what the field’s proponents see as the quiet racism of white people. The professor of one such “whiteness studies” course, Lee Bebout of Arizona State University, announced recently that he would be teaching for the second time a course originally called U.S. Race Theory & the Problem of Whiteness.

The syllabus described Critical Whiteness Studies as a field “concerned with dismantling white supremacy in part by understanding how whiteness is socially constructed and experienced.” Readings included works by Toni Morrison, Eduardo Bonilla-Silva (“Racism without Racists”) and Jane H. Hill (“The Everyday Language of White Racism”).

Of course, it’s not exactly the same course. For one thing, it’s now been given the clearly less combative name of, Whiteness and U.S. Race Theory. Also, the instructor will add Ta-Nehisi Coates’s book “Between the World and Me” to the syllabus. You may recall Coates from when we discussed Black Lives Matter activist DeRay McKesson’s new gig as a guest lecturer at Yale. (You remember Yale from recent headlines, right? Am I the only one sensing a pattern here?) DeRay included some of the writings from Coates in his class. The author was also featured by one writer at the Washington Post, discussing the radical chic of Ta-Nehisi Coates, as follows:

In an America consumed by debates over racism, police violence and domestic terror, it is Coates to whom so many of us turn to affirm, challenge or, more often, to mold our views from the clay.

Sounds like an excellent fit. Still, more than a few observers (and parents of students paying for this) have expressed concerns over the fact that a college course is dedicated to the proposition that the problem with white people isn’t that they’re evil racists. The actual problem is that they’re so drowned in their own culture that they’re simply too obtuse to even realize that they are evil racists. So, as Dr. Terrance MacMullan, philosophy of race professor at Eastern Washington University, explains, this isn’t about race baiting or starting trouble. It’s just an effort to educate all you white people so you can be more self-aware. But the problem with that approach is that some of the obnoxious white students might begin making it all about them.

“We all think of ourselves as decent people,” MacMullan said. “So it’s very disconcerting to see yourself as someone who benefits from systemic racism.” He said pointing out white privilege in classes has incited white students to bring up their personal struggles, turning the conversation toward their own “victimhood” and once again detracting from the experiences of people of color.

“One problem inherent in whiteness studies is that it might become a white pity party,” MacMullan noted. “Instead of talking about how whiteness is problematic, it becomes about the problems of white people.”

Well, Doc… we certainly wouldn’t want anyone talking about the problems of white people since they clearly don’t have any.

I would say more on this, but I have an appointment to go beat my head against the basement door for a while. I’ll close with our usual reminder to the parents of any of the special snowflakes at Arizona State University. The annual tuition is $9,782. That must be looking like a real bargain basement price now.