...it must be Dick Andzenge day at the St. Cloud Times. Dick is easily the best writer of the Times local writers group, and he takes on the latest bout of diversity training at SCSU in this month's essay.

History has shown the ability to control and mistreat other groups is never limited to numerical strength. Minority groups have been known to use economic, military, bureaucratic and educational power at the expense of the majority. In the United States today, certain minority groups control various resources and therefore control significant aspects of society. In fact, there are many key aspects not controlled by the traditional majority.

To perpetuate this misconception on our university, the curriculum creates a false premise, first by presenting teleological definitions and then applying them in a way that is supposed to justify the claims.

Without defining the races, the claim is that systemic power functions to favor whites over people of color. Social institutions are represented in a six-stage continuum: (1) exclusive segregated, (2) passive, (3) symbolic change, (4) identity change, (5) structural change and (6) fully inclusive. The goal is to progress from segregated to fully inclusive. Our university is said to be between Stage One and Two. Stage Two � the passive stage � is said to include:

• Intentionally maintaining white power and privilege through policies, practices, teaching and decision-making.
  
• Limiting tolerance for people of color with "proper perspectives and credentials."
  
• Secretly limiting or excluding people of color, in contradiction to policy.
  
• Often declaring, "we don't have a problem."

...With the efforts made at the university and the sacrifices made in policy changes, resource allocation, affirmative action, curriculum change and training, the suggestion St. Cloud State is near Stage One should be insulting to the university.

All of this raises an important question: What is the real agenda of diversity education at the university?

While the training deceives the university community about who has power, there is strong evidence that some minorities, or people supposedly speaking for minorities on campus, have assigned for themselves the power to control thought and speech, especially that of white people on campus.

Just last month, the chair of student government's campus affairs committee demanded and received from university administrators a promise to remove a plaque honoring white settlers whose bones were unearthed during the construction of the library. The plaque, in part, said:

"We honor the memories of the first European families to settle in St. Cloud whose remains were discovered on this ground in 1999. Let us remember the undocumented valor and pioneering accomplishments which set the standard in the mid-19th century for the community's proud history."

The student leader pushed for its removal, claiming its wording could offend Native Americans. Supporters of anti-white sentiments on campus have joined efforts to remove favorable references to white settlers.

On the same day the University Chronicle reported this racist bigotry by minority elements on campus, the St. Cloud Times reported two jury findings in Milwaukee and New Orleans that police departments and district attorney offices discriminated against whites.

The claim only whites can be racist is dangerous and sets St. Cloud State on a path of an eventual expensive collision with the criminal justice system.