At the very first glance, a controversial anti-racism course offered by Cornell University’s Medical School, featured on Fox News where a panel of newscasters debated the effectiveness of such a course, caught my attention and got me to thinking more about it from different angles.

The bizarre thing about this whole free anti-racism course is to begin with, how can you change someone’s long held attitudes and behaviors about race or even anything with only a five-hour course? It’s literally impossible!

First of all, human beings always evolve, both physically and mentally. The opinion that we once had about something will definitely change over time. We’re not the same person we were a year ago, let alone 20 years ago, so we should never be held responsible for the opinion we held 20 years ago when we were teenagers. Let’s not also forget how that teenagers often “view the world through rose-colored glasses.” Teenagers don’t always think about the repercussions of their words or actions. They always expect positive results or rewards for their deliberate or indeliberate actions, good or bad. “We can’t expect people to be held accountable for every terrible take or bad opinion they’ve ever had, because in that is no acceptance of grace. I expect you as a 37-year-old, to be a completely different human being than you were at 17” (Bailey, 2023).

This fact in itself makes the whole course irrelevant and a total waste of time.

The fact that the whole curriculum is designed on apologizing for past action instead of a forward thinking focus on the present and future is a wrong move from the get-go. The course would have been more profitable and plausible if it was designed with the aim of helping students to have a deeper understanding of multiculturalism or enabling students to better integrate with different cultures and ethnicities. “And it matters more to me who you are today. And you show that by your actions, not by an apology or a stupid – or even terrible in that case –  post from 20 years ago. That doesn’t tell me who you are today. Your actions tell me who you are today, which kind of renders this course null and void, in my opinion,” Jones said (Bailey, 2023).

Let’s be honest with ourselves, would apologizing for a social media post that was written some 20 years ago fix the whole racism issue? And one more question, even if one apologizes for the post, how certain are we that it is a genuine act, that originates from a true conviction of one’s self, or is it an opportunistic endeavor to make sure that one’s future career, especially one graduating from an Ivy League college, traditionally regarded as an upper-class and white dominated institution is “secured” from future racism blowback?

References

Bailey, K. (2023, May 27). Cornell medical school offering free anti-racism course, helps students apologize for old social media posts. Fox News. https://www.foxnews.com/media/cornell-medical-school-offering-free-anti-racism-course-helps-students-apologize-old-social-media-posts