Phoenix Insurgent

Ah, yes. No one whines like a white kid at ASU. Sophomore Matthew Jezierski does it like a pro. Last month Jezierski made waves at ASU when he became the local face of a Campus Leadership Program attempt to organize a "Caucasian American Men of ASU" front group on campus.

According to its website, the CLP is a conservative group that sends

[t]rained field representatives... to college campuses to identify and recruit student leaders who create and oversee organizations on each campus. Each local campus organization identifies, recruits and trains conservative college students who will promote conservative principles effectively.

In other words, Jezierski is a dupe whose reactionary politics have allowed him to be manipulated by an outside force pushing a right-wing, white supremacist agenda.

According to a recent article in the State Press, ASU's newspaper, ridiculously titled "The new minority?":

...with the official recognition of Caucasian American Men of ASU, or CAMASU, Jezierski, an industrial design major, said he would get the representation he and other Caucasian males deserve.

The student group of more than 40 members plans to become an official organization by registering with the Student Organization Resource Center today, Jezierski said.

"As soon as we become an official group, we can be taken more seriously," Jezierski said. "It won't be like we're preaching on campus."

After Jezierski learned of the group last month from Leadership Institute field representative Emily Mitchell, he said he immediately became involved.

After spending time on campus talking with students who said they wanted more representation for white males, Mitchell decided CAMASU was needed.

She then sought out students like Jezierski to start the group, she said.

"I want to put in as much time as is needed," Jezierski said. "This club is a way to instill pride in each other and not be ashamed that we're Caucasian males."

Unsurprisingly, Jezierski offers no real evidence to support his claim that white males are under attack at the university, but his pride in whiteness remark sure sounds familiar.

The very idea that whites or white men specifically are a disadvantaged or under-represented minority at ASU is ridiculous. Quite the opposite is true, in fact. First of all, there are all kinds of white people at ASU. The Regents is practically overflowing with white folks, with plenty of white males representing. The President of ASU is a white male, and he follows in the footsteps of many white men before him. Further, beyond positions of power at ASU, whites are actually over-represented in the student body as a whole. According to the US Census in 2004, barely 61% of Arizonans are white (almost certainly an over-estimate), yet in 2003 68% of the student body was white. Indeed, if anyone is under-represented it is Hispanics, who at 12% enrollment total less than half their count in the general population. If CAMASU were truly interested in addressing disparities, they would do well to start there.

Cali Kahlman, Feminist Organization member, has it right when she told the State Press that, "The group sounds like it consists of white men who cannot comprehend how ... much easier they have it than the majority of society. They are aggravated because people are 'taking away' their rights, which is complete nonsense."

The benefits of whiteness are many. Higher incomes, longer lifespans, better access to resources, higher net worths, lower incarceration rates and better access to advanced schooling just scratch the surface.

The problem is Jezierski makes the classic confusion between ethnic identity and the political identity of whiteness.

One ASU policy CAMASU intends to challenge is the general studies requirement of a course relating to cultural diversity in the United States, Jezierski said.

He said classes in European history and languages should also be included in the requirement.

"I can fluently speak and write Polish. I don't know how that's not culturally diverse," Jezierski said. "God forbid something comes from Europe."

Speaking Polish is awesome, but is Jezierski, who the Nazi's probably wouldn't have considered white, asserting that Polish is the language of whiteness? Clearly that's ridiculous, not least because Poles certainly weren't considered white when they first began immigrating here.

The fact is, whiteness is a political identity, a political relationship which was consciously constructed through law and political action by a combination of English elites and some working class European immigrants. In order to make the New World safe for their profits, Colonial elites offered some immigrants from Europe a "Devil's Bargain" in which some privileges would be extended to them in exchange for accepting the subservient status of others, slaves most importantly, but also including Indigenous peoples and other Europeans.

Originally it excluded plenty of Europeans we now consider white, including Irish, Poles, Jews, Italians and others. The fact that this identity has evolved proves its political nature. Poles didn't evolve into whiteness. It wasn't a genetic process, or even a cultural process, per se. They became white through politics. Generally, European immigrants have had to prove their worthiness as white people. Referring to the Irish experience, Noel Ignatiev put it this way:

There were two things they had to do. First, they had to distance themselves as much as possible from the black population of North America. They had to do whatever they possibly could to create barriers, to insulate themselves, to separate themselves from the black population.

The second thing they had to do was overcome the resistance to their own civil rights coming from the people who were better off than them--that is, the native Protestant, bigoted, anti-Catholic, anti-foreigner establishment that was running the country.

There was a relationship, in fact, between these two tasks. To the extent to which they could prove themselves worthy of being white Americans--that is, by joining in gleefully in the subjugation of black people--they showed that they belonged, that they deserved all the rights of citizenship. On the other side, to the extent to which they were able to force their way into the white polity of this country, they were able to distance themselves from black people.

Whiteness and Polish ancestry were not always considered mutually inclusive, and this is what Jezierski doesn't understand. By defending his whiteness, he is defending not an ethnic identity, but rather a political identity that is opposed to the interests of people of color and equality in general. It is a racist identity, quite unlike his Polish ancestry. By organizing a political group (white men) that already has power and privilege he is consolidating power, not reclaiming it or redressing a disparity.

But, in tried and true fashion, CAMASU is good at playing the blame game. First, they have attempted to flip the script by claiming that the resistance that they experience from the student body and administration is "racist."

Jezierski said CAMASU is trying to increase equality between races and genders, and nothing else.

"This isn't a mindless, sexist and raceless group," Jezierski said. "It's the opposite - we want to stop sexism and racism."

Quite a hilarious accusation, since white men suffer no discrimination at ASU, nor are they alienated from power.

And just this week the group cried to authorities about an alleged assault on the CLP's outside agitator, Mitchell. While out hoping to capitalize on some student's white supremacist sympathies, Mitchell was confronted by two women who identified themselves as Fine Arts professors. During the discussion, which Mitchell was filming (and later posted on YouTube), one of the professors reached out and attempted to grab the video camera. Mitchell alleges she was assaulted in the process, which, if true, would be a brave step out of theory and into practice for what appears to be two well-meaning anti-racist professors.

Let's hope that ASU students that are truly dedicated to anti-racism and anti-sexism find a way to confront and stop this troubling development on campus. White men who really want to fight racism and sexism should stand up and shut this organization down now.