Colby College, a private liberal arts college in Waterville, Maine, has a course in its Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies department combining the studies of “critical race theory,” feminism, and tap dance entitled “Critical Race Feminisms and Tap Dance.”
Critical race theory (CRT) is an academic theory centered around the notion that racism is systemic and inherent in the policies and institutions of the United States, and that those institutions exist to perpetuate the dominance of white people in society.
CRT has become a lightning rod issue among conservatives in recent years, and several states have passed legislation outright banning CRT-based discussions from government-run schools.
Last year, the testimony of several Ivy League university presidents regarding anti-Semitism on campus drew national outrage and brought additional scrutiny to how private colleges throughout the U.S. are promoting left-wing political ideas.
“Critical Race Feminisms and Tap Dance” is a part of Colby College’s January Program, or “Jan Plan,” an “exploratory term” in January the college says is meant to “broaden and extend the learning experience at Colby by offering students distinctive opportunities not ordinarily available during the traditional academic semesters.”
According to the college’s 2023-2024 Course Catalogue, students enrolled in the course will learn about the history of tap dance in the U.S. alongside “the concept of intersectionality, and the systemic and institutionalized nature of racism.”
The course description of “Critical Race Feminisms and Tap Dance” reads:
“Students will learn to perform and name basic tap skills and the ‘shim sham shimmy,’ a dance historically performed by African-American female tap dancers in Harlem; to perform a visual cultural analysis; to understand and think critically about critical race theory, black feminist thought; and to know the history of tap dance and its significance to racial politics in the United States.”
The course is taught by the chair of the college’s Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies department Sonja Thomas, whose courses focus on “South Asian feminisms, transnational feminisms, gender and human rights, feminist theory, and postcolonial and native feminisms.”
A promotional video for the course from 2014 is posted to the department’s YouTube channel, featuring clips of Colby students tap dancing and talking about the history of tap dance.
“The idea of [the course] was combining a studio tap dance class, intro to tap dance class, with Black feminist thought and critical race theory,” course instructor Sonja Thomas says in the video.
“[Tap dance] is really either authenticated through the Black male experience, or legitimized through the White female experience,” Thomas said. “So these are one of the things I wanted to bring into the class.”
Colby College has an estimated cost of attendance for 2023-2024 of between $85,470 and $86,720, according to the college’s office of Admissions and Financial Aid.
Tuition for the 2023-2024 year alone costs $66,600. Housing and meals adds an additional $17,120.
The liberal arts college has a student body of 2,300 — 30 percent of whom are “students of color.”
According to a review of the college’s 2023-2024 course offerings by the Maine Wire, Colby College offers 24 courses where the term “racism” is featured in the course title or description.
One course offered in the college’s American Studies department is a seminar entitled “Interrogating Whiteness,” the course description of which reads:
“This capstone guides students through the process of designing, researching, and writing a major paper on a topic that interrogates whiteness. ‘White’ is a constructed racial category, but it often remains invisible in American discourses on race.
Students will analyze the histories, structures, and representations of whiteness in the US. Why, despite US disavowals of racism, does racial injustice persist? How does white privilege intersect with gender and class to produce social, spatial, legal, political, environmental, and economic inequalities? What is white supremacy? What forms does
antiracism take?”
Several other courses offered by Colby College this year center around similar themes and incorporate CRT, a selection of which and portions of their course descriptions can be read below:
- “American Art: Identity and Belonging Since 1619”: “This introductory survey addresses the racial biases and foundations of American art history as a field and exposes, to undermine, the enduring power of Whiteness.”
- “Education and Social Justice”: “Goals include understanding the concept of social justice, the dynamics of power, privilege, and oppression, and how these dynamics shape the experience of students and teachers.”
- “Philosophical Inquiries into Race”: A philosophical treatment of several aspects of race and racism: ontological issues surrounding what race is; existential and phenomenological issues about embodiment as a visible racial minority; social and political issues regarding oppression, colonization, and discrimination; and ethical issues involving racial minorities in the American context.”
- “Reproductive Justice”: “Using a social justice lens, this course is an introduction to historical and contemporary reproductive politics that centers the impact of heteropatriarchy, global racial capitalism, and colonial projects on 1) intimate and procreative lives and 2) the sustainability of families and communities.”
- “Race and Gender in France”: “This course challenges the country’s problematic discourse on race and gender, and its systemic racism, through a critical analysis of film, performance, art, fashion, online media, advertising, podcasts, and social justice movements. Emphasis placed on black feminisms, critical race theory, and intersectionality.”
- “Race, Gender, and Visual Culture”: “Examine constructions and contestations of racial identity in U.S. visual cultures of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Draws on scholarship on scientific racism, intersectionality, trauma and racial time, and memory and memorials.”
Edward Tomic explains this story in more detail below!
A Mr Bo jangles degree, great for working sidewalks
Yes, you too can earn a CRT degree ! ——and have an exciting career looking for a job and figuring out how to pay off your massive student debt.
Meet interesting and productive people ! ——- who will find you to be ridiculous and insufferable.
See the World ! —— pass you by.
Make a Difference ! —— nowhere / never.
To take down America we must first dismantle whiteness and de-colonize the world. Through the Universities we are educating and organizing obedient pupils in Marxism as Revolutionaries. Like I have said many times before, we have captured the youth. We are less than a decade away. Many of you boomers will be begging us for mercy.
Cultures have invaded weaker cultures since even before recorded history, and anyone anywhere in the world who researches his family history will eventually discover that an ancestor suffered abuse – some even horrific – at some time. For example, as most people who study Irish history know, the policies of the British government contributed greatly to the Irish Famine. In order to flee the Famine, many Irish boarded “coffin ships” that brought them to North America. Thousands died during those long journeys due to diseases such as typhus. Those who survived the journey earned their way, and there were NO free lunches. At no time have we, of Irish descent, shown victimhood, and we shunned pity. So should those of us who descended from those who fled the Famine go back to Parliament and demand reparations for the savage treatment of our Irish ancestors by the English? Of course not.
I too learned that dance was an important part of my heritage, and I was fortunate to be able to take classes in authentic Irish dance offered by a UMO graduate student from Ireland. I took this semester-long class at a grange hall in Maine for about $35 a semester. I must say that at no time during any class was there occasion, or need, for discussion of or reference to atrocities committed by the British or anyone else.
There is absolutely NO reason for an exclusive college like Colby to be offering classes that attempt to undermine our society by degrading Whites, with the ultimate goal of dividing our nation even more. And just what is the goal here? Is it to view blacks as pitiful victims to add weight to a movement that leads to reparations?
Students who are not dance majors wishing to waste class time at exclusive colleges learning tap dance steps seems VERY unfortunate, and I personally consider it a failure at the administrative level. I know you can enroll in some darn good dance classes in community adult education classes for much less than Colby might claim. AS WELL, colleges, even private colleges, that offer classes which undermine our society by teaching bias should NOT be receiving taxpayer funding no matter how cleverly that funding is disguised.
Connor’s comments above are telling. He’s confessing that leftism is nothing more than an attempt to destroy America and all of Western Civilization.
LifeLoser 101
You too can be a malcontent, and dance until frenzied gnashing of teeth and guttural utterances are achieved and perfected in choreographical fenzy with others who self identify as outraged self loathing whitebread of the virtue signalling variety
$1,500 / credit hour
Zero qualifications needed, and you will graduate w these same qualifications
In a decade the Boomers will be well into their 70’s and 80’s. The only thing they will be begging Marxists for is their pudding. Lord have mercy!
@Sal, Yes. We are all openly calling for the end of Whiteness, to dismantle the west, de-colonization action around the world, DEI initiatives in companies, and Marxist Theory in schools. You conservatives act like you discovered some hidden secret.
We’ve been doing this for years. Yes, there are a few Democrats on the left that are usually older and don’t know what they are doing, but literally the rest of us are actively destroying America from within. It’s a necessary move in order to reduce the suffering in the world and collapse capitalism. There is still time to join us, otherwise you’ll be on your knees begging us for salvation in the next few years.
Thank you Connor for your insightful contributions.
Marxism has worked everywhere it’s been tried…Cuba, No. Korea, Venezuela, China and Russia where people can barely make ends meet while Putin has a net worth of $70 billion which includes 20 palaces, four yachts and 58 aircraft.
There is a term associated with advocates of communism known as useful idiots. People support the ideology yet never seem to climb the economic ladder waiting for their share of the ruling class pie. Sounds to me like you and your Marxist butt-buddy “revolutionaries “ are useful idiots.
Communism has worked everywhere it has been enacted. Marxist theory is about tricking the “useful idiots” into handing over all rights, land, possessions to the “One” Party. Through this system, those who are obedient and loyal to the “One” party rise up the ranks and gain more power & influence.
The “One” party gives just enough to the “useful idiots” to survive and exist. The State then uses the extra resources into furthering humanity and their goals to Progress the Future.
In Capitalism the “useful idiots” consume way too much and it’s wasted energy & resources. In this aspect a truly well-oiled Communist Party will eventually become the absolute authority and there is a path forward to rise – obedience.
Hence it has worked quite well in China where it appears Asians tend to be more obedient-leaning. Many whytes and Blacks tend to be less obedient and thus makes it harder for Marxism to flourish.
Doing what liberals always do; showing the seeds of hate and misinformation while trying to move America towards Marxism.