High above the waters of Cayuga Lake on a hill stolen from the Cayuga people sits our beloved Cornell University, a high caliber institution, held in the highest esteem, respected throughout civil society in general and in the economic sector of knowledge production specifically. It is the University which “educates” and “enlightens” us (for no small fee). The other side of this proverbial coin: Cornell is also a highly effective, highly insidious agent of mental colonization. To spin off the title of this past Sunday’s ’08 Class Council organized political event called Diversity Kills Me, let me explain how Cornell kills us, condemning us to living the death of mental bondage.

Imagine the scene: Cornel West’s hip hop album bumps through the speakers, rum marinates cola splashed in both glasses, and a sultry incense of sorts seasons the air. A black woman and a white man begin politicking in a first floor apartment. M1 of deadprez and KRS-One are featured on the track, a gun cocking keeps time, and Dr. West drops true knowledge: “Let these gay and lesbian brothers and sisters live a life of dignity.” At that very moment, an Escalade full of white men rolls slow down the street, blaring Weezy’s “Lollipop.”

Soul Sista #1: I hate Lil’ Wayne.

White Man: Yeah, the content is whack, but the flow is crazy. Nobody’s really spittin’ that innovative.

If any of you were at the graduation ceremonies last year, you might remember President Skorton’s commencement address. The one in which he said, “We are a land-grantuniversity to the world.” And, “the stakes are as high — or higher — than they were 60 years ago [at the end of the Second World War],” and that “nothing would honor the accomplishments of these graduates more than a major national and international effort, centered in our distinguished universities, to create a saner, safer, more sustainable, prosperous and equal world.”

This article is for white people. If you are not white, feel free to keep reading, but know that this article was not written for you; no, this article is for white people. White people, this article seeks to turn the analytical looking glass around on ourselves, seeks to spark an open and honest dialogue about who we are and how we came to be. It is a Discovery Channel expose on whiteness, if you will, and at the same time an urgent call for us to be brave and seriously analyze how our whiteness affects the world we live in. White people, who are we?

Last November, Denver police, without warrant or permission, broke into the home of anti-police brutality and anti-war activist Larry Hales, who was attacked and promptly arrested for “interfering with the police.” The police knocked on his door, looking for a man on parole who was temporarily staying with Hales and his partner Melissa Kleinman. Hales answered the door, asked for their business cards, which the police must surrender upon request according to a Denver city ordinance, and told them the parolee was not home. Ignoring Hales, the DPD proceeded to barge in, grab him by the neck, twist his arm, rip out some of his dreadlocks, tear his shirt and throw him down the stairs and into the street before punching him in the stomach and throwing him into a cruiser.

Like other capitalist states, the government of the United States seeks to further its capitalist interests. It uses its friends and abuses its foes, trading when it can, invading when it cannot. It installs puppet governments to secure favorable economic relations and facilitate the import of natural resources — oil from Iraq and Saudi Arabia, gas from Afghanistan — that are essential for capitalist expansion. Millions perish every year of curable disease and chronic hunger in the third world and millions more meet their proverbial maker in the many imperialist wars we wage. As egregious (or not) as we might find this, it is the standard M.O. of the capitalist nation state. It is no big surprise, as they say.

From Central Asia to Mesopotamia to the Eastern Coast of the Mediterranean, the United States — the world’s sole superpower — and its proxies continue to actively wage military warfare on Brown peoples of the impoverished world in the name of Freedom, turning our globe into a place of increasing economic disparity in the process. The government calls this, its latest belligerency, the “War on Terror.” Despite the official government claim that militant Islamists hate us for our “Freedom” (to buy what we can’t afford and be blamed for our own oppression), I think most of us know, at least on some level, that the United States is partly responsible for the World Trade Center attacks on Sept. 11.