ABSTRACT
In the following discussion an incident provoked by alleged comments regarding the preferential grading of Alaskan Native students at the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) is described and analyzed as a case study in the cultural-racial politics of education. As such it provides a vivid, even chilling, example of the techniques a white institution will marshal to resist cultural diversity and maintain its whiteness by completely missing, misunderstanding, and ultimately ignoring the responses, concerns, and actions of an aggrieved minority population in imposing its own institutional perceptions and interpretations of events. A deeply problematic and painful aspect of this resistance is that it is primarily accomplished through actions that the institution actually believes support minority success but in fact negate it. It is therefore necessary to illustrate and describe examples of the complexities and subtle machinations of white institutional privilege in order to begin to combat its devastating effects.
