About the only good thing about this episode is that it calls attention to poisonous thought that has been out there circulating in the black community, unchallenged, for years. A lot of the black newspapers (papers published in certain major cities for a black readership) routinely carry ravings about “the white man” putting the AIDS virus into the drinking water in black neighborhoods or some such thing. I was always amazed in New York when I saw seemingly intelligent, normal black co-workers reading this garbage and actually appearing to believe it. And there was really no way of discussing it with them, because it all part of a kind of paranoid parallel universe that the separatist leaders had developed and gotten help from - ta da - the (leftist) “white man” in incorporating into the educational and social services system.
I worked for a literacy organization once that was supposed to deal with a multi-racial clientele, but that particular branch of it had been taken over by a black woman who was a professor at one of the education schools. All of the materials were nothing but one big black separatist rant, varied only by the introduction of occasional Marxist concepts, and full of black victimization and hate-the-man stuff. Most of our clientele was referred from prison, and the whites usually lasted about one month, until we had our monthly consciousness raising meeting, where the black students were encouraged to verbally attack the whites. This was supposed to “empower” them.
Interestingly, one of the black students, a young man who actually did show up for class regularly and really wanted to learn how to read, told me that he hadn’t come there to hear “all this political stuff” and he asked his parole officer to get him assigned to some other program. Others just disappeared. And of course, if some little old lady showed up, wanting to learn how to read so that she could actually read the Bible she had basically known through memory all these decades, we were supposed to discourage her from the Bible and give her some black radical nonsense to read!
I only lasted there a few months myself. I kept hoping it would get better, because it was a well-funded program and had materials and space, something lacking in many literacy programs, but it got progressively worse. They wouldn’t have had any white teachers, I’m sure, except that they couldn’t find enough black teachers to run the program.
Perhaps the Wright episode could reveal how widespread this poisonous thought has become in the educational system, and how horribly destructive it is. But that would mean that the left and the press would have to reject it, and that’s just not going to happen.
Wow, livius, that’s a very interesting story and I hope you’re right that the public light shining on this pustule Wright might in some way end up helping teachers who actually want to teach students to read, study and excel academically.
I see the same mentality when discussing 9-11 with co-workers from the Middle East. They are rational, intelligent people, but have no doubt that the Jews brought down the World Trade Center as a power grab.