Mitt Romney: The Whitest Man in the Room? [English professor Li presents her evidence]

The American Thinker ^ | October 8, 2012 | Gary Jason

[Cincinatus' Wife]

..........Romney's whiteness has been hit by various super-PACs, including the organization the Obama campaign set up called "African Americans for Obama." But Obama's allies in the academic world are really stepping up to the plate. One of the loopiest attempts to attack Romney's race is from one Stephanie Li,an English professor.

Her vicious little hit piece on Romney has a truly stunning thesis. It is that Romney isn't merely white--simple observation reveals that, surely, even to the uneducated. No, it takes some kind of scholar such as Ms. Li to discern that he is "the whitest man to run for president"! Now, the fellow obviously is not an albino, so Li is compelled to explain to us what she means.

Li invokes what she regards as a well-established--what? scientific?--theory called "Critical Race Theory." She avers that "scholars" in this "field" have "demonstrated" that "whiteness" is a "social identity built upon unearned entitlements." Demonstrated! Like physicists have demonstrated quantum theory!

Li quotes another race theorist, one Peggy McIntosh, who claims that "whiteness" is "an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes, tools, and blank checks." Li does not indicate the evidence McIntosh offers for this bizarre claim.

Amazing, isn't it? If you are white, you automatically have all these tools at your disposal that apparently guarantee your success -- tools that no other races have, of course. The tools are there -- but invisible! (Maybe the reason the vast majority of whites don't know about all these tools, and remain poor or middle-class, is that the tools -- like little fairies! -- are invisible). Now we know where Obama came up with his mantra, "You didn't build that!"

This is nonsense -- the sort of nonsense that, as Orwell observed, is so silly that only intellectuals can believe it........

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Ms Li has won a lot of awards and acclaim:

Honors

* Provost’s Fellowship, Cornell University
* Alice Cook Hanson Award
* Liu Memorial Award
* Multicultural Alliance Fellow
* First Place Best Short Fiction, MARY Literary Journal
* First Book Prize in African American Studies, SUNY Press * 2010 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title

Teaching

Professor Li teaches classes primarily in 19th- and 20th-century American literature as well as creative writing.

Recent undergraduate courses

* Race in American Fiction (fall 2011)
* Toni Morrison and Critical Theory (fall 2011)
* The Radical Narratives of Toni Morrison (spring 2011)
* Race in Fiction, the Fiction of Race (fall 2010)
* Survey of American Literature (fall 2010)
* Narratives of Immigration and Assimilation (spring 2010)
* Introduction to Creative Writing (spring 2012)

Recent graduate courses

* Slave Narratives and Neo-Slave Narratives (spring 2012)
* Studies in the American Novel (spring 2010)
* The Radical Narratives of Toni Morrison (spring 2009)

Stephanie Li - Associate Professor of English - PhD Cornell University - MFA Cornell University.

"Stephanie Li's research focuses on the ways in which issues of race, class, gender, and sexuality influence conceptions of freedom. Her 2010 book from SUNY Press, "Something Akin to Freedom": The Choice of Bondage in Narratives by African American Women, which won the First Book Prize in African American Studies, examines how the decision to remain enslaved represents alternative forms of agency which include the protection of personal relationships and the development of community bonds. This analysis not only introduces reproduction, mother-child relationships, and community into discourses concerning resistance, but it also expands individual liberation to include the courage to express personal desire and the freedom to love. Li proposes that black women operate upon "intra-independence," a form of freedom that works through and within relationships rather than upon the valorization of individual achievements.

Li's third book, Signifying Without Specifying: Racial Discourse in the Age of Obama, was published this fall by Rutgers University Press. This study of contemporary political rhetoric and 21st-century literary texts argues that American politicians and writers are using a new kind of language to speak about race. Challenging the notion that we have moved into a "post-racial" era, she suggests that we are in an uneasy moment where American public discourse demands that race be seen, but not heard. Analyzing contemporary political speech with nuanced readings of works by such authors as Toni Morrison, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Colson Whitehead, Li investigates how Americans of color have negotiated these tensions, inventing new ways to signal racial affiliations without violating taboos against open discussions of race.

Li also published a short biography of Toni Morrison in 2009 and is co-editing a special issue of American Literary History entitled "Writing the Presidency" which examines the intersection of politics and literature through a variety of narrative forms............."

[sirchtruth]

These morons are the racist prix they supposedly vehemently fight against. Stunning idiots!

Academia has become a loser's paradise!

[The_Media_never_lie]

Logic, scholarship, accomplishments: white racial characteristics? I know of plenty whites exhibiting none of above. Ms. Li needs to explain how Obama became President with only half as much whiteness to prove her thesis.

[FenwickBabbitt]

I disagree. If the definition of “whiteness” is a “social identity built upon unearned entitlements,” then the totally undistinguished and inexperienced Barack Obama in 2008 must have been the “whitest” person we’ve ever had run for president.

[MrDem]

Elizabeth Warren’s ancestry research team has discovered that Romney is 1/32nd black and hence qualify as the 3rd black POTUS. :)

[MrDem]

And just think, some parents are paying a king’s ransom in tuition for their children to attend Cornell and have complete flaming idiots like this professor teach them. I WOULD DEMAND A REFUND!

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Get ready to foot the bill for all the “forgiven student loans” - $$$Billions paid out to institutions that passed off this socialist, racist crap as “education.”

[nathanbedford]

This is my explanation posted earlier this morning in a slightly different context of why liberals can blithely march into a welter of contradictions on these issues of race:

What's the Real Race Issue Here?

[9YearLurker]

I couldn’t be sure, but from her full CV, it appears as if she herself may identify as a black, Asian Latina (all the while, by the appearance of her photo she could as a white woman as well as Elizabeth Warren):

https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:DYwBncC99kkJ:rochester.edu/College/eng/faculty/stephanie_li_cv.pdf+Stephanie+Li’&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESihKPllB1BQCeFo18bAp7TsvD6YyVsAthA_2jYDHN7IMF74pXwC7WRD-Iqtjo3AkWO6Fy9iuwoPI4_yZpTzLbo25gKwBy4qjLEXdUHtGhTDeHC9Gj99rWDY-TyDIr0N3Gxzn5VP&sig=AHIEtbQdVG61oqcw2E1Y24BJdJzpIT5qig

[pieceofthepuzzle]

“I disagree. If the definition of “whiteness” is a “social identity built upon unearned entitlements,” then the totally undistinguished and inexperienced Barack Obama in 2008 must have been the “whitest” person we’ve ever had run for president.”

Winner!

[niteowl77]

There's not much English being taught, but she is sharing the secrets of brewing kick-ass Critical Race Theory. Well worth the price of tuition.

Mr. niteowl77

[Venturer]

Her whole life seems to be focused on race

I think she needs to get laid.

[DaveA37]

Where’s that pictures of the little black kid screaming “That’s Racist” when you need him???????????

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Reflections of a Diaspora Jew on Zionism, America and the Fate of the Jews ".......In the household I grew up in, I was not brought up to be a Zionist because my parents were Marxist progressives who looked to a socialist future to provide an earthly salvation, and an end to the persecution of the Jews. My parents and their comrades believed that mankind’s conflicts would be resolved by a universal class whose revolution would abolish all nations and unite all peoples, and thus remove the distinctions that made them Jews......" - David Horowitz

[Cincinatus' Wife]

I’m sure most of Professors Li’s students are REQUIRED to purchase her books - like her biography of Toni Morrison:

http://www.amazon.com/Toni-Morrison-Biography-Greenwood-Biographies/dp/0313378398

“The first African American woman to be honored with the Nobel Prize in Literature and the last American to receive the award, Toni Morrison has produced some of the most unforgettable writing on the African American experience ever published. In awarding her the 1993 Nobel Prize in Literature, the selection committee noted that Morrison ‘gives life to an essential aspect of American reality.’”

[RGSpincich]

PhD Cornell University - MFA Cornell University

Cornell, big suuuuprise.

[pieceofthepuzzle]

I find the fact that this woman is sitting on the faculty of a major American University, and using that as a soapbox to perpetuate this bs, very offensive. Ms. Li would do well to acknowledge to herself and her readers that Asians far outnumber Caucasians in the world, and make up over 50% of the world population.

The high-water mark for Caucasians was around 1950 when they were ~28% of the world population. It is projected that Caucasians will be less than 10% of the world population by 2060 (and remember - not all who count as Caucasians are ‘white’).

I'm so sick of hearing about ‘white privilege’. The one overwhelming privilege whites now have is the privilege of being blamed when things don't go as well as desired for non-whites.

[mosesdapoet]

What the authors of these racist comments should be asked is :
“You mean I can’t complain about what someone is doing to me who happens to have a black outer covering if my outer covering some other color”.”

[MrB]

Oh, he's easy to pull up -

of course, in Li's case, she might prefer

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[Cincinatus' Wife]

One of their standard replies would be, “People of color don’t have power” - white people have power - thus whites have no right to complain, while being of non-white ethnicity [historically oppressed] entitles one to different standards of fair, accountability, as well as extra credit [”leg-ups”] for advancement (and as we’re seeing, freer speech).