What Does Toni Smith Mean?

A look at the college basketball player who turns her back on the American flag. Examining the fine line between experienced protest and youthful exuberance.

People in their very early twenties, not at all unlike people in their mid to late teens, have opinions … and that’s just one small part of what’s wrong with them. The unfortunate part of young opinion, whether it comes from the Left or the Right, is that it’s so often rooted in one’s suspicion and gut feelings (as opposed to fact) that it loses its grandest intentions and becomes self parody. Anyone who has attained serious majority knows where this observation comes from – just as you convulse when viewing old prom and graduation photos, so do you (most likely) cringe when reflecting back upon your young opinions and thought processes. (One supposes Mr. Buckley doesn’t have that problem, having graduated from Yale only to immediately write a modern conservative masterwork.)

Enter Toni Smith, a native New Yorker and a senior at Manhattanville College, which rests 25 miles from where the World Trade Center towers once stood. She is 21, a sociology major and a guard / forward on the ladies basketball team; though unable to find her statistics for this season, I can tell you she averaged 5.4 points (with a shooting percentage of .277), 8.2 rebounds, 2.6 steals and less than one assist per game her junior year. As in often the case with college athletes embroiled in controversy, however, Smith’s play isn’t the focus of the current attention, and won’t ever be: when the National Anthem is performed before Manhattanville games, home or away, Toni Smith … turns her back to the American flag.

Well, all right. And you could very well expect such a thing from a sociology major. Thing is, there’s a war coming up soon, and the Smith protests have become another convenient way of reporting that opposition to the thing is, indeed, everywhere. It has so much as been said, in every possible venue; reads a caption below a picture displaying the ongoing protest, “Toni Smith of Manhattanville College turns her back to the flag to protest U.S. policy.” That’s the popular story, and the media – both Left and Right – are by and large sticking to it.

But what does Toni Smith say are the reasons are for her protest? It is to point out: 1) That Indians were killed to claim the land upon which America sits; 2) That blacks were enslaved in order to build the nation, and that; 3) We continue to enslave people in order for the country to continue forward. Well, as to the Indian and slavery issues, there are regrettable parts of the country’s past, and honesty demands a certain condemnation of the philosophies behind slavery and some practices employed in moving West (young man). One can criticize both, but no parts of either can be undone. Certain passions can be pacified (and have been, through this affirmative action program and that reservation casino), but long ago wrongs can only remain long gone, and distinctly uncorrectable.

Now as to the third thing, I am genuinely at a loss as to what she means; the closest America comes to a legal, organized slavery is the income tax. There are such things as third worlders shipped to America for a few sex and agricultural trades, but the benefits of those trades cannot logically be said to subsidize any man of real importance, which cannot be said of the slavery Toni Smith wishes us to consider. Distance-wise, the closest we come to that sort of continuing slavery is Haiti, which stands for children being kept as domestic slaves, and adults as forced laborers on sugar plantations. That, it bares mentioning, is in Haiti, which is notably not the United States, which nonetheless bears the brunt of the young girl’s protest – maybe because she knows nothing about the modern examples of injustice and slavery around the world, maybe because she chooses not to know, because to know would be inconvenient. (If, on the other hand, she means foreign sweatshops turning out American product, she should protest Kathie Lee and Nike.)

Toni Smith isn’t fond of America in a place where she is free not to be, a convenient thing. (You cannot, to take the current popular example, be publicly unhappy with Iraq in Iraq.) There are no shortage of people who have their objections to the grand experiment; I am one of them. There is also no shortage of people who are willing to tell you America is their country, right or wrong, and that they will defend it, right or wrong. The manifestations of both those things can be, and often are, wrongheaded. One doesn’t ask Toni Smith not to turn her back to the flag, nor does one ask her to abandon the exuberance typical in her age. One does, however, expect her to learn a few things before undertaking positions she may not fully understand, and maybe there will be less to regret later, when age and experience finally catch up to philosophy.

Ms. Smith has been indoctrinated, and not in a little way, but in a big, big, big way. She has been brainwashed. She is a sociology major at Manhattanville College. The following are descriptions of the courses that constitute the BULK of her course requirements. She is required to take legitimate core courses such as Introduction to Sociology and a research course, but otherwise you’ll never see a more politically correct, Marxist-derived, radical Leftist inspired program in all the United States. Take if from someone who knows, this is actually quite typical in sociology. It is the field where the PC parasites reside. If you know anybody who is a reporter it would make a very interesting story to delve into the politics of the Sociology Department at Manhattanville.

Oh, and just for fun, do a little research into the faculty of the College and see where it leads you ….

SOC 2006: Human Nature and Marxism

SOC 2011: Wealth and Power in America
This course will examine institutionalized social inequality in America. Topics include: … the role of elites; the alienation of white-collar and blue-collar workers; social science and the analysis of power; class consciousness and political organization; strategies for change.

SOC 2017: Sport and Society
This course examines the historical and social roots of American sports as well as contemporary issues of violence, big business, and racism and sexism in both amateur and professional athletics.

SOC 2025: Urban Sociology
Problems such as gentrification, homelessness, racial and ethnic conflict … will be explored [interesting how ‘gentrification’, i.e., moving from poor to not poor, from non-white to white, is characterized as a ‘problem’, don’t you think?]

SOC 2031: Sociology of the Family and Sex Roles
People debate whether [the family] is disintegrating or simply changing, whether it oppresses women … It also will explore various political and policy issues regarding the family, the labor force role of women, and the problem of domestic violence. [interesting how the role of men is not explored, except as it relates to domestic violence, don’t you think?]

SOC 2034: Sexuality and Society
Areas to be covered include: 1) historical construction of sexuality, 2) sexual orientation, 3) Transgenderism, 4) eroticism, 5) pornography, 6) sex and violence, 7) politics of the body.

SOC 2049: Crime, Law and Society
The course will examine the political origins of criminal law … and the effect of race, class and gender on the judicial process. [Ah yes, the Holy Trinity of the Left: race, class, and gender. Can you be more PC?]

SOC 2061: Cultural Anthropology
… This course provides an introduction to the myriad of human cultural systems … with specific reference to two non-Western cultures. [notice that Western cultures are de-emphasized … mmm…]

SOC 2064: Culture and Personality
The effects of the media, in their capacity as dominant cultural institutions, will be emphasized. [Take it from one who knows, a radical ALWAYS tries to convince young minds that the dominant culture institutions are suspect]

SOC 2070: Marxist Political Economy

SOC 2075: Models of Social and Economic Justice
Among the questions addressed are: Does justice permit gross inequality of income and ownership? Does justice require compensatory action to remedy inequalities which are a result of past injustice …. [Yet another Marxist course]

SOC 2076: History of Social Action
This course examines the history and legacy of social movements in the United States …. The abolitionist, suffrage, anti-imperialist, labor, anti racist, civil liberties, antiwar, feminist, environmental, gay/lesbian, human rights/global, justice, anti death penalty struggles are among the movements to be studied.

SOC 2077: Social Problems
An examination of major social issues from a sociological perspective. Topics will include: corporate power, inequalities of race, gender and class …. [Interesting how ‘corporate power’ is listed first, don’t you think?]

SOC 3003: Classical Social Theory
This course will study Karl Marx, Max Weber and Emile Durkheim, early sociological masters who profoundly influenced contemporary social theorists and researchers. [last I checked, there were many social theorists who had nothing to do with socialism or critical theory]

SOC 3023: Racial Oppression

SOC 3073: Women and the Law
The legal treatment of women from a sociological perspective. Topics include: the exclusion of women from critical public roles like owning property, voting and jury duty; workplace discrimination including sexual harassment …. [A class in female victimhood, essentially]

SOC 3079: Political Movements and Social Change
Political movements take a variety of forms, ranging from multi-issue parties to single issue movements. … Ultra-Right, neo-fascist activity will receive special attention. [Why does the right deserve special attention, and not neo-communist activity?]

SOC 3081: Education and Society
Many view education as the major vehicle for upward mobility. Others understand that education is a means of creating and perpetuating social inequality.

SOC 3088: Images of Women in American Popular Culture
An exploration of how images of women in popular culture both perpetuate stereotypes and, at the same time, create new images which maintain deceptive distinctions. [No course is offered on the images of men in American popular culture]

SOC 3092 Women, Religion, and Social Change
This course will examine the role of women of African descent in various efforts to eradicate discrimination based on race in the western hemisphere. [Sigh … need I go on?]

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