Posted on 01/07/2002 8:35:06 PM PST by VinnyTex
Edited on 04/22/2004 11:45:52 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
By Shelby Steele. Mr. Steele, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, is author of "A Dream Deferred: The Second Betrayal of Black Freedom in America" (HarperCollins, 1998).
There should be many more imbroglios like the one currently playing out at Harvard University, enough for America to finally understand that white guilt is exactly the same thing as black power. But it is testament to the daunting power of white guilt that confrontations like this one happen so rarely.
(Excerpt) Read more at interactive.wsj.com ...
True, but when it does intercede (in jazz or blues or in what used to be called R'n'B,) the results are no different than elsewhere: mediocrity. This is a minor correction to an otherwise excellent article (as usual from Shelby Steele.)
This entire mass neurosis which infects many of our so called intelligentsia disproportionately is likely to be our ruin if we don't discard our fear and stand up for common sense and our culture. I do not know of an historical precedence involving mass guilt and it's accompanying weaknesses that has destroyed a culture in the way we are undermining our own now.
At the PhD level, you can maybe get a job in the African-American Studies department at the local university. Below that level, you are qualified to ask "would you like fries with that?"
By comparison, Andrew Young was a successful mayor of Atlanta. And, if you haven't noticed, you don't see Andrew Young hanging around with Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, or for that matter, Julian Bond.
Whites simply come to a place with blacks where they feel no authority to speak or judge and where they sense a great risk of being seen as racist.
I would revise Steele's equation: White Fear = Black Power.
See also:
Fear of what, though? We're certainly not going to be executed, or shipped off to some concentration camp. We're probably just going to suffer some obloquy. At the worst, we will lose our jobs. Given the example of the courage with which some heroes resisted the real threat of totalitarian regimes, how can we allow such flimsy threats to intimidate us?
I quite agree. And I didn't mean to suggest otherwise.
Point being, some will suggest otherwise.
However, none of the foregoing detracts from your point. Americans these days are not the heroic nation they once were. Consider how much of war planning involves avoiding situations in which American boys might end up in body bags.
January 8, 2002 - WorldNetDaily.Com
How to mau-mau a Harvard don
By Patrick J. Buchanan
For students interested in learning how to conduct a first-class shakedown, few finer examples exist than the recent de-pantsing of the president of Harvard, Larry Summers. A thing of beauty it was, and here is how it went down.
Last month, Summers called in the highly-paid star of his black studies department, Cornel West, to dress him down. West, said Summers, was not devoting full time to teaching, was giving half his students A's, had just signed on as chair of Al Sharpton's presidential campaign and had put out a hip- hop rap CD the lyrics to which would have embarrassed Snoop Doggy Dog. Here is a partial rendition:
"From the heights of rich African humanity, to the depths of sick American barbarity, in the whirlwinds of white supremacy, black people preserved their sanity and dignity."
Feeling dissed, West – one of only 14 on Harvard's 2,000-person faculty to carry the title "university professor" – let drop a threat that he might just jump over to Princeton and take the rest of the all-stars in the black studies department with him.
Instead of telling West to take a hike, Summers chilled. So it was that on New Year's Day, that inveterate pair of shakedown artists, Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, arrived at Harvard to lay down surrender terms to Summers.
"There are two issues here," said Jesse, "one of academic freedom, and the other of affirmative action. We had Cornel West leaving a meeting with Mr. Summers feeling aggrieved. And (Summers), at his inaugural address, was not forthcoming about the role of affirmative action, which helped establish this DuBois Institute." By week's end, writes columnist Rod Dreher, Jesse and Al had turned "the famously ferocious Larry Summers into the Ivy League equivalent of a prison bride."
According to Professor William Julius Wilson, who also threatened to walk, Summers apologized, committed himself to greater "diversity" (more black students) and promised to keep his hands off the DuBois Institute.
As an example of Ivy League cravenness in the face of minority mau-mauing, Summers' capitulation is hard to top, though most Americans probably would not care if the gang at the DuBois Institute had looted Harvard's endowment and used the cash to buy an NFL franchise.
After all, Harvard is hardly representative of America – as one graduate, an ex- congressman, noted in the title of his book, "Harvard Hates America." Why else would Harvard name a school for Dr. W. E. B. DuBois, who gave up his U.S. citizenship, joined the Communist Party, praised Stalin as "a great man" and won the Lenin Prize after applauding Stalin's murder of 7 million Ukrainians.
Yet there is an issue here that ought to concern Middle America. For Harvard and the Ivy League have become the major access roads to power in America, and these roads are being closed off to ethnic Catholics and white Christians.
A few years back, Harvard graduate Ron Unz wrote in the Wall Street Journal about the admissions policies at his alma mater and the student body it produced. With affirmative action for preferred minorities and set-asides for children of alumni and faculty, and for foreign students and athletes, Harvard's student body, said Unz, had begun to look like the Greenwich Village Democratic Club.
According to Unz, 15 percent of Harvard's student body is Hispanic or black, 20 percent is Asian, 25 to 33 percent is Jewish, but only 25 percent comes from that 75 percent of America that is white and Christian. Christians are being frozen out of the elite schools that control the access to power in a nation that Christians, primarily, built.
But, in challenging this Ivy League bigotry, Republicans have shown all the courage of Larry Summers. Nevertheless, Congress ought to demand that the Department of Education require all Ivy League schools to report annually on the religious and ethnic composition of their faculties and student bodies, and, if Unz's percentages hold, should be asked what they are doing to end this discrimination. After all, if it is illegal for Irish cops to get their kids preferences, why is it OK for Harvard professors?
And if the Ivy League fails to take corrective action, federal funds should be cut off until the reverse discrimination ends, and the student bodies and faculties start to look just a little more like America.
Unfortunately, ours has become a country where those who preach loudest about injustice and persecution turn out to be its most unexcelled practitioners, once they get into the driver's seat.
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I cann't remember who, but I remember reading some conservative saying that these studies can be worthwhile if students were first given a strong foundation of Western Civilization/History, by which they could compare other cultures/subcultures. Of course, that will never happen on today's closed minded colleges.
No, I can't, but I have seen letters to the editor in WSJ doing it. (There might have been editorials on these topics, but probably not as strongly worded as this article.) I'll concede your point, though.
I do think however, that what we're seeing is a social taboo that is not limited to white vs black issues and is only vaguely related to the white guilt thing. Have you ever heard non-Jewish comedians tell jokes about Jews? (I know there aren't many of those!) Do we need other examples? There may be jokes about Italians or other ethnic groups, but serious discussions of such groups' internal problems are not allowed, unless the speaker/writer is a member of the group. I even suspect this type of taboo is common in other countries.
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