Tennessee: VU professor's essay sparks 'Confederate' backlash

The Tennessean ^ | 12/1/02 | Holly Edwards

[GailA]

Anger that has been brewing for months over Vanderbilt University's deletion of the word ''Confederate'' from Confederate Memorial Hall has boiled over in recent weeks in the wake of a professor's comments about slavery and racism in the South.

Outraged Southern heritage groups have launched Web sites, posted counter-opinions on the Internet, flooded their organizations' offices with more than 1,000 phone calls and e-mails and demanded that professor Jonathan Farley be fired in the weeks since Farley's essay appeared in The Tennessean.

[sneakypete]

University officials are standing behind Farley's right to express his opinions publicly. ''Our faculty have, by virtue of their academic freedom, the ability and authority to say anything they want,'' said Michael Schoenfeld, Vanderbilt's vice chancellor for public affairs. ''We also encourage civility and respect, and we want our faculty to be responsible with this right.''

So,I guess we are to believe that if a white professor there wrote that all blacks should be hanged and their property seized because blacks commit most of the violent crime in this nation,VU would stand behind them and applaud their speaking out?

Somehow,I don't think that would be the case.

[sneakypete]

Oh, isn't that rich. He calls for executions and now he is receiving death threats.

You didn't notice the most serious charge,attacks on his career!

[wideawake]

The southern states initiated their rebellion to defend what they saw as a threat to their institution of slavery.

Oh, so that's why Robert E. Lee, a man completely opposed to slavery, took the position he was offered as commander of the Union army and refused to join the Confederates.

It really must be just that simple.

[sneakypete]

I simply don't understand.

It's really simple when you remove all the camoflague. At the base,it's all about Marxism versus freedom. You spoke up for freedom and doing what is right,so you had to be punished by the Marxists that dominate in that field. Face it,they HAVE to fight to keep control over academia. Their whole lives revolve around theory instead of reality,and if they lose their domination of the educational system they have nowhere else to go. That is the only field where theory is superior to reality.

[sneakypete]

I guess too many white Ameicans are used to the surley, racist black clerk at the store who neither says a word to any white customer and never makes eye contact but will spend ten minutes having a epithat filled, profanity laced conversation with every black customer at 95 decibels.

I thought I was the only one to notice that. I don't get out like I used to,but I always get in their faces and DEMAND they serve me. The last time was early last summer at a McDonalds,when the black girl at the counter ignored me to serve a black customer standing behind me in line. Even then she tried to refuse to give me my coffee. She placed it on the other side of the cash register rather than give it to me,so that I would have to walk over there to get it. I had moved aside after placing my order so the customer behind me could place his. I told her in a LOUD voice that I wanted my GD coffee,and if she wasn't willing to do her job and give it to me,she needed to take her worthless ass home. You could have heard a pin drop,but I got my coffee.

[Non-Sequitur]

It really must be just that simple.

No, not really because Robert Lee was not, as you say, completely opposed to slavery. He may not have been one of its strongest supporters but he did not advocate taking actions to end it. He believed it would end in God's own time and men should do nothing to hasten it.

BTW, you know that Lee held slaves up to the end of 1862, don't you? And that in the 1850's he paid passage to Africa for some of his own slaves? Just curious.

[Non-Sequitur]

I agree, that is crap.

That's because you haven't done any investigating of the causes of the southern rebellion. The speeches, the secession declarations, the writings of the southern leadership of the rebellion all show that they were almost solely concerned with protecting the institution of slavery.

[Balding_Eagle]

You could have heard a pin drop,but I got my coffee.

Ya' know, I've got to be braver than I am. You provide a good example.

Now, what about all those cars parked right outside the front door of the grocery stores, causing a traffic jam while the minority person is inside shopping? Should Mrs. BE park right in front of them, and me right tight behind them, and then go in the store too?

[yankeedame]

DITTO, from looking at his photo, he looks about 20...

(LOL)You kidding? Going by his picture he looks like he can still remember who sat next to him in High School algebra...in his junior year.

[Republic of Texas]

The most racist people in America are now left wing Blacks.

[Darnright]

"Farley is a racist masquerading as an educator."

His racism is not his only "attribute". Notice the the portrait in the background of his official photo.

I just love academic tenure.

[Morrigan]

The Civil War had negative impacts on every one that was involved. Lincoln had his own reasons for his participation, and it was not just to free the slaves. All Americans suffered--black, white, North, South.

I hope that Americans can start to put this war in the past. We don't want to argue and fight each other, not when so many other countries and groups want to fight and argue with us. Americans need to stand together, not divide with petty squabbling and resurrection of past misdeeds. I don't ever want to see another civil war between Americans again.

I'm a Yank, so perhaps I am not really all that qualified to comment on what is going on with the Confederate advocates right now. I must say, though, I have never had any animosity to the South and we were never taught anything like that in school, either. It happened. It is over. It has been over for many, many, many years.

[Maigrey]

Rosario added that most people cannot understand what it's like to be an African-American man — particularly a well-educated African-American man — living in the South. ''You are always on the defensive and always trying to prove you have a right to exist, because you are looked at as something less than other human beings,'' he said.

How 'bout this for an open viewpoint.... If Dr. Farley would quit assuming that everyone who came in contact with him was a prejudicial racist, and worked to get to know some of these people, he would see that not everyone is intimidated or offended by him.

Alas, this would require getting to know others and shedding the party-line image of socialist thought, and I don't see this happening in the near future.

-Maigrey-

[southcarolina]

This anti-Confederate sentiment seems like something that's relatively new, at least in the virulent form it's now taking. I'm not yet 40, so I can't speak to what happened deades ago, but it seems in the past different sides were willing to let the other have their history, heroes and beliefs. (And perhaps in the midst of Jim Crow this wasn't the case, either.) But today more and more often being a proponent of the Federal view of the Civil War means you have to tear down the Confederacy in the uglist terms possible. Perhaps the Prof. Farleys of the world are worried they may not be right, so they use rhetoric and outlandish overkill to compensate for their lack of confidence and knowledge. Whatever the cause, it's unfortunate that those who can't stand to see the Old South in anything but a negative light can get their opinions into print so easily.

[flyervet]

I'm pretty sure you can't call for executions of men who have been dead for 130+ years.

[bat1816]

Plenty of us notice it. When I lived in a crime-ridden part of Maryland, the service I received at businesses where most of the employees were black, was atrocious. I finally decided that I wouldn't patronize any business that gave me such shoddy service.

[Search4Truth]

I was born and raised in the Deep South. In my entire life here I have not witnessed the kind of racism that I hear from these Yankee intellectuals, from any race.

The prevailing belief in the Deep South is that we are all equal in the eyes of God. Perhaps it's that our Christian values place more importance on what kind of person you are, rather than the race, education, economic stature, intelligence or the attractiveness of the individual.

Of course there were always racists, but they were always looked upon as having the right to their beliefs, but were akin to those who broke wind in public; distasteful.

What a morally bankrupt and strange world academia has become.

[GailA]

I was being generous with the 20ish.

I is PC to fire a person for stating things about slick willie. While those who spoon feed this crap to young adults in the guise of education keep their jobs.

Sure it's his right to speak this garbage, BUT it is not his right to teach it.

[billbears]

VU professor's essay sparks 'Confederate' backlash

After what he said, I'm not suprised. God bless Dixie

[billbears]

'If I had written this essay in 1952, I'd be dead right now,'' Farley said, adding that he did not abide by Martin Luther King Jr.'s doctrine of passive resistance.

''I am not the Reverend Doctor Farley. I am not going to respond to the Confederates' vicious, hostile actions by embracing them.''

I guess Mr. Farley falls more along the lines of Douglass and Asa Gordon. Agitate,agitate,agitate? Is that it? Following Asa's rules, I bet he's a fun loving fan of those nuts over at the Temple of Democracy, huh?