We recently discussed the case of Saida Grundy, an incoming assistant professor of sociology and African-American studies at Boston University who released a series of tweets denounced by many as racist and sexist, including calling white males the main problem on college campuses and admitting how she tries not to buy anything from white people. While many called for Grundy to be fired, some of us defended her racist and sexist comments as an exercise of free speech done outside of her teaching responsibilities. However at the time, I noted “a series of tweets denounced by many as racist and sexist. “White masculinity isn’t a problem for america’s colleges, white masculinity is THE problem for america’s colleges.” Now we have such a case and it does appear to confirm some of our concerns that the same standard is not applied to those with opposing views. Duke University professor Jerry Hough has reportedly been placed on leave after posting comments online that were also denounced as racist. While Grundy was allowed to apologize for “indelicate” comments about whites, Hough is facing calls for termination and has reportedly been put on leave. [UPDATE: there are some stories indicating that Hough may have been on academic leave rather than “put on” academic leave. It is not clear from various reports.]
Hough was commenting on a New York Times editorial titled “How Racism Doomed Baltimore” and included an observation that Asian Americans don’t riot because “they didn’t feel sorry for themselves, but worked doubly hard.” He also wrote that “every black has a strange new name that symbolizes their lack of desire for integration” compared to “every Asian student [who] has a very simple old American first name.” Just as with Grundy’s comments, it is not necessary to debate the merits of such comments. What is at issue is the right to voice such views outside of the classroom and off campus as a matter of free speech. As with Grundy, these views may also be part of Hough’s academic views as political science teacher. His bio states that “his current research centers on the establishment of the state, identity, markets, and democracy in the United States.”
He later defended his comments and said that “Martin Luther King was my hero” and insisting he is “strongly against the toleration of racial discrimination.”
Duke Vice President for Public Affairs and Government Affairs Michael Schoenfeld released a statement quickly that said that “The comments were noxious, offensive, and have no place in civil discourse.” Boston University was right to treat Grundy’s comments as an exercise of free speech. If Hough has been put on leave, Duke has positioned itself on the other side of the free speech divide and has decided that it will now impose disciplinary action for academics who espouse offensive or obnoxious views outside of the class room. The problem is a lack of a standard that explains where this line. It is not simply a question of what speech will be considered permissible outside of the classroom but how the school will limit principles of academic freedom and free expression under such a standard in both academic writings and classrooms. It is a dangerous and slippery slope. The greatest problem is that the uncertain standard creates a chilling effect on academics, particularly untenured academics in what views will be tolerated. In the academic world, such uncertainty can be devastating and strikes at the very heart of the academic mission.
Here are Hough’s full original comments:
“This editorial is what is wrong. The Democrats are an alliance of Westchester and Harlem, of Montgomery County and intercity Baltimore. Westchester and Montgomery get a Citigroup asset stimulus policy that triples the market. The blacks get a decline in wages after inflation.
But the blacks get symbolic recognition in an utterly incompetent mayor who handled this so badly from beginning to end that her resignation would be demanded if she were white. The blacks get awful editorials like this that tell them to feel sorry for themselves.
In 1965 the Asians were discriminated against as least as badly as blacks. That was reflected in the word “colored.” The racism against what even Eleanor Roosevelt called the yellow races was at least as bad.
So where are the editorials that say racism doomed the Asian-Americans. They didn’t feel sorry for themselves, but worked doubly hard.
I am a professor at Duke University. Every Asian student has a very simple old American first name that symbolizes their desire for integration. Virtually every black has a strange new name that symbolizes their lack of desire for integration. The amount of Asian-white dating is enormous and so surely will be the intermarriage. Black-white dating is almost non-existent because of the ostracism by blacks of anyone who dates a white.
It was appropriate that a Chinese design won the competition for the Martin Luther King state. King helped them overcome. The blacks followed Malcolm X.”
Karen
I answered your points above, you musta missed it. Here it again:
Can you address those points?
——————————————————
From http://www.epi.org/publication/making-ferguson/
“Many of these explicitly segregationist governmental actions ended in the late 20th century but continue to determine today’s racial segregation patterns. In St. Louis these governmental policies included zoning rules that classified white neighborhoods as residential and black neighborhoods as commercial or industrial; segregated public housing projects that replaced integrated low-income areas; federal subsidies for suburban development conditioned on African American exclusion; federal and local requirements for, and enforcement of, property deeds and neighborhood agreements that prohibited resale of white-owned property to, or occupancy by, African Americans; tax favoritism for private institutions that practiced segregation; municipal boundary lines designed to separate black neighborhoods from white ones and to deny necessary services to the former; real estate, insurance, and banking regulators who tolerated and sometimes required racial segregation; and urban renewal plans whose purpose was to shift black populations from central cities like St. Louis to inner-ring suburbs like Ferguson.
Governmental actions in support of a segregated labor market supplemented these racial housing policies and prevented most African Americans from acquiring the economic strength to move to middle-class communities, even if they had been permitted to do so.
White flight certainly existed, and racial prejudice was certainly behind it, but not racial prejudice alone. Government policies turned black neighborhoods into overcrowded slums and white families came to associate African Americans with slum characteristics. White homeowners then fled when African Americans moved nearby, fearing their new neighbors would bring slum conditions with them.
That government, not mere private prejudice, was responsible for segregating greater St. Louis was once conventional informed opinion. A federal appeals court declared 40 years ago that “segregated housing in the St. Louis metropolitan area was … in large measure the result of deliberate racial discrimination in the housing market by the real estate industry and by agencies of the federal, state, and local governments.” Similar observations accurately describe every other large metropolitan area. This history, however, has now largely been forgotten.
When we blame private prejudice, suburban snobbishness, and black poverty for contemporary segregation, we not only whitewash our own history but avoid considering whether new policies might instead promote an integrated community. The federal government’s response to the Ferguson “Troubles” has been to treat the town as an isolated embarrassment, not a reflection of the nation in which it is embedded. The Department of Justice is investigating the killing of teenager Michael Brown and the practices of the Ferguson police department, but aside from the president’s concern that perhaps we have militarized all police forces too much, no broader inferences from the events of August 2014 are being drawn by policymakers.
The conditions that created Ferguson cannot be addressed without remedying a century of public policies that segregated our metropolitan landscape. Remedies are unlikely if we fail to recognize these policies and how their effects have endured.
Ahhhhh.
Today we are treated to “Judenrat”.
Always an encouraging word from Mr. Positive who sees only the best in people.
Judenrat.
What lovely images that word evokes.
Let’s savor it….
Judenrat.
isaac
Tirades? Lol. Check out your long, rambling, mostly-off-topic diatribes about everything, including the kitchen sink, and then get back to me about tirades. Who said the French have no sense of humor? You must’ve done extensive work with the theater of the absurd.
Montgomery County is full of money. I really don’t know what he’s talking about.
Po:
Who is being forcibly herded into ghettos? If a child gets a scholarship to a great college, is he prohibited from leaving the ghetto? Are women being forced to have unprotected sex, and the fathers forced to abandon their families?
What is the defense against crime in a high crime neighborhood? The police. And what is the attitude towards the police in the high crime neighborhood? That they are the enemy. Is some white guy telling black young men to beat up police officers? To do drugs? To have kids out of wedlock? To join a gang?
In Ferguson, the complaint was there weren’t enough minorities on the police force. In Baltimore, it is minority majority police and politics. But they still rioted.
The crimes done against our ancestors throughout history could be used to justify any number of things in present day, from crime to apathy to helplessness. One of my ancestors immigrated here to avoid being murdered. She gave up everything and arrived penniless. She was a German American through 2 World Wars. Can I use that as an excuse to drop out of school, do drugs, commit crimes, and/or have kids out of wedlock? Can I blame The Government or anyone else for my actions?
What about during Colonial times? Indentured servants were forced to work for 7 years, regardless of whether their masters beat or raped them. The men were given an ax and a pair of shoes at the end of it. Can their descendants blame their current circumstances on those ancient acts?
What about women’s suffrage? Women were second class citizens throughout recorded history until fairly recently. Can I blame anything I’m lacking on the millennia-long subjugation of women?
And let me again remind people that slavery was practiced by every civilization in recorded history, and possibly before. Africans sold their enemies to slavers, and slavery is still practiced in parts of Africa today.
Do you reserve your ire on slavery for the US, or do you include Africans, the British, the Portuguese, Dutch, Native Americans, Greeks, Ancient Egyptians, Aztecs, Mayans, etc?
Because I never see any “Darn those Portuguese Slavers”, even though they were some of the most prolific and brutal traders.
Isaac:
“Affirmative action was and continues to be a move in the right direction in establishing minorities in professions, creating examples for the youth of these minorities, and establishing a strength for these minorities in this upper strata of our society.”
Why is lowering the bar for people based on skin color or gender a move in the right direction? Why is it OK to lower test score requirements for black cops than for white cops, for example? Why is it OK to taint the degree an African American earns by the certain knowledge that he wasn’t held to the same rigorous requirements as any other race? That’s unfair to the African Americans who earned their degrees (jobs/whatever) based on their own merit.
If you were in a burning building, and the female firefighter dropped you and could not get you out because they lowered the bar for her to get in, is that a move in the right direction? I’ve known firemen and cops, and heard the same story over and over again. They lowered the requirements to get people in to those professions, even when it risks lives to do so.
A woman should be a fireman if she has the aptitude for it and can pass all the requirements. I don’t care what race or gender or sexual orientation a fireman is as long as he or she can get me out of the burning building. But I would care if he or she was unable to save me because Affirmative Action let them cut in front of more qualified applicants, and it was my life forfeit.
What do you think Affirmative Action does for race relations when someone who’s wanted to be a cop for his entire life got beat out for a place at the police academy by someone with barely any interest at all and much lower test scores? Or a fireman? Or a college student? Pick your venue, and Affirmative Action causes rancor and resentment because it is unfair and racist.
Instead of making it easier for unqualified people, why not just judge everyone based on merit? Help all kids, regardless of color, get the best education possible and make their neighborhoods the safest possible?
Affirmative Action preaches that African Americans are inferior and need to have lower standards. That is anathema to me. The time to intervene is in early education, not graduating an illiterate high school student with poor syntax because they don’t want a high failure rate for blacks.
I have already given you concrete, documented examples of the failure of Affirmative Action, and you appear to just ignore them and press on. Unless I’ve missed it, you have not addressed the negative consequences of AA, including the MLK Hospital Scandal and the Supreme Court case.
If your theory is that doing something wrong is better than doing nothing, is it OK if someone burned your house down because it had termites and at lease he “did something?”
Personally, the best solution to any problem is to try an approach, gauge the results and adjust accordingly. But if you refuse to analyze the results and change your approach, then you end up harming the population you are trying to help.
Bam bam
Let me see now: I’m from France so I’m wrong. What people wear determines their value in society, i.e. whether they are right or wrong. French cheese is stinky. And the rest of your more and more humorous tirades and less and less substantial tirades, tirades nevertheless. Are you sure you are not related to Nick Spinelli?
David
And these ‘work gangs’ could sing really neat songs and chants. The men would be the baritone and the children could be the sopranos. The women could work too when they weren’t popping out more kids for the work gangs.
BamBam
At least have the decency to quote the later Malcom X who changed his mind about white people and toned down his racial rethoric!
And for those among you who want to heap praises upon Mlk, he has nothing in common in you. Matter of fact, he railed against every single thing you hold dear. He has been emasculated through the process of cultural appropriation, but in their core beliefs, he and Malcom were much close, only the methods they proposed differed.
Tin ear, if you think affirmative action is robbing the white to give to the black, your grasp on history doesn’t span more than 2 decades.
Again, if you cannot check the following boxes, then friends, you better count of blessings and enjoy your privilege.
1- Have your ancestors been brought here in shackles?
2- Have your ancestors been separated from their husband/wife/child/sibling and sold?
3 have your ancestors been whipped, worked like animals, raped, amputated?
4- has your grandparent returned from world war two and been denied the right to buy a house like his fellow GI’s in any community because of the color of his skin?
5- Has your grandparent/parent been denied the opportunity to live anywhere because of government policies that discriminated against people of color?
6- Has your grand/parent been refused the right to vote because of the color of his skin?
7- Has your grandparent been deemed by the constitution of his land a less than full human being? His live therefore taken on a whim, his property taken on a whim, his freedom taken on a whim?
8- Have over 4000 of your people been lynched in your country? Shot, hanged, dragged, burned…with announcement of such events made ahead of time and the subsequent scenes photographed and sold?
9- Has your government and all its parts established your skin as unprotected, unworthy, unvalued for close to 5 centuries, which finds its expression into being herded in ghettos, with a deficient nutritional supplies, deficient schooling, deficient healthcare, and continuous abuse at the hands of the authority?
And I wonder who did all of the following:
Who massacred the native Americans?
Who brought slaves in this land and justified their enslavement through man and divine law?
Who discriminated against the Chinese, the Irish, the Jews…?
Who originated Jim crow laws and repeated them?
Who held women subservient to these days, paying them less than men, when other countries have had female heads of state ages ago?
Who bombed Hiroshima and Nagazaki?
Who invaded Iraq under false pretenses thereby setting the world on fire?
Who is enabling dictatorships in the middle east to repress freedom and women’s rights?
Who has been undermining democratically elected governments across the globe?
Who is selling off the country to highest bidders, starting wars for the benefit of their warmasters?
Yes, white men it is!
(Although we can add a white woman, Hillary Clinton to that list, if, as we dread, she becomes prez.)
po –
As a relative newcomer to this country you have no say in anything down to the last line. However, for your benefit, it is a black man, Obama who is selling the country off to the highest bidder right now. He is helped by the Muslim Brotherhood and several blacks who he has installed in various offices.
Bam bam
It’s not that difficult to look at the top of this blog. What gender and color are all of them? I don’t think you noted being a blind person in any of your posts.
So a misunderstanding as to why this “brilliant” guy was on leave. How about the truth? What notes should I take? I’m blinded by all the enlightenment.
Michelle Obama grew up in an apartment in Chicago (a second floor flat of a house owned by her aunt). Her father worked for the city water dept; her mother was a secretary. Rod Blagoyavich grew up in a four-room apartment in Chicago, where his father worked in a steel mill and his mother was a ticket-taker for the subway. In socio-economic terms, both came from remarkably similar working class backgrounds. Ethnically, Michelle was African-American, and Blagoyavich was the son of two immigrants and spoke Serbian at home.
When it came time for college, Michelle was considered disadvantaged and gained admission to Princeton as a minority / diversity candidate. Blagoyavich was considered a normal white kid, so he was on his own, and went to a state college. He majored in history. She majored in sociology and African-American studies, writing her thesis on ‘the black experience at Princeton.’ Michelle then gained admission to Harvard Law School, and worked at Sidley Austin in Chicago for two years, before leaving law for community service and political positions.
Blagoyavich went to lesser-known Pepperdine Law School, then returned to Chicago and worked as a prosecutor in the District Attorney’s office, a state legislator, congressman, and governor of Illinois before his fall from grace. In the case of Michelle, she received extraordinary opportunities because she was black, and has really done very little with them. Certainly her legal career didn’t amount to much and has been a waste of a Harvard legal education.
Blago’s accomplishments are quite impressive, considering where he came from, a white immigrant working class kid who spent summers working on the Alaska pipeline to earn his tuition. His public corruption conviction ended an otherwise amazing career; I wonder what would have become of him had he received the social polish and professional connections of Princeton and Harvard Law. Probably would be president of the United States, instead of wasting away in the SuperMax serving a seemingly excessive 14 year sentence handed down by a Harvard educated Jewish judge.
But then again, Blago had the advantage of “white privilege,” which means you rise and fall on your own.
Karen, The dynamic I have seen over the last 4-5 decades is this. Liberal elitist whites run the Dem party. They need to keep their slaves voting like slaves, in the 90th %. So, they and their house slaves, or their Judenrat, have to keep all the field slaves in line. There are many black folk that do not buy the Dem party line but they are kept in line by the Judenrat blacks. You get a bunch of black people talking and they do not sound like Dems, particularly when it comes to the thugs in their culture, gays, etc. But, they are kept on the plantation by the house slaves/Judenrat. If you have the audacity to be a Republican, well they can skewer you w/ the most vile stuff ever. This is rich limo liberals running the show. Make NO MISTAKE about that. The black Dem politicians are the Judenrat.
Malcolm X:
“The common enemy is the white man.”
“I’ve never seen a sincere white man, not when it comes to helping black people. Usually things like this are done by white people to benefit themselves. The white man’s primary interest is not to elevate the thinking of black people, or to waken black people, or white people either. The white man is interested in the black man only to the extent that the black man is of use to him. The white man’s interest is to make money, to exploit.”
But the only permanent solution is complete separation or some land of our own in a country of our own. All other courses will lead to violence and bloodshed. It will lead to the destruction of America, and it will also lead to the destruction of our people who fall for it. So his message is flee for your lives and save yourselves.
David Duke:
“What we really want to do is to be left alone. We don’t want Negroes around. We don’t need Negroes around. We’re not asking you know, we don’t want to have them, you know, for our culture. We simply want our own country and our own society. That’s in no way exploitive at all. We want our own society, our own nation….”
____________________________________________________________________________________
How interesting to find some on here heaping praise on Malcolm X, when his words mimic those of David Duke.
We’re just not supposed to notice how similar they are in their opinions.
“BUT, I secretly fume that my money is likely to help black service men, or hispanic babies, or even mixed-breed mutts; after all, I am secretly heartless, shameless and completely bigoted.”
****************
No need to convince anyone, this comment alone convinces me you’re a bigot.
Enough! Enough! Enough!
I confess! After having been waterboarded with the tears from this blog, I confess.
I am a white male. I am “The Problem with America”. I wake up each morning and I rededicate myself to suppressing the black man, the brown man, and the yellow man. I go to my “Screw the Minorities” meetings (“Hi, I’m Steve and I’m a racist.” “Welcome, Steve!!”) every day, although it’s getting harder to remember the secret location and the secret code words since I’m not just a white male but I’m an Old White Man. I watch O’Reilly.
I hide my suppression of the “people of color” in many ways: I pay my taxes in full and on-time despite my 39.6% marginal tax rate; I donate liberally (oops, progressively) to Wounded Warriors, to St Paul’s Children’s Hospitals, and to various animal rescue/shelter orgs. BUT, I secretly fume that my money is likely to help black service men, or hispanic babies, or even mixed-breed mutts; after all, I am secretly heartless, shameless and completely bigoted.
My sponsor, who helps me when I’m tempted to not watch MSNBC, says that I should feel guilt for all that I have achieved, including but not limited to (after all this is a legal blog), having ridden my white-skinned privilege to: graduate from high school, gain admission to college, graduate from college, get a job, get another job, get another job, get another job, save money, pay my debts, father and raise three kids, and retire debt-free and not “on the dole”. I have to convert my pride into shame in knowing that I achieved all my, uh, achievements by suppressing minorities and taking their opportunities away so I can use them myself. (Except for my third job; I got that with my uncle’s help.)
But someday, with the help of the government and wise progressive guidance, I can fully repent: redistribute all my money, vote Democrat, and co-author anti-GOP blogs with Rafflaw.
Please accept my confession. Steve “The Problem With America” H.
Po, no I don’t think I was the “typical white” in higher education; my circumstances were worst than most, but not all of my classmates. Most of my white classmates were lower-middle to upper middle class. Lots of very average kids from working class and middle-class backgrounds. Yes, there were some rich kids in the frats but they were not the norm. As for blacks, on average they were better off than the average whites and average Asians. Maybe that’s something unique to California, with its low (7%) black population and high immigrant-Asian population. I do recall the AA situation breeding a lot of resentment and manipulation. One of my classmates, a Hispanic, applied to U.C. Davis Law School and was rejected. So she reapplied the following year, this time claiming to be black. She was accepted. Being a naive young thing at the time, I was astonished and assumed she would be found out and kicked out of law school. Apparently they didn’t care, as she graduated three years later and reverted to being Hispanic.
po
Turley is pretty casual about his facts.
He calls for academic free speech – but apparently that doesn’t include the need for truth.
isaac at 5:19 pm
If you are so foolish to believe that an academic adviser’s personal appearance, which is something that I alluded to in another thread, is irrelevant, then you are are as misguided as you are unrealistic.
Those charged with the responsibility of guiding others, with regard to what is expected in terms of dress and behavior in the professional world, must lead by example and not dress as slobs in the workplace.
Oh, I forgot. I’m addressing someone from France–the land of stinky cheese and deodorant-optional people. Yeah, I get why all this fuss about personal appearance and hygiene would be confusing to you.
Karen
Affirmative action was and continues to be a move in the right direction in establishing minorities in professions, creating examples for the youth of these minorities, and establishing a strength for these minorities in this upper strata of our society. However, it will not work alone to erase the hundreds of years of racism and pigeonholing that is still a part of our society. The two missing parts of the equation include another extraordinary move by our society as a whole, that is attacking the problem at the source or with the children. Minority children start off disadvantaged due to their neighborhoods, family structure, and local opportunities. The other part of the equation, the will and force to work one’s way out of the circumstance, needs the assistance of the society.
Perhaps some with lower SAT scores, lower GPAs, and other standard measurements of abilities will take places that those with higher scores would have taken. I have yet to read any reports of doctors, lawyers, or other professionals who have made it through the seven to eleven years of education making it with lower bars along the way. Affirmative action lets some with ability get in the door, some who would not ordinarily get the chance. They still have to make it through. When they emerge they are better for society over all than if they had not been allowed in the front door due to a few percentage points.
Americans with their strengths placed in the single mindedness of the ‘dream’ and every one’s access to it, sometimes forget that problems typically take time to develop, are the result of many forces, and need time and more than one solution to address. The hundreds of years of crimes against this segment of our humanity will not be addressed by any one approach but by a concerted effort of many approaches.
As no one approach can solve the multifaceted problem, it is easy to point to any one approach and label it, by itself, ineffective and as with Affirmative action, unfair. There is nothing more unfair than doing nothing.