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.”
Po said…
…the simple fact you think the solution is to just move on reflects an inability to fully comprehend the other.
Po, how do you miss the aspect of my desire to improve relationships, not just “move on”, and assert I have an “inability” to comprehend any aspect of the past. That comprehension is WHY I believe as I do.
I suspect, truly, that my experience with civil rights efforts per se, by dint of my age if nothing else, is quite a bit more vast than yours….in both the north and the south of 1960. Yet you insist I can’t fathom it? Correct me if I am wrong…let’s just cite one aspect from 1960….when I saw black people in the south having to step off a curb when white people passed by them. Have you ever seen or experienced that? A minor aspect, yes, but significant on how some others think that was in opposition to the way I thought even way back then.
I DO fathom it, with full comprehension, and temper flaring revulsion in some instances, and THAT is why I believe as I do.
You can insist all you want that I am in some kind of denial, but you cannot be further from the truth when you do so.
Oops, forgot the link http://www.marketplace.org/topics/wealth-poverty/how-many-jobs-does-100-million-get-you
Ari
The sentence should have read “…step ENOUGH out of one’s skin in order to…”.
I have no doubt you have gained the ability to take some steps into someone’s shoes, and I have no doubt you are also open minded. However…the simple fact you think the solution is to just move on reflects an inability to fully comprehend the other.
None of us fully can, however, that proverbial mile always starts with the ability and willingness to let people live their trauma without pointing the finger, and without urging them to just move on.
The past is never the past as long as it affects the present.
For everyone, here is a bit I heard today on NPR (boo!) that discusses federal investment in Baltimore and poor affiliated areas. This is one the ways we solve these issues, by dedicating resources and time into the underserved communities, not by overpolicing them. At the end, it features a man who came out of a prison bid to get a job working for the community improvement program that those funds supported. Now he is gainfully employed, proudly employed, and rather than feeling that there are no avenues for him, he is now a proud member of his community, with self-worth and ambition. We all gain from that.
And, for Rick…. if equality waits for you, sorry to tell it it will keep waiting. You obviously have nothing to add to this conversation, other than this anecdote about your crazy uncle and his glue sniffing. Explains a lot!
Thanks for sharing.
Rick, that’s a start!
That’s the end. We’ll continue working toward equality alone. Meanwhile we’ll let you tell your embarrassing stories in close company while everyone understands their shared responsibility to keep you away from sharp objects. That’s how you protect your crazy uncle who sniffed too much glue when he was 13 and humoring his rants about slavery and 9-11 conspiracies is just a sad part of the gig.
Po … it is obviously hopeless if you cannot see from what I’ve written here and elsewhere that it is the very fact I know our history and seek to improve on it. If you’ve read with comprehension anything I have said, it should be clear I “stepped out of my skin” long ago. I know of no way to make it more clear. I am aware of our continuing foibles today, on all sides, and only want to enable progress, which I cannot do by any way other than how I live and hopefully that is a good example. I am not powerful and cannot force anyone to change, but I can live my life as a human irrelevant of my skin or ethnicity. Hopefully that gives others pause to think: if he can do it, maybe it is worthwhile. At one time I was referred to as one who “went native” in Asia, both RVN and ROK, and it was true enough…enough so that when I could assist in resolving something because of my language skills, crude as they were, and my knowledge of the people, not just the terrain, I was called upon to do so officially…and quietly without fanfare. I recovered more than one lost young man gone AWOL and they were not punished beyond a unit level Article 15 and maybe some loss of pay….because they came back with me without a struggle. We all felt pressure in those days and some broke under it, but could be recovered, and rejoin those who did not break ever. After that they could redeem themselves amongst their fellow soldiers. It is part of being in a unit, unified, and supportive. I don’t regret a moment of those days or now as I periodically am asked why I live where I do, by outsiders, and I answer: because I like it here and the people around me. It is not hard. But often ignored.
Paul, what do you think am doing here, trying to take the white man’s money to give it to my black american brothers as penance for any role my ancestors had in their plight.
Considering I also had relatives who ended up on this side, I’ll pay myself from that money.
Rick, that’s a start!
Po – just deduct a percentage for your relatives.
the redress I ask for is not, as you fear, the dreaded word REPARATIONS, it is confession and penance
I confess I had nothing to do with lynching and therefore reject penance out of hand.
Po – what Rick said!!!
Paul, before the white man…(that guy) came to buy them and take them across the globe, African slaves remained African. They made the trip across the continent ONLY so they can be taken away…ain’t it?
Sure, let’s blame all parties concerned, muslims, christians, whites, blacks…everyone…that’s what I am saying…
Keep saying it, Paul, won’t change the fact that I am asking for redress (institutional) not reparations (individual). The only reparation i demand is from you, for being so infuriating :)…and from Nick obviously!
Po – you, as a former African, seem to owe the blacks of the USA quite a bit of money. BTW, institutional is still me.
Karen says:
As I’ve explained before, history is packed full of injustices. If the sons are going to pay for the sins of the fathers, then everyone is just going to be broke. Are the descendants of African tribes who sold people into slavery going to pay for that, too? Are the descendants or distant relatives of Nazis all responsible to clear that terrible debt? They killed men, women, and children and made lamp shades out of human skin. That’s pretty much off the evil chart. Who has a spotless ancestral tree?
————————————————————-
Karen, it is not about having a spotless ancestral tree. No tree is full of stain. You may have noticed that Germany is still paying for the Holocaust, financially as well as emotionally. Germany has sought absolution by confessing and making penance. Matter of fact, the whole Western world as sought absolution by attempting to redress their complicity of inaction in face of what the nazis did. Israel being the result of that.
Turkey is being ostracized for failing to recognize the evil of the Armenian genocide.
Japan is still blamed for the brutality of its occupation of China, which still feeds the hatred the Chinese have for the Japanese.
china, for its own of Nepal.
An attempt was made to make it up to the Native Americans.
Meanwhile, herein the US, when blacks complain about what they went through, we hear, stop being being racist/divisive/whiny/lazy/contrarian…just get over it!
Po – you were not here for any of that history that your want reparations for. Why should you cash a check for something other suffer for? And actually all of them are dead. As for Germany, Japan and China, people are still alive.
Paul, the slaves in Africa were slaves that remained in Africa. They were men caught in war and kept as servants. Their skills and the fruit of their labor remained in Africa.
The 15 million slaves who were removed out of Africa for those distant shores were the strongest and healthiest, thereby robbing Africa of its building force, the one that would have insured Africa reaches higher levels of development.
So, let that dead horse lay.
Po – the slaves in Africa did not always stay in Africa. Many of them make the trip across the continent to be sold to slavers. And we have black Africans and Arab Muslims to thank for that. Like I said. Let’s start at the source.
David
The more you speak, the more suspect your non-racism is. You are working way too hard to claim that something that is widely documented and accepted, just doesn’t exist, to the point of advocating for separation?
You can try denying as much as you want that 400 years of slavery and the subsequent discrimination and oppression, which leads to today’s school to prison pipeline does not exist.
Overlook the facts as you wish, they are there nonetheless, obvious to anyone who cares to look.
The sources i offered make for great reading, but it is easier to just dismiss them, your choice.
And let’s stay on topic here. I offered Clyde Ross’ experience as example of the effect of the oppression I referred to. You chose to remove that experience from its communal expression and instead framed it as that of an individual who did not make the proper choices, then suggesting to him what he should have done. I responded by placing Clyde Ross’ experience in the light of a black man growing up the way he did, and what it does to one’s psyche. Then you take Clyde Ross’ experience of a different place and different era, and place it squarely and anachronistically into today’s era.
Obviously today’s black man will not be afraid of looking you in the eye, or would not step off the sidewalk when encountering you, that’s silly. The obvious signs of racism are no longer that obvious. Lynching would not take place in a public space. Fliers will not be distributed announcing the place and time for it. Postcards will not be taken and sold later.
But the legacy of that is still here.
The emotional response to this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J05RyQ48A6k
will not go away simply because you want it to. Closing your eyes to it and pretending it is alright now will not make it disappear, and he redress I ask for is not, as you fear, the dreaded word REPARATIONS, it is confession and penance and working hard at making sure that the system doesn’t have any loophole that would allow the bad apples, and there are a great many of them, to sustain their policies of racial oppression.
Po wrote: “The more you speak, the more suspect your non-racism is. You are working way too hard to claim that something that is widely documented and accepted, just doesn’t exist, to the point of advocating for separation?”
You are on a witch hunt. You are no different than those in Salem seeking out someone to crucify, and you hope to turn a profit by doing it.
If you paid attention, I NEVER denied what happened in the past. I object to how you react to what happened in the past. And I reject a system of morality that expects to be compensated for what was done to unnamed ancestors of one group by unnamed ancestors in another group.
Before Darwin wrote his book on the Descent of Man and attempted to describe the Negro race as an inferior race, we never really had much talk about racism in society. Did racism exist? Of course it did, but it was widely recognized as only one basis of stereotyping. For example, discrimination based upon religious affiliation was considered far more of a problem. There are many ways in which people base hatred on a stereotype. Now people like you want to claim that all the problems of the black American is based in racism. I don’t believe that is true. You pick a number of 400 years. I would like to know why. America is not 400 years old. Slavery has existed for thousands of years. At one time, the Jews were slaves in Egypt for 400 years. I suspect that is the source for the number 400. I don’t believe it is pulled from black history. It is pulled from Jewish history of slavery. It probably comes from a sermon somebody preached, trying to equate the slavery of blacks to the slavery that the Jews suffered for 400 years before Moses led them out of Egypt. Notably, the descendents of these Jews never sought reparations from the descendents of the Egyptians who made them slaves and mistreated them.
Po wrote: “I offered Clyde Ross’ experience as example of the effect of the oppression I referred to. You chose to remove that experience from its communal expression and instead framed it as that of an individual who did not make the proper choices, then suggesting to him what he should have done.”
I did not REMOVE his experience. I’m just saying that his suffering was based on his choices, and that is something that needs to be talked about. Was he treated wrong? Yes! I accept that. But I point out that he jumped into that situation and signed an agreement that he should not have signed. And you know what? For every black man this has happened to, I can point to at least 5 white men that suffered the same kind of mistreatment. His experience is valid, and certain parts of his experience are even unique to a black man, but the truth is that what he experienced is common to all man. You cannot fight for equality and then claim we don’t understand because we are not equal. You can’t have it both ways. You either have to stand on the commonality of our humanity or you stand on the basis that blacks are different from whites so whites will never understand the plight of the blacks.
Po wrote: “The obvious signs of racism are no longer that obvious. Lynching would not take place in a public space. Fliers will not be distributed announcing the place and time for it. Postcards will not be taken and sold later. But the legacy of that is still here.”
So in other words, you point to bad actions of anonymous ancestors in the past to stereotype modern people and argue that you are justified in hating them. I’m white, the Klu Klux Clan was white and lynched black men, therefore, David is just like them and he owes me money before I will forgive him. You can’t even document that I am related to even one person who did any of these things, but I am guilty because I am white. I owe you reparations. I need to confess to you that I am racist and guilty for what other white men did to your alleged anonymous ancestors, and I need to pay you money for it. Sorry, but that makes no sense to me.
As for the segregation comment, I believe in segregation. However, my standard of segregation is not based upon race, but upon morality. If a person lies to me, I cannot trust that person. I don’t want to be around people like that. He has violated my ethic and my commonality with him is like oil and water. We don’t mix. If your ethic is what you stated it to be, that you hate white men and will not forgive until money is paid to you for what anonymous ancestors did to your ancestors, then that standard of morality is not up to my ethical standards. I would not want to be in community with you. You can live your life and I will live mine, but not together. Go to the other side of town please, or maybe another county or State. If you do not want to move somewhere else, then I will.
Ari
You as well are others are unable to step out of your skin to see what others, blacks, are referring to.
Again, why can’t we talk about racism without every single white man raising his back and start fighting back? Racism is a structure, it is a system, it the enabling of the bad apples to take advantage and practice their bigotry.
It is slavery, then indentured labor, then socio-economic discrimination, then housing and work discrimination, then aggression by the representatives of the authority (police, courts and prisons.) At no point in our history, did the system completely break from its structure of discrimination and oppression.
No one is discounting the work white people have done to enable the civil rights fights…many have lost their lives in that struggle…just as many whites have lost their lives in the fight against slavery. So stop making this about you (communal) and learn to see the other outside of your traditional perspective. You (individual) are not racist, David is not racist, Paul is not racist…but your refusal to take stock of our history is racist…your refusal to allow blacks the full right to their trauma is racist…your closing the eyes to a system that treats you differently from them is racist. Your racism is not of action and sentiment, it is one of inaction and of denial, through which you permit the system to keep abusing those it is trained to abuse.
Why are we waging war all across the globe? Why do we keep repeating the same mistakes we continuously do? Because we refuse to take stock. We keep pushing forward, we keep refusing to sit still for a minute and wonder what is happening, we keep refusing to acknowledge our wrongs, seek out the higher authority, confess our sins and ask for absolution. We keep refusing to ask for forgiveness and to do the necessary penance for our sins, which is the ONLY way to keep from repeating them.
It works for your child as it does for the faithful s it does for the country. We ask our children to identify their errors, to confess to them, ask for forgiveness then work are being better. Yet, we refuse to do that as a nation.
Instead, we keep doubling on the denial of black people of their experience…we keep saying…just get over it, thinking it would solve our problems? Are you people serious?
Others have similarly suffered? Who? Where? And so what?
How do you explain the many recordings that are surfacing of police chiefs and police officers across the country disparaging blacks? The emails that make the round, similarly racist? The illegal kidnapping and torture of blacks by police, forcing them to confess to crimes they did not commit? The discrimination in hiring and housing based on the ethnic sound of a name? Stop and frisk?
Next up on the podium today,Ladies and Gentlemen, MOSES!
MOSES is here today to inform us about the evils of slavery (the world’s 2nd oldest profession) and bellyache endlessly about immaterial historical events.
No, sorry. I’m wrong on that. Moses actually took the bull by the horns and got his people up off their lazy arses and moved them, post haste, to the “land of milk and honey.” End of slavery; end of problem. Compassionate repatriation works every time.
MOSES: “Show’s over, nothing to see here, folks, move along.”
“Recrimination will never cease until there is absolution. And absolution will never be given until redress is offered”
“How to Start a Race War 101.”
Po:
“Recrimination will never cease until there is absolution. And absolution will never be given until redress is offered. The past is not dead, how could it be? The sons will pay for the sins of their fathers, that is unavoidable!”
As I’ve explained before, history is packed full of injustices. If the sons are going to pay for the sins of the fathers, then everyone is just going to be broke. Are the descendants of African tribes who sold people into slavery going to pay for that, too? Are the descendants or distant relatives of Nazis all responsible to clear that terrible debt? They killed men, women, and children and made lamp shades out of human skin. That’s pretty much off the evil chart. Who has a spotless ancestral tree?
If a civil war, hundreds of thousands of people dead to free the slaves, anti-discrimination laws, race-specific grants and scholarships, and billions of dollars spent on programs to help minorities do not satisfy the price of absolution, then nothing will.
No one alive had anything at all to do with slavery.
I’ve been to Rose Hall, toured old plantations, and I’ve seen manacles from slave ships. If anything is haunted, it’s anything to do with a slave ship. It makes bile rise in my throat to even think of what slaves endured. We must teach our history accurately, and never forget, but we must not allow ourselves to devolve into this divisive obsession about race. It’s all about votes to the politicians and activists, who, you’ll note, try harder to divide than to unify.
The past is the past. Learn from it so as not to repeat it, but do not wallow in it. Our just goal is equality, not special treatment or lower expectations based on skin color.
We should all be judged, and treated, equally. People who make any race their enemy, including Whites, are racist, have something to gain, or have an agenda, and it’s not everyone living peacefully together.
Aridog – great post. 🙂
As ignorant, tedious and stupid as many of these comments are– how in the world can we ever get past the silly assumptions/stereotypes etc we make about each other if we don’t say them out loud and get some feedback??
The sons will pay for the sins of their fathers, that is unavoidable!
So Michelle Obama must pay for Reginald Denny?
Po said …
Our current “race problem” is directly caused by our lack of national taking stock of the wrong we did black Americans, and for failing to seek absolution from it.
I’m anxious to hear your ideas of just what such absolution involves?
I can’t reverse discrimination in the past, all I can do is assure I do not participate in it now and in the future and that I try to get others to emulate the idea. So, do tell me, what debt I can repay, and how? Will recrimination absolution ever be enough?
Paul, you are right, he was a pimp until he wasn’t.
And he was a racist until he wasn’t.
Meanwhile, he was always a black man under police oppression. That, unfortunately never changed.
Ari
I believe nothing exists in a vacuum, everything comes from something else. What I fight against, is the disconnect between causes and their consequences. When speaking to black people, I never let them blame anyone but themselves. However, I won’t let anyone lay down all the blame on their shoulders.
Our current “race problem” is directly caused by our lack of national taking stock of the wrong we did black Americans, and for failing to seek absolution from it.
The modicum of redress blacks get, in the form of affirmative action, even that little is begrudged them…meanwhile, racism still exists, oppression still exists and they still live it everyday.
Recrimination will never cease until there is absolution. And absolution will never be given until redress is offered. The past is not dead, how could it be? The sons will pay for the sins of their fathers, that is unavoidable! The past can die only when it is given the proper last rites, otherwise it remains a ghost, haunting land and homes, souls and hearts until the end of times.
The same battles slaves were waging while in iron fetters, that Malcom and MLK were waging while in invisible chains, are the same battles we fight today. Black lives were always cheap, in marked contrast to their value to the capitalist system that built this country.
What is their reward? Where are the 40 acres and the mule? Where is the appreciation? Where is the national apology?
As I said before, blacks Americans suffer form unconscious communal PTSD from the past and current trauma from the systematic aggression they are subjected to, and unless it is properly cared for and we all heal as a nation, this will be the state of things until they get worse.
So it’s not about the past, it is about today and about tomorrow.
But, some things are better said by a white man: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9AMY2Bvxuxc
Po wrote: “Recrimination will never cease until there is absolution. And absolution will never be given until redress is offered.”
This is probably the most stupid thing I have read in this thread. All you are doing is asking for a handout, and declaring that if you don’t get the handout that you expect, you will never forgive and you will always return evil for evil. This is the most despicable standard of morals that I have read in a long time. Whoever adopts this perspective is not fit to live in the same community as me. I don’t care if that person is black, white, yellow, or red. Segregation is the best response to people who embrace hatred and refuse to forgive unless they are given some kind of handout for the color of their skin and the way some anonymous ancestors of one race mistreated the anonymous ancestors of another race.
david – the first offer of redress must come from the African nations and Arabs who captured the blacks and sold them into slavery. Next would be Portugal who first brought blacks to the New World. Spain follows, then the Dutch and the English. Let’s not forget the French.