As I’ve noted in the past, the student (and faculty-endorsed) protests transpiring on college campuses throughout the land ultimately amount to nothing more or less than an anti-white campaign.
Whether the protesters and their leftist supporters recognize the inexorable logic of their demands, it points toward nothing short of the “fundamental transformation” of America and Western civilization itself.
And insofar as Western civilization is the house that Europeans, i.e. whites, built, this fundamental transformation that militant leftists wish to visit upon it can only amount to a purging of every last vestige of this legacy.
At Princeton University, black student-protesters and their white allies have gotten the administration to consider eradicating references to Woodrow Wilson, the “progressive” who, despite having served as president of both the United States and Princeton University, held racially regressive views.
At Yale University, student activists, including Dante de Blasio, son of Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York City, are in the process of pressuring administrators to change the name of one of its colleges that is named after John C. Calhoun—an apologist for slavery. Dante’s father “absolutely” supports his son’s efforts.
Perhaps these aggrieved students and their faculty allies, like their fellow travelers in the larger culture, are genuinely oblivious to their own inconsistencies. Or maybe they know exactly what they’re doing. Either way, there is no circumventing the fact that if it is “racially insensitive” to blacks to name buildings after Wilson and Calhoun, then there is no getting around the following.
(1) For starters, it isn’t just references to Wilson that should be purged from Princeton University; Princeton University should itself be purged. There would’ve been no College of New Jersey (subsequently renamed Princeton University) had it not been for Jonathan Belcher, a New Jersey governor whose efforts resulted in the establishment of this institution.
Belcher, though, owned slaves.
A one-time merchant, Belcher trafficked in slaves, and on one of his trips to England, he presented as a gift to Electress Sophia an Indian slave.
How, we must ask, can we expect for these poor black students at Princeton to attend this most prestigious of the world’s institutions of higher learning knowing that it was founded by a slave owner?! How can we expect American Indian students to do the same?!
(2) But it isn’t just Princeton that must be abolished. So too must we eradicate most of America’s elite universities—including Yale, where Mayor de Blasio’s biracial son is forced to live under the daily oppression of attending a college named after a defender of slavery.
As black author Craig Steven Wilder notes in his Ebony and Ivy, many of these institutions depended for their daily functioning upon slave labor.
(3)In his full-throated defense of his son, Mayor de Blasio insisted that his son would have to feel uncomfortable attending Yale’s Calhoun College, because his son is of “African” descent.
Yet “African,” like “Africa,” is racially insensitive: “Africa” derives from “Afri”—a Latin name devised for referencing the inhabitants of what is today known as Africa. Latin was a European language. The boundaries of Africa have expanded as Europeans (whites) have discovered the land mass of the continent.
So, by the logic of student-protesters, shouldn’t de Blasio’s characterization of his son as being of “African” descent be treated as offensive? Isn’t such a characterization a painful reminder to blacks of their ancestors’ encounters with Europeans, of the omnipresence of “white privilege?”
(4) Yet if “Africa” is offensive, “African-American” is doubly offensive, for America, we should never forget, was named after Amerigo Vespucci, a European—a white—explorer.
(5) America,” then, is another word that should go the way of the names of Woodrow Wilson, John Calhoun, and others, for “America” reminds people of color, particularly Native Americans, of the “White Supremacy” that they have daily been forced live under for centuries.
(6) Then again, “Native American” is racially insensitive as well: The implication here is that America had always existed, but the “natives” were here first. The problem with this is that there were no “Americas” before the Europeans invented them. “Native American” is a Eurocentric construct through and through.
(7) Of course, if we do retire the word “America,” we do so at the risk of offending women, for America is a feminine term. That such a move may be racially enlightened in no way precludes it from being “sexist.”
(8) Obviously, if references to Wilson and Calhoun are racially insensitive, then references to George Washington and Thomas Jefferson have got to be blood curdling. Washington and Jefferson, after all, were massive slave owners. If we are to provide a safe space to non-whites, then every site, city, and memorial designed to commemorate these men must be erased.
This, it should go without saying, applies equally as well to all of America’s founders who traded in slaves or otherwise entertained thoughts that fail to satisfy the constraints of contemporary racial orthodoxy.
(9) In connection to this last point, it is imperative that both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution go the way of the names of Wilson and Calhoun.
Consider: How can we expect racial minorities to experience anything but unmitigated suffering knowing that their fellow citizens claim to revere documents that were endorsed by not a single person of color? Worse, these are documents endorsed by slave owners who regarded blacks as inferior to whites!
In the interest of racial sensitivity, the Declaration and Constitution must go.
(10) The American flag, a flag that flew over slavery, segregation, the mistreatment of Native American—I mean “indigenous”—persons, etc. must go.
(11) ”Racism,” “sexism,” and the like are also racially insensitive. This claim will doubtless strike many as patently false, even bizarre. But it’s true all of the same.
“Racism”—meaning (presumably) the mistreatment of an individual on the basis of race or color—is regarded as a moral evil precisely because it is held that the individual’s worth transcends such morally irrelevant characteristics as race or color. However, this notion of the individual—let’s call it individualism—is, well, Eurocentric: The moral doctrine of individualism took flight in and imbued the West before it spread to other lands and peoples with which the West came into contact.
The very word “racism” (and, by implication, “sexism,” “homophobia,” etc.) should go the way of the name of Woodrow Wilson, for it accentuates the dominance of the Eurocentric ideal of individualism.
(12) If Columbus Day is offensive or racially insensitive because it celebrates the European subjugation of the indigenous peoples of what would become the Americas, then other holidays that inescapably call to mind the Europeanization of the Americas must also be erased.
Christmas and Easter remind racial minorities of their oppression by reminding them of the religion—Christianity—of their oppressors. Ditto for Saints Patrick and Valentine Days. Thanksgiving is a reminder of the suffering that indigenous peoples endured as a consequence of Europeans’ discovery of “the New World,” as is Independence Day.
If student-protesters (and leftists generally) were consistent, they would be following this course. But then again, logical consistency as an ideal they will probably dismiss as but another Eurocentric imposition.
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