by Ben Shapiro
Marxism is dying globally. But it’s alive and kicking at America’s universities.
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“NOT JUST FOR THE RICH AND WHITE!”
On March 14, 2001, I stood alone atop Ackerman Student Union and looked down at Westwood Plaza. Three stories below me, a throng of more than one thousand in strength yelled and chanted. Most of the crowd were black, but some students were Hispanic. Even some Asians stood with the protesters. Together, this conglomeration of races barraged the campus with sound. Many wore red shirts reading: ACCESS DENIED. Many had been bused in from high schools around the Los Angeles area. Exhorted to new heights of fanaticism by a few lone figures carrying bullhorns, they screamed the same batch of tired civil-rights slogans over and over. It was race-baiting at its finest.
“EDUCATION IS A RIGHT! NOT JUST FOR THE RICH AND WHITE!” they chanted, ignoring that the majority of those in the UC system are not white, and that there are more Asian Americans than whites on UC campuses.1
“THIS IS WHAT DIVERSITY LOOKS LIKE!” they proclaimed, forgetting that no whites were in the crowd.
“UC REGENTS: WE SEE UC RACISTS!” they shouted, slurring a board that contains more liberals than it does conservatives.
And, to the regents, “YOU WORK FOR US!” not for the people of California.
These militant affirmative action protesters were attempting to change the stated policy of the University of California admissions system, a policy that was set forth in two acts called SP-1 and SP-2. These provided that 50 to 75 percent of all freshmen applicants would be admitted based on grades and SAT scores alone, not on race. And it was this policy that had all the race-baiters in a tizzy.
So the protesters weren’t too happy when they looked up and to the left and saw me holding a large poster board sign that read:
MERIT BEFORE DIVERSITY SAVE SP-1 AND SP-2
At first, only a few of the screamers saw me. These laughed derisively and tapped their friends. Soon, about a third of the thousand were looking up and either yelling at me, staring, or flipping me the bird.
Later, the crowd began marching through campus shouting their stupidity. I knew that they would have to take a certain route through the campus; I cut them off at the pass. I held my sign where every one of them would have to see it. The rally organizers, sensing possible trouble, were forced to station rally organizers around me in order to prevent the protesters from jumping me.
The bottom line of this story is that this kind of violent, emotional, race-based liberalism doesn’t arise in a vacuum. It comes from somewhere. And in the case of the colleges, it’s coming straight from the faculty.
“US/THEM” AND “THE OTHER”
Professors often play a semantic game. They define “racism” as the division between “Us” and “Them,” and the maltreatment of “the Other.” The only way for peace to bloom between people of different cultures and ideologies, they say, is for each person to consider all of humanity “Us.” Using the word “Them” objectifies other people, and separates you from them. It all sounds so deep. Too bad it’s baloney.
“The imposition of social inequalities between ‘Us’ and ‘Them’ is now recognized as racism,”2 says an assigned text for an UCLA biology course. (Translation: If anyone or anything creates inequality between two groups, that’s racist.) This is half-witted. Sometimes it is life itself that imposes social inequalities; is life then racist? If society imposes “social inequalities” between law-abiding citizens (“Us”) and violent criminals (“Them”), are we racist?
Griffith Chaussee, lecturer of Hindi-Urdu at the University of Virginia, criticized “the us/them mentality” many people have when it comes to different cultures: “The modern nation-state concept has become hegemonic, propagating binary thinking.”3 (Translation: States promote “we’re great, everyone else stinks” type thinking.) So what? Binary thinking is good. It keeps America safe. As long as we don’t get too buddy-buddy with “the Other,” “the Other” has a tough time getting close enough to bomb our buildings. The more clear the distinctions drawn between the good and the bad, the better and safer life will be.
Chaim Seidler-Feller is a sociology professor at UCLA, as well as the head of UCLA Hillel. At a Holocaust memorial he compared Nazi treatment of Jews to Jewish treatment of Palestinians, and urged students to “Think about the others, the other, the other . . . The Holocaust happened because people did not think of ‘the other.’”4 Actually, no. The Holocaust happened because the Nazis were evil maniacs intent on killing Jews and because much of Europe let them get away with it. Nazis thought about “the others” and then they murdered them. “The Other” is a foolish, vague abstraction that means nothing when push comes to shove.
This scorn for any Us/Them dichotomy is a favorite semantic game of the Left in general. I once spoke at a public high school about the Arab/Israeli conflict. “As long as they [the Arabs] continue to attack us [Americans and Israelis],” I said, “I believe that we should racially profile Arabs.” One of the students angrily blurted: “Why do you separate ‘Us’ and ‘Them’? Isn’t that racist?” “No,” I replied, “that’s proper grammar.” Unfortunately, the Left has so corrupted ordinary use of the English language that it is almost impossible to avoid some linguistic snake pit.
The “Us/Them” and “the Other” garbage is an excuse for accommoda-tionist philosophy, which believes that in any conflict of ideology, surrender is the best option. A group is behaving badly? Well, we can’t call them “Them,” or “the Other,” so they must be some of “Us”; we must be responsible for their behavior. It’s all our fault. We must change our behavior. If you are unwilling to accept blame, you’re a racist. It’s a nice Catch-22. If some-one does something wrong, it’s your fault. Or be called a racist for driving a wedge between “Us” and “Them.”
WINNERS WRITE HISTORY
History professors across the country believe that teaching world history is too often taught from a “Eurocentric” viewpoint. European history is given more time in the classroom than African history; American history is given more time in the classroom than American Indian history.
Instead of merely accepting the fact that European and American history have had more of an impact on today’s world than American Indian or African history, professors attempt to rectify this imbalance. They teach history from the “African point of view,” or the “Native American point of view.”
Thus, in colleges across the country, history is taught from a “multicultural perspective.” As Dinesh D’Souza described in his book, Illiberal Education, “Most American universities have diluted or displaced their ‘core curriculum’ in the great works of Western civilization to make room for new course requirements stressing non-Western cultures, Afro-American studies, and Women’s Studies. . . . professors who are viewed as champions of minority interests . . . are permitted overtly ideological scholarship, and are immune from criticism even when they make excessive or outlandish claims with racial connotations.”5
At Carnegie-Mellon University, the History Department offers “Gender Roles and Social Change,” a course studying “women’s and men’s roles, behaviors, and beliefs in a variety of societies.” Stanford University offers students History 36N: “Gay Autobiography”—“gender, identity, and solidarity as represented in nine autobiographies.”
New York University students get the chance to enroll in “Race, Gender and Sexuality in US History.” The course description states that “throughout US history, the social, economic, moral, and political arguments advanced to sustain the subordination of people of color, women, and gays and lesbians have frequently revolved around the sphere of sexuality.”
At Oberlin College, the History Department gives students the incredible opportunity to take “Unbearable Whiteness: The Social Construction of a Racial Category.” “Throughout the history of the US,” the course description avers, “people deemed to be ‘white’ have accrued social, legal, and economic privileges at the expense of
others deemed non-white.”6 This sounds like a history class about pre-civil rights America. It isn’t. Texts include Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1990s, How Jews Became White Folks and What That Says About Race in America, and The Possessive Investment in Whiteness: How White People Profit From Identity Politics.7 This class revolves around continuing white oppression of minorities.
Edward Said describes Western views of the Middle East as “ethnocentric” and inherently racist in Orientalism. He writes that the only “unbiased” observers of the Middle East and Orient are Arabs.8
Professor John Esposito echoes Said’s gibberish in his book The Islamic Threat. He describes Americans as “ethnocentric,” especially with respect to the American style of democracy. He also calls for an end to the study of any linkage between Islam and terrorism because it reinforces stereotypes.9 Universities should whitewash Islam, rather than showing it for what it is— because people might “stereotype” Muslims. When feelings clash with facts, facts just have to be changed.
As it turns out, “multicultural history” does little for college students in the way of teaching useful information. A 2001 study showed that of the seniors at the top fifty-five colleges in the country, “only 23 percent could identify James Madison as the Father of the Constitution.” Only “40 percent could identify the correct fifty-year time period in which the Civil War was fought.”10
But at least the seniors aren’t Eurocentric.
THOSE POOR, VICTIMIZED MINORITIES
All minorities are poor. All minorities are undereducated. All minorities are unfit because they have been subjugated and victimized. If you don’t believe me, just ask the professors.
According to one assigned reading, minorities are “the most vulnerable members of the working class,”11 they “suffer because of their class position in society and because of their race,” and their “burdens of class and race continue.”12 This stuff is reminiscent of the old joke about the New York Times: The day before the world ends, the Times runs the headline: “World to End: Women and Minorities Hit Hardest.”
On campus, the same civil rights struggle that began long ago continues today. An assigned book for a political science course entitled “Introduction to American Politics”states: “African Americans have been engaged in a two-hundred-year struggle for civil rights.”13 Uh-huh. So we’re supposed to believe that no gains have been made in the civil rights struggle? That the civil rights of African Americans haven’t been guaranteed by the government of the United States? Heck, the civil rights people have done such a good job that anyone who even criticizes minority communities can expect a mailbox full of letters calling him racist.
The same text later states, “African Americans, along with numerous other minority groups . . . share a history of discrimination first-hand. Whites tend to think that legal equality has now been achieved and that any special effort to overcome the effects of past discrimination is unfair to whites.”14 (Translation: While minorities have well-informed views of the world because they have seen discrimination “first-hand,” whites think that no discrimination exists.) Okay, wait a second here. First off, to assume that the white community is monolithic is as racist as to say that all black people support Jesse Jackson. Second, this statement implies that if you are white, you have never experienced discrimination. In short, it is promoting a lie.
Blaming the problems in some minority communities on the white majority, UC Irvine professor Diego Vigil said that “young, second generation immigrants. . . . are marginalized on many levels and thus drawn to street life.”15 Most of the people in America are the descendants of immigrants to America, yet somehow they have been able to rise to the top. Why is it that only this generation of immigrants is being oppressed and “marginalized”?
Professor Noel Ignatiev of Harvard University identifies himself as an “abolitionist” seeking to abolish “whiteness.” “White people must commit suicide as whites in order to . . . change from the miserable, petulant, subordinated creatures they are now into freely associated, fully developed human subjects,” Ignatiev told a crowd at the University of California-Berkeley. “By attacking whiteness, the abolitionists seek to undermine the main pillar of capitalist rule in this country.” Ignatiev also attacked the police force, which he feels is a tool of the racist state: “The cops look at a person and then decide on the basis of color whether that person is loyal to the system they are sworn to serve and protect. They don’t stop to think if the black person whose head they are whipping is an enemy; they assume it.”16 According to Ignatiev, “every group within white America has at one time or another advanced its particular and narrowly defined interests at the expense of black people as a race.” For those who know Ignatiev’s record, this should come as no surprise. Ignatiev is the founder of the magazine Race Traitor. The first issue of the magazine bore the slogan “Treason to whiteness is loyalty to humanity.”17
In 1993, Nation of Islam spokesperson Khalid Abdul Muhammad spoke at Kean College in New Jersey. In his babbling, hate-filled diatribe, Muhammad portrayed the black community as a victim of “the Jewish conspiracy.” “You see everybody always talk about Hitler exterminating six million Jews. That’s right. But don’t nobody ever ask what did they do to Hitler?” He then turned to South Africa, where as reparations for apartheid he advocated giving the white man “twenty-four hours to get out of town, by sundown. That’s all. If he won’t get out of town by sundown, we kill everything white that ain’t right in South Africa. We kill the women, we kill the children, we kill the babies. We kill the blind, we kill the crippled, we kill ‘em all. We kill the faggot, we kill the lesbian, we kill them all.”18
According to Professor Vernellia R. Randall of the University of Dayton School of Law, “because of institutional racism, minorities have less education and fewer educational opportunities.”19 It’s actually rather pathetic. Because professors are running out of real racists in positions of power to criticize, they blame everything on some institutional racism. And the great thing for them is, it’s impossible for anyone to debunk institutional racism. How can race-baiters lose?
Professor Wallace Sherwood of Northeastern University parrots the “if you’re white, you’re a racist” line: “There are a lot of white people who genuinely don’t believe that black people are as intelligent as they are. . . . In discussions, they tune out. Comments don’t register in their minds unless they come from a white person.”20 Professor Sherwood is black, so I can’t comment on his statement—I already tuned out.
RODNEY KING AND THE LOS ANGELES “UPRISING”
No event better illustrates the racial issue on campus than the professorial reaction to the events surrounding Rodney King. Professors sympathize fully with him, they condemn the police, and they use these events to promote their own causes. Here is moral relativism at its finest.
Jorja Prover, a professor of social welfare at UCLA, was teaching at USC when the Rodney King trial took place. During a lecture on violence in Los Angeles, a student rushed into her classroom to announce that the officers on trial in the beating had been acquitted. “I was basically fighting back the tears,” Prover said.21 Terrific. She “fights back the tears” when cops are acquitted for beating a large, drugged-up and resistant thug, because of the feeling that the black community was once again being oppressed. Does Professor Prover cry for the police officers murdered by such thugs every year?
The reaction of a law professor at the University of Georgia was this: “What happened to Rodney King was no fluke; it was not an isolated incident involving rogue cops. Beatings and other forms of police brutality, though carefully and cleverly concealed from the public, have always been, and continue to be, standard police behavior throughout this nation.”22 The police must be pretty clever to find ways to beat up all black criminals without anyone seeing. Perhaps they have magical invisibility shields.
Sympathy for Rodney King is at least a bit justified; one could argue the police
overreacted to King. What is not justified is embracing the so-called “Los Angeles Uprising” as a legitimate protest to racism. (Professors, like many on the Left, call the Los Angeles Riot an “uprising” in an attempt to legitimize it.) Professor Jody Armour of USC stated that “racial discrimination, especially against young African American and Latino men, continues to corrupt the criminal justice system and could prompt a similar uprising in the future. ‘We are still living in a tinder box,’ he said.”23 When in doubt, blame all horrific behavior from any minority group on the problem of racism.
Professor Edward Chang of the University of California at Riverside predicted: “We are not confronting the cause of the problem [that led to the riot], so there will be another riot.” What were the causes of the 1992 riot and what will be the causes of future riots? “Poverty and a growing gap between the ‘haves’ and ‘have nots,’ pervasive racial discrimination and segregation, lack of employment and educational opportunities for minorities and widespread police abuse.”24 In short: racism causes everything bad. Not single motherhood, or high crime rates, or lack of work ethic. Minorities are being kept down by the oppressive hand of the white man.
Professor Kyeyoung Park of UCLA is more opportunistic than her blustery colleagues, using the “uprising” as an excuse to tout “diversity requirements”—classes designed to “enhance multicultural sensitivity.” These useless courses which students would never take voluntarily serve only to keep superfluous professors employed. But Park really believes these requirements help with explosive racial tensions: “We don’t provide the mechanisms for people to learn about other groups,” she explained, as if diversity class kumbaya would stop looters from burning down L.A.25
