by Ben Shapiro
“Rodney King was about police abuse, O.J. was about police incompetence . . . That’s a pretty grim picture for the LAPD,” stated Laurie Levenson, a Loyola University Law School professor.26 It’s creative the way Professor Levenson equates the Rodney King incident with the O.J. trial— creative and disgusting. Rodney King was about the police using excessive force in subduing a criminal; O.J was about a brutal murderer slaughtering his ex-wife and her friend.
Only at university is a riot an “uprising,” a police officer a thug, and a criminal a hero.
“YOU CAIN’T TELL ME I DON’T BE SPEAKIN’ GOOD ENGLISH!”
Those with a leftist mindset assault the English language. I don’t mean that they redefine words for their own purposes, although that is also a serious problem. I mean that university professors assault the actual grammar of English. They do this in order to equate improper use of English and proper use, thereby allowing those who speak improper English to advance in the system. They pretend that speaking English incorrectly is still okay; they push for bilingual education to preserve the “diversity of language.”
I took a linguistics course at UCLA during Spring 2001, entitled “Introduction to the Study of Language.” The first activity assigned to the class was a pre-test. A portion of the pre-test was a series of true/false statements. One read, “We should say ‘It’s I’ rather than ‘It’s me.’”27 Being the diligent student of English that I am, I naturally responded true. Wrong. The answer was false: We can say “It’s me” just as well as “It’s I.” I was stunned. Grammar clearly requires that we say “It’s I,” and yet here the students were being told it is just as correct to say “It’s me.” Incredible.
Professors equate bastardized forms of English, mainly Ebonics, with grammatical English. In fact, it was Professor Robert Williams of Washington University who created the term “Ebonics” in 1973. Williams believes that “Teachers must recognize Ebonics as a language and not devalue it. . . .When children are criticized on the way they talk, their self esteem is hurt.”28 If teachers actually taught with the goal of boosting self-esteem, most adults would still be illiterate.
Says Professor Ernie Smith, formerly of Cal State Fullerton: “If Ebonics is not a language, then neither is English.”29 Professor Mikelle Omari of the University of Arizona concurs: “It is now time to work together to remove the social stigma associated with Ebonics.”30 Black English: Separate, but equal.
Dr. Ronald Bailey of Northeastern University went even further, claiming that Ebonics is “the African American version of the Boston Tea Party”—he believes that black youths who speak Ebonics do so to resist the white oppressors.31 Professor Geneva Gay of the University of Washington feels similarly, explaining that “Taking [Ebonics] away would destroy African-American culture.” According to Gay, the only reason that anyone would oppose Ebonics is racism.32
Bilingual education, states Professor Richard Ruiz of the University of Arizona, allows people to maintain “a sense of their ethnic identity, who they are, and of their community, while at the same time, pledging an allegiance to the United States.” Professor Ruiz opposes any ballot proposition aimed at preventing bilingual education. Such measures “[tie] the hands of the people who are trying their best to teach children through bilingual education.”33
A guest lecturer, Professor Pamela Munro, came to speak to my linguistics class. During the course of the lecture, she casually said, “What can be done to save our vanishing linguistic heritage? Discourage discrimination against bilinguals or people who speak minority languages.”34 (Translation: Force companies and businesses to hire people who speak “minority languages.”) How about, instead, teaching people English? What a concept.
SLAVERY REPARATIONS
Professors are tickled pink when it comes to slavery reparations. Some 40 percent of professors would love to see reparations become a reality, as opposed to a mere 11 percent of the general public.35 Since big government is the solution to every problem, the solution for the troubled black community must come in the form of cash garnered from tax dollars.
First, they rev up the pity machine to justify slavery reparations. An assigned history text reads: “Because slaves made up the overwhelming majority of the labor force that made the plantation colonies so profitable, it is fair to say that Africans built the South.”36 To emphasize this point, the text stresses: “Although African Americans received nothing in return, their labor helped build the greatest accumulation of capital that Europe had ever seen.”37 You can see where this is going. If the slaves received “nothing in return,” the obvious solution is to give their descendants something—except, of course, both the oppressors and oppressed are long dead and the descendants of the former owe nothing to the descendants of the latter.
But professors continue to use this history of “subordination” to justify demands for slavery reparations—even when those reparations will be paid by people who had nothing to do with slavery and will be paid to blacks who are not affected by slavery.
Chris Ogletree, a Harvard Law professor, said there is a “blistering racial divide” in the United States because insufficient discussion of racial issues has taken place, one that could only be solved by slavery reparations. “We are not just taking action against the government, but also institutions and individuals who directly profited from slavery.”38 Just to let Mr. Ogletree know, everyone who directly profited from slavery is dead.
Professor Richard Lobban of Rhode Island College agrees. He said to a crowd of students at Brown University that “we need to have a sense of national apology.” He continued, saying that slavery went on for longer and killed more people than the Holocaust, and its victims are just as deserving of compensation.39 Lies. There is no way that slavery in the United States caused more than thirteen million deaths, the number of people murdered in the Holocaust (counting Jews, other “non-Aryans,” and Christians).
And don’t dare to challenge the leftist view of slavery reparations. Just ask David Horowitz. Horowitz attempted to run an ad entitled “Ten Reasons Why Reparations for Slavery is a Bad Idea and Racist Too.” It was originally accepted by the UC Berkeley Daily Californian. The next morning, papers were stolen and burned by students to prevent the ad from having any impact. Later, the editor of the Californian ran an apology for the ad.
Professor Lewis Gordon of Brown University characterized the ad as “both hate speech and a solicitation for financial support to develop anti-black ad space” and believed that it would “embolden white supremacists and anti-black racists.”40 Horowitz is hardly a white supremacist—he’s Jewish. And rather than combating the actual ideas Horowitz espoused, Gordon chose to slander the ad as “hate speech.”
Professor Ernest Allen Jr. of the University of Massachusetts also slandered the ad as “a racist polemic against African Americans and Africans that is neither responsible nor informed.”41 When you can’t combat the argument, call it racist—works every time. Professor Allen, as well as Women’s Studies Professor Arlene Avakian, also picketed a Horowitz speech at the University of Massachusetts.42 Don’t these people have to prepare for classes?
When Horowitz spoke at Arizona State University in Spring 2001, he was counterbalanced by no less than three professors from the university, as well as a “moderator”—another professor. Professor James Weinstein (Law) emphasized the importance of free speech just as Horowitz did, saying “If it guaranteed Horowitz the right to make obnoxious and patently wrong assertions, it also gave [the opposing professors] the right to protest vigorously against his views.” Professor Joseph Graves (Biology) accused Horowitz of being “blatantly racist.” Professor T.J. Davis (History and Law) essayed that Horowitz and his arguments “flew in the face of three decades of authoritative scholarship on the subject of slavery.” According to the moderator, Dr. Michael Mitchell (Political Science and African American Studies), Horowitz was “contentious and closed to any truly civil dialogue.”43 Of course, being stuck on stage with four
professors to fight off would never make anyone testy. It’s fair and balanced—just like CNN.
“IT’S NOT YOUR FAULT”
Failing to gain admission into a school is never a minority’s fault. It’s all the fault of some institutional racism or biased testing procedure. Just ask Paul Ehrlich. “[I]s Pedro loaded with smart genes but deprived of an opportunity to develop his potential and held back by a meaningless score on a biased test?” he asks rhetorically.44 Of course, yes. Never let it enter your mind that Pedro isn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer. Even though there are plenty of dumb Jacks and Jills, to acknowledge such a thought about Pedro would be racist.
Calling the SAT a biased test is the latest excuse for allowing less qualified students to get into schools on more than just merit. Richard Atkinson, the former UC president, advocated omitting the SAT I from the UC admissions process as part of “a series of steps aimed to increase the accessibility of the university to students from different backgrounds.”45 Said Atkinson, “This proposal is about fairness in educational decision making.”46 Atkinson claims that the test is biased. Because of Atkinson’s pressure, the SAT I banned word analogies and added an essay section in an attempt to appease the UC.47
How are word analogies biased? I don’t get it. For example, the following question will no longer be allowed on the SAT I:
DETECTIVE is to CLUES as
(A) student : school
(B) deer : trail
(C) bloodhound : scent
(D) merchant : receipt
(E) sleuth : mystery48
This is biased? If you’re black, do you see this question differently than if you’re white? (The answer for both blacks and whites is C.)
But apparently more than just word analogies are tilted against minorities. Here are some examples of phrases or ideas deleted from standardized texts to avoid “bias”: references to marital status, grandmothers in rocking chairs, men as doctors and women as nurses, teen-aged rebellion, and hamburgers, birthday cake, and soda. In their places are: one-parent homes, one-child families, grandmothers jogging, gender-neutral occupations, obedient kids and fruit juice and vegetables.49 What a strange world we live in.
SPECIAL TREATMENT
In California, affirmative action is banned by Proposition 209, which prohibits the use of race or gender preferences in state hiring or admissions. That referendum passed easily, with 54 percent of the public vote. However, that doesn’t stop the universities from attempting to “increase diversity” in different ways.
UCLA education Professor James Catterall called for new measures to put those of different races into the UC system. He “proposed admitting students on criteria other than just academics to ensure classrooms where students excel in different areas.”50 In short, ignore grades and SATs so that we can ensure access to those who are great at finger-painting.
UCLA took Professor Catterall’s suggestion to heart. The new admissions policy takes into account “life challenges.” Of course, the admissions boards who read the “life challenges” will grant more credit to those of minority races (excluding Asians). A front-page Wall Street Journal article detailed this policy: “Starting this spring, all applicants were weighed under a process known as comprehensive review, which awards extra credit for surmounting a wide range of personal, family, or psychological obstacles— what UCLA calls life challenges.” The article also contrasted the cases of Stanley Park, a Korean, and Blanca Martinez, a Latino. Park and Martinez had virtually identical “life challenges,” and Park scored a 1500 out of 1600 on his SATs, 390 points higher than Ms. Martinez. Strangely, Park was not admitted to UC Berkeley or UCLA, while Martinez was admitted to both.51 It’s not that hard to figure this one out. If you’re black or Hispanic, you’re in. If you’re white, Asian, or Jewish, you’re out. It’s as simple as that.
When the race-based admissions policy of the University of Michigan Law School was challenged in court, the courts upheld the policy. Professor Gary Orfield of Harvard applauded the decision, stating: “We must compliment the leaders and scholars from the University of Michigan for providing a very vigorous and intellectually rich defense of their affirmative action policies.” Harvard President Lawrence Summers concurred: “I applaud the Sixth Circuit opinion that supports Harvard’s [and Michigan’s] approach to admissions that race may properly be considered as one among many factors in a well designed and competitive admissions process. This is welcome news.”52 Perhaps this is welcome news to Summers, but it sure isn’t to qualified students sure to be rejected in favor of unqualified minorities.
The UC faculty generally opposed UC Regent Ward Connerly’s “Racial Privacy Initiative.” RPI would bar the state from seeking or keeping records of race-based data. This would, of course, have had enormous ramifications for college applicants, who would not have to state their race. It would also have ended questions about “non-proportional representation” in schools.
Fellow UC Regent William Bagley inanely asserted, “The banning of the [ethnic check] boxes would be counterproductive and deleterious to our effort to recruit qualified minorities.”53 Yeah, right. Qualified minorities won’t apply because the application doesn’t ask their race? If that drives them away, they’re frankly too stupid to get in anyway.
Chicano studies Professor Paule Takash self-righteously stated, “You do not achieve a color-blind society by hiding the problem or by not addressing it.”54 Apparently according to Takash, the solution must be to continue thrusting race in everyone’s face and calling everything discriminatory.
The final result of “diversity goals” in admissions: underqualified candidates make it into some of the most highly regarded schools in the country. The Fall 2002 admittees at UCLA included seven students with SAT scores between 700 and 800 (you get 400 points just for writing your name on the answer sheet), 106 students with scores between 800 and 900, 412 students with scores between 900 and 1000, 762 students with scores between 1000-1100, and 982 with scores between 1100 and 1200. Meanwhile, 191 students with SAT scores between 1500 and 1600 were rejected from UCLA, as were 1455 students with scores between 1400 and 1500, 4667 students with scores between 1300 and 1400, and 7609 with scores between 1200 and 1300. Simply put, lower scoring students got slots that should have gone to the people with better credentials.55 The story was the same at UC Berkeley, where the Fall 2002 admittees included 381 students with SAT scores between 600 and 1000. Meanwhile, 641 students with near perfect scores on the SAT were rejected.56
The universities push affirmative action, “life challenges,” and racial classifications in order to admit minorities—not because they’re smarter than their white or Asian counterparts, but solely because they’re minorities. In so doing, they look for ways to admit underqualified students in place of qualified ones. Why not instead push for better achievement from minority students? Isn’t it racist to imply that minorities can’t live up to the challenge?
“THAT’S OFFENSIVE!”
In recent years, universities have become so sensitive to “insensitivity” that many have instituted speech codes prohibiting students from speaking about certain topics. Best-selling author and commentator David Limbaugh reports that “as many as 90 percent of American universities have adopted such codes in one form or another.”57 Since everything offends someone, universities may soon resemble silent monasteries.
At Bucknell University, students are barred from “bias-related behavior,” defined as “any action that discriminates against, ridicules, humiliates, or otherwise creates a hostile environment for another individual or group because of race, religion, ethnic identity, sexual orientation, gender, language, or beliefs.”58 That just about covers everything, doesn’t it? By this definition, Mr. Rogers is as offensive as Al Sharpton.
Meanwhile, at Shippensburg University, students must “mirror” university policy regarding “racial tolerance, cultural diversity and social justice.” Social justice? So if you oppose minimum wage, you’re committing a hate
crime? The code continues: students must not “provoke, harass, intimidate, or harm another.”59 Provocation is not clearly defined. Somehow I doubt that railing against Bush would be considered provocation. For some reason I think that railing against Clinton could be.
Tufts University bans “demeaning or derogatory slurs, name-calling and using words or negative images associated with a group on signs to create a publicly hostile environment.” Tufts goes on to ban students from “attributing objections to any of the above to the ‘hypersensitivity’ of others who feel hurt.”60 This last clause is amazing. If my shoes offend you, you can cry about it, but if I say that you’re a crybaby, I can be punished by the university administration.
Hendrix University students are expected not to participate in “conduct which leads to embarrassment, physical harm, or indignities to other persons.”61 Don’t go pointing out that someone’s socks don’t match. If you live in the dorms at UCLA, don’t make “derogatory remarks about one’s clothing, body, or sexual activities based on gender” or “disparaging remarks, jokes, and teasing based on gender”—that might be “sexual harassment.”62 Sexual harassment at the University of Missouri-Rolla extends further than UCLA’s policies: even “ogling and inappropriate staring” can be considered sexual harassment.63
Harvard students are required to refrain from “Behavior evidently intended to dishonor such characteristics as race, gender, ethnic group, religious belief, or sexual orientation”; such behavior “is contrary to the pursuit of inquiry and education.”64 Similarly, at Colby College, “Harassment, which can run the gamut from verbal abuse to physical assault, directly conflicts with a commitment to human dignity and will not be tolerated.”65
