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Thursday, December 21, 2006

Racism and "Power"

I recently received a response to one of my posts by a graduate student in something called “African American and African Studies” – in other words the person is getting a degree in racism. He claims that
“In order to be a racist, one has to have a certain amount of power. In this society, Black people in this country do not possess the institutional power to be racists. They never have.”
Interesting re-definition of racism. Professors of “African American and African Studies” can pronounce the following without a hiccup in their synapses:

"I absolve you, my child, of the sin of racism which can only be practiced by people who are melanin challenged. No matter what you do and who you do it to, your actions can never be racist."


This kind of non-thinking leads to graduate degrees at Michigan State – and, I am sure at most of our hallowed institutions of higher learning, like Vanderbilt and Duke.
I wonder who has the power in the following little vignette:

On Halloween night, in an upscale neighborhood of Long Beach called Bixby Knolls, three young white women were surrounded and severely beaten by about 30 black youths, who allegedly punctuated their assault with comments like “We hate white people, f— whites.” One of the victims suffered multiple facial fractures; reportedly she was struck with a skateboard. Ten black kids, ages 12 to 17, are currently on trial for felony assault. Eight of them are charged with a hate-crime enhancement. Nine of them are girls.


Read more at Patterico.

1 comment:

Undercover Black Man said...

The "Blacks don't have the power to be racist" quasi-argument has been floating around for years. A few nights ago, Michael Eric Dyson, a respected academician, trotted it out during a CNN roundtable discussion of race in America.

Funny thing is, this power-based definition of racism would mean that an Afrikaner in South Africa cannot be a racist. Black people in South Africa now run the government; Boers as a class have no instutional power. Therefore, only black South Africans can be racists!