Vik Bahl (courtesy linkedin.com)

How Should Community Colleges Respond to Charleston?

Vik Bahl
June 21, 2015

Our hearts are broken. How can words possibly respond to the ongoing butchering of precious Black lives? The heartless and horrific terrorism visited upon our brothers and sisters at the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina by a white supremacist invoked the historical rhetoric of lynching and the global signifiers of European imperialism. Dylann Roof is part of a movement and culture that is an integral part of the fabric not just of America’s past but also its present. Roof’s ideology and stated justifications reflect a virulent mix of white entitlement and resentment, male sexual anxiety, and the willingness to use obscene violence in response to Obama’s presidency and the demands for dignity and justice put forth by the profound “#Black Lives Matter” grassroots social movement . . .

Institutional Racism: It is too easy to believe that racism is simply a matter of individual psychology, thereby allowing us to distance ourselves from the extreme and obvious racism of a figure like Roof while being blind to the operations and effects of structural institutional racism. The imbrication of Roof’s values and feelings into the social, political, economic, and cultural fabric of the United States is evidenced most directly by mass incarceration, the criminalization of Black youth, and pathological policing, but also by stark disparities in income, wealth, housing, employment, health, and educational access.

Rather than seeking comfort and absolution by regarding ourselves as utterly outside Roof’s racist universe, let us instead take seriously our own complicity in his violence by recognizing that his sense of entitlement, his anxieties and frustrations, and his sense of the diminished humanity of Black people are an essential part of American culture and its institutions.

Community College Mandate: What conversations and actions are necessary at Green River College in Auburn, which is where I teach, and at the other 33 community and technical colleges in Washington state, in order to respond meaningfully to Charleston? I pose the question in this way to draw attention to ourselves as an institution and to insist that we have unique obligations as a specific sector, namely, public higher education.

Higher education is the most important pathway to financial and professional advancement, which also makes it a crucial driver of economic development and community regeneration. For fifty-plus years in WA and elsewhere, community colleges, far more than public or private four-year universities, have offered open access to higher education, especially for those students who are the most marginalized and disadvantaged. The 34 WA community and technical colleges educate approximately 400,000 students a year!

Racial Justice and Racial Equity: What must WA community colleges do in order to acknowledge, reject, and move beyond institutional racism? We must be prepared to address the role that community colleges, and other educational institutions, play in reproducing the racist practices, structures, and ideologies that are integral to American society. As publicly funded institutions of higher education with a compelling social contract to serve our communities, community colleges can contribute to transforming society by joining the honorable fight for racial justice and racial equity. Let us begin by addressing these questions:

· As institutions of public higher education, what are the mechanisms of our accountability to Black families and communities?

· How can community colleges provide more equitable access and success for Black students?

· How much money and political will is the system willing to devote to substantial and widespread anti-racist training and equitable hiring practices and equitable professional advancement?

· How can community college faculty develop and enact anti-racist pedagogy and curriculum that gives students, the next generation of civic actors, the tools necessary to dismantle institutionalized white supremacy?

· Are community colleges willing to prioritize the hiring of faculty in all relevant disciplines with expertise in Black Studies and deep experience in Black communities? Relevant disciplines for such hiring include Criminal Justice, History, English, Sociology, Fine Arts, Political Science, Education, among others.

· Are we prepared to ask that SOME new faculty hires in all disciplines, including Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM), demonstrate an understanding of the historical exclusions and current racial disparities within their fields, along with strategies and best practices for improved access, success, and equity?

· Are we ready to insist that SOME of our administrators and staff have demonstrated expertise in understanding and redressing the violence against Black people?

· How can community colleges honor and empower the voices of Black students in this work, especially through the network of Black Student Unions (BSUs)?

Governing for Racial Equity: How many Black people have to be gunned down before community colleges say: “We cannot continue business as usual. We cannot just begin classes on Monday as though nothing happened.” The State Board for Community and Technical Colleges (SBCTC) provides oversight and support for the 34 community and technical colleges, including distributing tens of millions of dollars from the WA State Legislature to each college. Each college has a president, and each college has a five-member board of trustees appointed by the Governor’s office.

Where is the leadership at each of these levels—SBCTC, college presidents, boards of trustees—that acknowledges that responding to Charleston and racist police violence is also the responsibility of community colleges? Let us ask the leadership of WA’s community and technical colleges to adopt something like other public sectors have done, including the City of Seattle’s Race & Social Justice Initiative (RSJI) and King County’s Equity & Social Justice framework.

Certainly, let each of us examine our hearts, minds, and families for racial fears, privileges, anxieties, projections, hatreds, desires, antagonisms, and fantasies. This is not a small exercise and would undoubtedly be a worthy effort. But as institutions of public higher education, let us examine the distribution of power, authority, money, resources, and jobs, which is where institutional racism and institutional white supremacy must be diagnosed and addressed.

Let us not hold vigils at our colleges. Let us not be consumed by grief and sympathy. Let us act.

Vik Bahl, Ph.D., has taught in the English Division at Green River College in Auburn, WA since 1998. He is co-chair of the Green River Diversity & Equity Council (GDEC); and co-founder of Diversity & Equity in Hiring & Professional Development (DEHPD), a cross-college network to address the low numbers of faculty, administrators, and staff of color and other underrepresented groups in WA’s 34 community and technical colleges.

63 COMMENTS

    • yep Elitist blaming whites no matter how much good we do, some how we are the problem and all racist?

      this POS should never be allowed to teach another soul Ever!

    • Leave it to Prager to spotlight the contradictions of the Left that the MFM is blind to….

      http://www.nationalreview.com/article/420164/forgiving-dylann-roof-wrong-dennis-prager


      Regarding whites, blacks, and crimes, we seem to inhabit a strange moral universe.

      Great numbers of black Americans seem to be unable or unwilling to forgive America — specifically white Americans — for sins committed by whites who are long dead. But many seem to support the forgiveness of a white man who murdered nine blacks last week.

      The families of the murdered blacks speak eloquently and movingly about preferring forgiveness to feeling anger and hate toward a man who murdered their loved ones just days ago. But millions of blacks seem to prefer feeling anger and hate toward a vast number of their fellow Americans who have never wronged them or any other black American. Indeed, most American whites don’t even have ancestors who ever wronged blacks.

      The truth is that the vast majority of white Americans are not racist.

      This is demonstrated by the lengths to which those who contend that white Americans are racist must go to “prove” their case. For example, they fabricate the falsehood that civil-service and SAT tests are anti-black because whites do better on those exams. Yet, first-generation Asian Americans also do better than blacks. And how can a math question be racially biased? And as regards non-math questions, the public is almost never shown what questions are racially biased — lest the charge of “racist” questions be revealed as absurd.

  1. What missing?

    Hmm. Well, the Black Student Union asking for/getting support from the White Student Union?

    Oh wait…there ISN’T a White Student Union? Why not?

  2. When you look up “abject failure” in the dictionary…

    Seriously, to call this man delusional would be the understatement of eternity. Shame on you, sir.

  3. This liberal bullshit. We always hear, “it’s time to talk about race,” or “we need to look at racism,” No. Actually, what we need to do is shut the f**k up about race, because race isn’t scientifically real. Let me say that again. Race isn’t real, so we should stop acknowledging its existence. Funny how quick liberals forget science when it contradicts policy.

  4. ummm–what does this bucket of bilge have to do with guns? Or have I stumbled upon the “what’s missing?” answer??

  5. WTF….I think the Huffington Post just came a little…I wonder how much money he has taken from the evil white devil… or how about you STFU and carry….sheep

  6. re community colleges willing to prioritize the hiring of faculty in all relevant disciplines with expertise in Black Studies and deep experience in Black communities?

    I hear there’s a Black studies professor from Washington in need of a job.

  7. Why can’t we all just be human? I don’t give a shit what someone’s skin color is. I want to be judged on my character, in the same way I judge people I meet….

    • I agree. What you say and do to others determines more than color ever will. I’m white. I live in a predominately black area. Know what I’ve seen? Most of them are good people just carrying on with their lives. And they give me the same courtesy they would give anyone else.

    • I am sick to death of hearing progressives talk about moving our country past the race issue, by making race the central issue in every single discussion. As in this case, getting rid of institutional racism by institutionalizing racism. How does that work, exactly? (rhetorical, of course)

      • Right. The gummint made it illegal to ask someone their race, unless the asker is the gummint, in which case it’s illegal not to answer.

        • Illegal? Really? I guess I never refused to answer, all I did was answer for years that I was “native American”, since I was born in SC. What you think, I’m a native Canadian? That answer eventually ceased to be an option, probably since a lot of people were answering that way.

    • That’s exactly what I do. I’ve been fortunate to work in a technology industry that is as culturally diverse as Star Trek. I got along fine with just about everybody. Took quite a few people shooting or to gun shows, too.

      Prejudice is just like global thermonuclear war from Wargames–the only way to win is not to play.

    • As Prager mentions often…..

      “There are only two races — the decent and the indecent.”
      Viktor Frankl, author……Man’s Search for Meaning

  8. “Where is the leadership at each of these levels—SBCTC, college presidents, boards of trustees—that acknowledges that responding to Charleston and racist police violence is also the responsibility of community colleges?”

    In social psychology this is called “frame alignment”. For the purposes of serving a political agenda, two disparate issues, the actions of a socially isolated, deranged spree-killer and the actions of dysfunctional, incompetent police, are conflated to give the impression that the circumstances of the two are somehow interrelated. This guy is spouting errant twaddle, of course. Fortunately, nobody’s going to pay much attention to him.

  9. “male sexual anxiety”

    I’m assuming this is in reference to the shooter’s comment about black men raping white woman. It seems the shooter had been exposed, via the Council of Conservative Citizen’s website, to the US Bureau of Justice Statistics data on interracial rape.

    From the National Victimization Crime Survey:

    Year 2003 – Rape/Sexual Assault

    White on Black:0
    Black on White: 20,309

    Year 2004 – Rape/Sexual Assault

    White on Black: 0
    Black on White: 11,610

    Year 2005 – Rape/Sexual Assault

    White on Black : 0
    Black on White: 37,460

    Year 2006 – Rape/Sexual Assault

    White on Black: 0
    Black on White: 32,443

    Year 2007 – Rape/Sexual Assault

    White on Black: 0
    Black on White: 14,092

    Year 2008 – Rape/Sexual Assault

    White on Black: 0
    Black on White: 19,292

    The percentage of multi-offender sexual assaults, (gang rape) in which the perpetrators are all black, is 64% in 2006, 67% in 2007, 52% in 2008.

    About the data:

    – The victims are male and female victims combined
    – The total number is an estimate based on extrapolation from the sample group of 60,000-70,000 households, not an actual number of victims
    -Zero does not mean there were literally zero victims for that year, just zero in the sample and therefore a statistical zero for the result.

    The FBI stopped publishing these statistics broken down by race in 2008.

    The mainstream media’s steadfast refusal to touch on this issue, or the similarly disproportionate statistics on interracial murder and assault, is a likely contributor to the probability that other mentally-unstable people will commit atrocities like this is the future. When the media and government say nothing about a particular crime problem, many people feel like they have no voice or representation in society, and some at the fringe will feel compelled to act out on their own. Some may react with horrific acts of violence, as in this case.

    To reduce the chances of future tragedies like this, American does need to have a realistic conversation about race, but it’s not the one Vik Bahl would like to have.

    • “The mainstream media’s steadfast refusal to touch on this issue, or the similarly disproportionate statistics on interracial murder and assault, is a likely contributor to the probability that other mentally-unstable people will commit atrocities like this is the future. When the media and government say nothing about a particular crime problem, many people feel like they have no voice or representation in society, and some at the fringe will feel compelled to act out on their own. Some may react with horrific acts of violence, as in this case.”

      Almost every other person in comments sections and on social media who I have seen bring this up in the last few days has brought these stats up to imply in some way that blacks are either savages or inferior to whites You sir, however, hit the nail on the head.

  10. One must justify their position in their clique….ALL LIVES MATTER…..like the pontus, he is narcissistic!

  11. Are we prepared to ask that SOME new faculty hires in all disciplines, including Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM), demonstrate an understanding of the historical exclusions and current racial disparities within their fields, along with strategies and best practices for improved access, success, and equity?
    Not necessary.
    Most of the time there are no black students in the above fields of study. My daughter stated there were only asians and caucasians in engineering at her college. Most of the black students were in black studies. Sorry, just the way things are.

  12. I think this is part of what it means for me to apologize for being a white man. I don’t deny that we need to continue to help disadvantaged people, but the fact is, we spend a lot of money on it! I don’t mind but I see no reason get loopy about it. After all, there is only so much that can be done. If a kid doesn’t want to learn but instead spends his shooting at kids on the next block, he likely won’t encounter much opportunity. I think people like this self-flagelator expect too much, too fast. We can’t force people to change.

  13. How about the punk that’s bug-house nuts?

    This ivory tower professor can hold hands, sing “kumbaya” and talk about white guilt. However, everybody in the group will likely be liberal, “feel” horrible about racism and would never, ever discriminate.

    As for the basement dweller, he’s not going to crawl out of his parents house and join in.

  14. If he had a gun, he would blow his own brains out do to self loathing. Weird, libtard, commie.

  15. A complete crock of crap. Welfaristic entitlement demands to working people’s tax money by the non-working, (which is heavily majority black sorry to say) is the root cause of current racial animosity. Really end welfare as we know it and a lot of racism would end with it.

    • Most days I agree with a lot of the commenters. One days where there are articles about race, many of the commenters prove to not understand the problems currently going on in America. As a black man that has a successful career in engineering, I am not part of the “heavily black welfare system”. Paul is wrong. Black people are not the most common users of welfare. His quote represents part of the problem though. So many have internal prejudices that have been trained or engrained in them that are highly inaccurate. It is hard for people that are not oppressed to understand what the oppressed are experiencing.

      Many of you will never open your eyes to see the problems with race relations in this country. The church shooting, the murders are on one man. But the thinking and hatred is not isolated.

      This site is about the truth about guns. I thought this community would open its mind to facts based on data rather than anecdotal “evidence”. I thought this community might open their mind to “the truth about race” in our country. Many of you just don’t get it.

      • Man, I think you are right that most people don’t understand racism. I sure don’t. That is becuase I am not a racist and I don’t see any racism in my daily life. If most people don’t see racism is that becuase we are blind or becuase it is not common? I, like many people who beleive in the individual right to self defense, have a general belief that the best life available is one of self-reliance. We have a problem with people who want to get something for nothing and who are unwilling or unable to take care of thier own, regardless of skin color. It seems to me that the racial diviciveness that we do have in this country is exacerbated by those who use claims of racism to advance themselves (Obama) or for profit (Sharpeton, Jackson). I think that it is sad and unacceptable that we seem far from the ideal that Martin Luther King Jr. envisioned of a man being judged soley by the content of his character.

      • I agree with you. My problem with Mr. Bahl’s rant is that he want’s to fix the problem at the community college level. That is way too late in the educational system to be offering new motivation for education. Society needs to provide quality pre-school and educational programs for kids under 10 years of age. That is before they get involved with gangs, sex, drugs and start associating with the neighborhood hoodlums. That is also the age where the biggest return is gotten for each dollar spent.

      • You’re partly right. I don’t understand racism. At all. I have no idea why color matters to anyone, period. It’s irrelevant data. You’re an engineer, you say. If I think gravity is mean, does it go away? Can I vote to make gravity give me free stuff?

        Play the hand you’re dealt. Don’t try to identify the dealer, because no matter who you pick, you’re wrong. You’re promoting the very thing you claim to be against by trying. Not everyone gets a head start. Not everyone gets screwed horribly. Do retarded people blame non-retarded people? They’re retarded and they’re smarter than that…

        Race relations will never succeed at fixing stupid. You can’t fix stupid. Quit trying to fix stupid.

        You’ve got now, don’t look for excuses to fail. Some people have higher hurdles than others. Man up and stop blaming. Even if racism is 100% real, it’s just another hurdle to clear. Step up. Every minute you waste taking about “race relations” is a minute you hold yourself back. Life’s not fair, get over it.

        If you weren’t trying to cut everyone’s helping hands off all the time, maybe they’d reach out to you more often…

      • “Black people are not the most common users of welfare.”

        If you talk raw numbers that’s true. If you talk rates and percentages, suddenly the story changes. As an engineer, you understand how this works. As an honest person, you should make sure your audience understands how this works, too, and are not misled by the wrong statistic.

  16. The simple fact is that racism in has been dying a horrible death for quite some time. Even that nut job Dylann Roof in his manifesto stated “we have no skinheads, no real KKK, no one doing anything but talking on the internet”. The church killings are one of the last desperate acts of an ever dwindling support for racial hatred in America.

    The left can’t allow racism to sunset into oblivion otherwise they lose their talking point. Instead they double down on the fanatical idea there are expanding racist attitudes of ordinary Americans when in fact it’s just the opposite.

    What are the going to blame next? Confederate Flag? No, that’s been taken down. Affirmative Action? No, since asian-american kids are being denied entry into top schools due to racial quotas. Seriously, who are the real “bitter clingers” of racial indifference from a bygone era?

    • Well put. To be oppressed, there must be an oppressor. The left in America knows this, so they invented an oppressor in lieu of a real one.

    • Racism is still alive and well. There are still schools that have segregated proms and graduations.

      All one needs to do is check Twitter to see the ignorance that still exists.

      There are laws set up that places minorities as a disadvantage to the rest of the country.

      If you are every interested in actually opening your mind to the issues at hand, I recommend “The New Jim Crow.” Institutionalized racism is real.

      • Racism or some derivative thereof will always be real. One of my college professors travelled literally all over the world. He told us one thing that never changed: everywhere he went, every racial/ethnic/national group had some other racial/ethnic/national group they held in low esteem. Two Scandinavian foreign-exchange students in my high-school class would happily lecture us about our anti-black racism. Then someone mentioned “Italians” and they actually went ape-guano shouting about “spaghettis” flowing into their country, taking jobs and ruining the culture. It’s a part of the human condition. Ever hear the tale of the “painted bird”?

      • Racism is still alive and well.

        The last time I checked the president is still black. Minority students are also the plurality at most major universities.

        There are still schools that have segregated proms and graduations.

        Self-segregation is vastly different then institutionalized segregation. I can’t recall any public or private schools that specifically excluded students based on the color of their skin within the last four decades.

        All one needs to do is check Twitter to see the ignorance that still exists.

        Twitter can’t be considered a benchmark of anything, it’s a den of iniquity. To use Twitter as a barometer of racial strife is laughable at best.

        There are laws set up that places minorities as a disadvantage to the rest of the country.

        Especially Affirmative Action, which disadvantages asian-american students at top tier universities. SCOTUS even upheld the Michigan law banning the use of race as a criteria for publicly funded universities.

        If you are every interested in actually opening your mind to the issues at hand …

        Why would anyone be interested in opening their mind to your brand of propaganda? Racism, as in the traditional sense, only exists in your imagination. In today’s society the effects of class far outweigh any racial bigotry that may still be lingering.

        • Just because we have a black president doesn’t mean racism doesn’t exist any longer.

          Just because you personally have not seen or experienced racism, it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Are you telling me the racism I have experienced in my life wasn’t real?

          Are people on Twitter real? If they are real, and display their racism, how can you claim racism doesn’t exist.

          I have worked in HR and I have personally seen managers fired because of racist behavior. Mangers that had been at companies for long periods of time that finally got caught.

          It isn’t propaganda. It is real. Minorities are arrested at 8-10times the rate of white people even though they buy and sell drugs at equal rates. Crack which is a derivative of coccaine will get you a harsher sentence than coccaine even though there is less coccaine per ounce. Once you have a drug conviction you are no longer applicable for any federal grants and scholarships, government jobs, or housing. Institutionalized racism.

          There is definitely a war of the classes, but racism is still alive and hindering minorities.

          Segregated proms: http://mobile.nytimes.com/2009/05/24/magazine/24prom-t.html?pagewanted=1&_r=5&referrer=

      • Racism is still alive and well. There are still schools that have segregated proms and graduations.
        Prove it….where’s the link

        All one needs to do is check Twitter to see the ignorance that still exists.
        100’s of millions of people on Twitter with a Gaussian curve of Intelligence. You cannot rid the world of tail dragging idiots.

        There are laws set up that places minorities as a disadvantage to the rest of the country.
        Prove it….what are these laws.

        If you are every interested in actually opening your mind to the issues at hand, I recommend “The New Jim Crow.” Institutionalized racism is real.

        You are parroting your Leftist professor

  17. This bloviating windage is most assuredly not like, in my experience, the majority of my fellow Washingtonians. I-594 not withstanding, it seems most folks out here have few issues with either race or other folks having the means or self-defense. Personally, I’m more than willing to dislike someone regardless of race, creed, color, or religion. ????

  18. Well aside from all the white male hating, affirmative action, hugs and kumbaya BS, he seems to be the only liberal other than maybe Bernie Sanders, focusing on the underlying social issues (even if misguided) rather than the evils of gun ownership and calling for irrelevant gun control legislation as a solution.

  19. … let us instead take seriously our own complicity in his violence by recognizing that his sense of entitlement, his anxieties and frustrations, and his sense of the diminished humanity of Black people are an essential part of American culture and its institutions.

    Newsflash: Roof is responsible for Roof’s actions. Period. I played no part in raising him, nor his culture, nor anything else. Roof and Roof alone bears the responsibility for his actions. And Roof’s victims, who chose to be unarmed and defenseless, bear the sole responsibility for their choice. Period. I played no part in raising the victims, nor their culture, nor anything else.

    • I’m gathering the Confederate battle flag was responsible for Roof’s actions…

  20. If you’re waiting to target hate at the college level, you’re already far too late.

    Of course, you’re going to have to address the hard social and economic realities of failed neo-liberal policies, as well as the neo-con “War on (Some) Drugs” (yeah, “thanks” Nixon), first. If you want to see any sea change in culture, it begins in the home anyway. With the parents, at that.

  21. That’s all well and good, but education starts at home. We can see what kind of education this guy got from home. Schools can’t undo that. We need a culture change to get to the home level of education.

  22. Used to be you went to school to learn. Nowadays it seems like you go to try and everybody else just as stupid as you are.

  23. “Dylann Roof is part of a movement and culture that is an integral part of the fabric not just of America’s past but also its present.”

    That would be the drugged-up lunatic loner movement and culture, I guess.

  24. An instructor at a community college with but a 36% graduation rate, from a two year institution, mind you, ought to direct his efforts at becoming more relevant and consequential on his own campus and within his existing mandate, rather than plead for additional personnel, training and funding to go crusading against phantom forces of racism.

  25. This is a clinical example of philosophically advanced synaptic degeneration, resulting in bark-at-the-moon liberalism.

  26. OK, I live in New Zealand, so I have a totally different perspective on this. We have black people here, but they are mainly African immigrants, British from the Caribbean, and a few Americans working here. Our indigenous Maori people are brown shades from light to darkish. They are about 15% of the population, but concentrated in low cost housing areas, as are the Pacific Island folk from Samoa, Tonga, Cooks, and Fiji. There are many recent Indian and Chinese residents due to unrestricted immigration, but these people are most quite wealthy.

    Our history is of the Treaty of Waitangi, signed in 1840, which declared the Maori of New Zealand to be British subjects, and which allowed immigration from Britain. Maori at that time lived in settled tribes, but there was much inter-tribal warfare, which later expanded to war against the British in the 1860s.

    Maori were then decimated by disease and much reduced in number. Their tribal lands were in large part taken by legal and not so legal means. After the widespread industrialisation in the mid 1900s, most Maori lived in urban areas, many in State housing, so they had separated from their tribal origins.

    In the 1980s and 1990s, Maori tribes went to court to obtain redress for the land confiscations of the past. To address this, the Government of the day established the Waitangi Commission, which negotiated settlements with individual tribes. This process has resulted in large payments to most tribes, which have become the basis for commercial activity which helps sustain tribal members.

    Many New Zealanders resented this process, and were bewildered by the privileged position many Maori seemed to enjoy, with regular payment from tribal enterprises along with share ownership of new tribal land grants.

    I was fortunate to learn about Maori and European history while at high school – we had an excellent history teacher. This made it easy for me to accept the new reality, and it helped considerably in my dealings with Maori in my working life.

    Most Maori understand that the people of NZ have done the best they can to atone for past wrongs. The future is generally positive for most Maori. However, there is still a holdover from the bad old days, and Maori still make up 50% of the prison population, and rank last in education and unemployed statistics. That situation is starting to improve, with many highly educated Maori in good positions in business and Government, as well as running tribal enterprises.

    What I see in America is that you have not acknowledged or make apology for the wrongs done to African Americans in the past, nor have you made effective financial reparations sufficient to ensure self reliance from enterprise activity. These are steps we in NZ took despite the cost, and which have markedly improved our whole situation.

    There is now school course material to cover the history of our country, so every child understands what underlies the present, and there is good promulgation of Maori culture such and language and song (waiata) available.

    I say that if you can make amends to bankers for getting the financial situation wrong, you can afford to make it up to black people for the centuries of slavery they endured. Until you do, you will be justly accused of racism, even though individual Americans have no such feeling. It is a collective responsibility. There is a process to go through which you have not even thought about beginning.

  27. What’s missing? Editing. Man was that verbose. Academics really need to work on clarifying their writing style. Of course, if you remove all the bloviating, then all you’re left with 90% of the time would be “I have no idea what I’m talking about.” That could get repetitive.

  28. This is what they give doctorates to? Reading that crap made me stupid to the point that I ended that sentence with a preposition. How screwed up can you get? They want US to submit to mental health checks? Are you kidding me?

  29. Seems like the perfect product of leftist indoctrination. Self hating, self blaming, and willing to give over his money, power, and life to government redistribution. This guy only wishes he could chain himself and prostrate in front of minorities.

  30. No mention of any type of gun control, just racism and violence.

    Definitely elitist and definitely different (no gun control) than I would expect from academia.

    Just my two cents worth.

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