In what may be the perfect example of modern universities’ mixed up ethics, the College Republicans at Boston University are getting heat for criticizing the racist comments made by one of the school’s professors
Late last month, Ibram Kendi — who runs Boston University’s fledgling Center for Antiracist Research — tweeted that whites who adopt black children are “colonizers” who are trying to train “savage” children in (white) “superior” ways.
The tweets came right before President Trump’s nomination of Amy Coney Barrett for the US Supreme Court. Barrett has two adopted children from Haiti.
Some White colonizers "adopted" Black children. They "civilized" these "savage" children in the "superior" ways of White people, while using them as props in their lifelong pictures of denial, while cutting the biological parents of these children out of the picture of humanity. https://t.co/XBE9rRnoqq
— Ibram X. Kendi (@ibramxk) September 26, 2020
Kendi attempted to clarify his comments in subsequent tweets noting “whether this is Barrett or not is not the point. It is a belief too many White people have: if they have or adopt a child of color, then they can’t be racist.”
Kendi also claimed many of his Twitter critics were “bots.”
The BU College Republicans ripped Kendi in a September 29 Instagram statement, calling his remarks “outrageous,” “hateful” and “racist,” and demanded the school sever all ties with the him.
According to The Daily Free Press, both the BU College Democrats and BU PhD Student Coalition called out the College Republicans … and defended Kendi.
BUCD President Cecilia Szkutak said the College Republicans’ statement “supported reverse racism and invited harmful rhetoric into the BU community.”
Szkutak added: “We wanted to make it very clear that the type of thinking and language that was used in the BU College Republicans’ post is, one, not tolerated in BUCD, and also just should not be widely accepted and it should be denounced by the BU community.”
Overall, there were over 700 social media comments “largely opposing” the CRs’ statement.
BUCD Treasurer Bridgette Lang, a sophomore in CAS, said responses to BUCD’s statement have been “overwhelmingly positive.”
Lang said that while social media is not the best way to measure the response, the number of likes on BUCD’s statement have continued to increase. Students outside the organization have also reached out to her, expressing their support.
“I think that people are happy that we’re taking a stance,” Lang said, “and we hope that other clubs will also take a stance on the issue as well.” …
Kendi declined to comment on the record about his tweets or subsequent student reactions but directed The Daily Free Press to Rachel Nolan, an assistant professor at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies.
Nolan, who has studied the history of international adoptions from Guatemala for nearly six years, said the issues Kendi brought up in regard to transracial adoption are well-known structural issues within the adoption sphere.
Nolan said the idea that someone who adopts Haitian children cannot be racist is refuted by the hundreds of adoption files she has read during her years of study.
“The people who were responding with the most upset to Dr. Kendi’s comments were naturally adoptive parents who felt personally attacked, and that’s understandable,” Nolan said. “It’s wrong because he’s critiquing the institution, not them, but it’s also understandable that they take it personally.”
Nolan added that if she and Professor Kendi “wanted to make people happy,” they’d have gone into public relations, not history.
Of course, their historical “focus” is a bit more lucrative than others. Kendi’s BU center got a $10 million donation from Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, and the prof recently got paid $20,000 by the Fairfax County (Virginia) Public Schools for a one-hour talk.
Not bad for a guy who claims you can’t be an anti-racist if you’re a capitalist.
MORE: Kendi’s antiracism center got big donations, put out little academic research
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