The College Fix

We should condemn racist belief—no matter who it comes from.

The past week has seen two professors face professional repercussions for arguably racist behavior. Under normal circumstances, two college professors expressing racist beliefs would be a wall-to-wall news event; the Office of Civil Rights would probably weigh in; and legions of student protestors would hold demonstrations across in the country in protest. But that hasn’t been the case this time around. And it’s not hard to see why.

In the first instance, professor Lisa Durden was fired by Essex County College due to her having gone onto Tucker Carlson’s Fox News program and championed a segregated Black Lives Matter event. ““[B]oo hoo hoo,” Durden jeered, “you white people are angry because you couldn’t use your white privilege card to get invited to the Black Lives Matters [sic] all black Memorial Day celebration.”

“White folks crack me up,” she went on. “All of a sudden, when we want one day for black folks to focus on ourselves but you’ve been having white days for ever, you don’t say the words anymore because you know its politically incorrect.”

Essex County College first suspended and then fired Durden, claiming it could not “maintain an employment relationship” with her due to the “potential impact on students” she might have regarding this “contentious and divisive issue.” But Durden was not the only professor who is catching heat for her inflammatory racial remarks. Earlier this month, Trinity College sociology professor Johnny Eric Williams posted to his Facebook account that anyone witnessing white people in mortal danger should “let them fucking die.” Following an outpouring of criticism, Trinity College decided to suspend Matthews as it conducts an investigation into his conduct. “We’ve determined that a leave is in the best interest of both Professor Williams and the college,” Trinity’s president announced.

And so it surely is. But it is hard to imagine so measured and balanced a response coming from the college if it were a white professor saying such cruel things about black people. And while there has been extensive media coverage of Durden’s firing, almost all of it has been framed in the context of her being fired rather than her expressing neo-segregationist beliefs on national television.

It is not enough to say that the media, and the academy, are both frequently biased toward liberal beliefs. There is, too, a distinct deference toward anti-white racialist sentiment, a kind of soft indulgence of it if not an outright tolerance of it. In some cases, on campus in particular, it can cross the line to genuine enablement: witness the college that barred white people from a campus cafe, for instance, or the university that hosted a segregated student retreat.

If the races were reversed in the cases above—if Durden and Matthews were both white, say, and were mocking and condemning black people—there is no doubt that the response from the colleges would have been far more swift and far less equivocal: both professors likely would have been fired at the outset, rather than suspended, and college officials would have rebuked them in the harshest and most condemnatory terms possible.

And who could blame them? When the racists are white, we are not afraid to recognize racism for the gross and indefensible ideology it is; if a white professor mockingly said “Black folks crack me up” on national television, armageddon would surely follow. When the tables are turned, however, our society oftentimes tends to defer judgment and equivocate in a way that borders on obeisance. It is troubling that this should be the case; it is also troubling to wonder how many other professors and educators remain in our colleges and universities who believe these kinds of things and who continue to shape young and impressionable minds.

MORE: ‘White people are responsible for racism’

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