Righting On The Wall: Mary Grabar

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Tuesday, September 6, 2016

Zulus and Liberals (and, No, This Isn't Racist)

by Dissident Prof

In odd moments I am reading Donald R. Morris’s The Washing of the Spears (1965), the helpful subtitle of which is The Rise and Fall of the Zulu Nation. Amazon.com no less helpfully tells us that “this unsurpassed history details the sixty-year existence of the world’s mightiest African empire—from its brutal formation and zenith under the military genius Shaka (1787-1828), through its inevitable collision with white expansionism, to its dissolution under Cetshwayo in the [Anglo-]Zulu War of 1879.”

Photo Credit

History buffs will remember the names of that war’s two famous battles, Isandhlwana, according to Wikipedia the “single greatest defeat for the British Army at the hands of a native army,” and Rorke’s Drift, a brave British hold-out against an overwhelmingly superior force that enabled the preservation of some national self-respect. It was followed by the awarding of eleven Victoria Crosses, the highest British award for valour in the face of the enemy, an act perhaps having a slightly politic component. Movie enthusiasts will remember Zulu Dawn (1979), a not very commercially successful film about Isandhlwana, and Zulu (1964), a hit about Rorke’s Drift. I am no historian, and am, anyway, presently much nearer the beginning of Morris’s book than the end but it seems superb, a vigorous narration of an absorbing, if finally tragic, tale.

The first chapter, after a “Prologue,” is entitled “The Bantu.” Morris describes what we know about Bantu provenance, which apparently isn’t very much (“No one knows from whence the Bantu came, and by the time modern man turned a scientific scrutiny on the problem a century ago, the layers of evidence were irrevocably tangled”), their social structure (subdivisions divided into clans, and kraals “inhabited by a single family”), and their sometimes self-destructive superstitions (a warrior who killed an enemy soldier had to undergo an elaborate “cleansing process” that involved going back to his own kraal, so military campaigns tended to be short). But what stopped me in my tracks were four paragraphs about Bantu, i.e. Zulu, belief in the strength and ubiquity of witchcraft. The italics in what follows are mine.

Witchcraft was universal. All illness, and indeed all evil, was caused by . . . wizards who made use of primal forces. . . . The unfortunate host would be quite unaware of the parasite until a witch doctor pointed it out . . . .

An accusation of witchcraft was fatal; once the wizard had been smelled, no defense was possible, and because the host was quite unwitting, no plea of ignorance, purity of action, or innocence of action could stand. Whenever the presence of [a wizard] was suspected, the chieftain would summon the entire male membership of the clan, which assembled in a large circle with the witch doctors in the center. These worthies . . . paused in front of each man, sniffing and howling, passing on and suddenly darting back to terrorize anew someone just starting to breathe again . . . . The volume [of the witch doctors’ chant] peaked as [they] passed, and died away beyond the suspect. . . . [They] were merely sounding out public opinion, cleverly reinforcing nuances of sound until they were certain their choice met with popular approval—a rich but miserly kraal head, or the transgressor of some social taboo. The witch doctors would pass him and return, until finally they were leaping and screaming before some poor wretch on his knees. Bounding clean over him, they flicked him with a gnu’s tail, whereupon he was at once dragged off to have sharpened stakes pounded up his rectum, while an impi [“regiment” or “army”] was dispatched to exterminate his family root and branch, destroy his crops, and burn his kraal.

Finally, “Witch doctors also waxed fat on private practice. They were called in as consultants for every form of minor crisis, and rarely failed to secure the payment of at least a goat. The vicious grip in which they held the people was made possible by an implicit and universal belief in magic; not even the victim of a smelling-out was indignant. He might register horror or fear or remorse, but not even in his final painful moments did he doubt the existence of the wizard that had possessed him.”

"The Ubiquity of Irrational Fear": Doubtless you can see where I’m going with this. The ubiquity of an irrational fear, the catastrophic consequences of being found the unwitting host of an evil parasite, the submission of the victims to the onslaught against them, a priestly class that acquires and keeps material goods and power by means of officious intervention. Sounds like the West over the last forty years or so, does it not? It sounds in particular like elite segments of government, the university, and the media.

A few examples. My account of the first is taken pretty closely from Wikipedia, which is trustworthy for this sort of thing at least. Notoriously, in 1999, David Howard, an aide to the mayor of Washington, D.C., used the word “niggardly” in reference to a budget. A black colleague heard the word, or claimed to have heard it, as a racial slur, and made a formal complaint. “Howard tendered his resignation, and [the mayor] accepted it” (my italics again). After a public brouhaha, Howard was offered his old job back; he refused the offer but agreed to accept another position with his former boss, “insisting,” in the words of Wikipedia, “that he did not feel victimized by the incident. On the contrary, Howard felt that he had learned from the situation. ‘I used to think it would be great if we could all be colorblind; that’s naïve, especially for a white person, because a white person can’t [sic for “can”] afford to be colorblind. They don’t have to think about race every day. An African American does.’” It must be conceded that many commentators found the controversy absurd, the head of the NAACP, no less, saying, “David Howard should not have quit. Mayor Williams should bring him back—and order dictionaries issued to all staff who need them.” But then again this was seventeen years ago.

Two more contemporary examples, and when I say contemporary I mean occurring over the last month or so (I’m writing this in mid-August). A certain Rohini Sethi, vice president of the Student Government Association of the University of Houston, so far forgot the environment in which she lives and the nature of some of those amongst whom she lives as to post on Facebook, “Forget #BlackLivesMatter; more like #AllLivesMatter” after five Dallas police officers were shot dead during a BLM rally. Blake Neff’s article in The Daily Caller (31 July) reports “numerous UH students denounced [the comment] as incredibly offensive or even hateful,” one of them, Nala Hughes, going so far as to observe, “Just for her to say, ‘forget Black Lives Matter,’ is a punch in the stomach.’” Sethi made an attempt to combine an apology with a justification of her words: “My response has caused enormous pain for many members of our community, and I think it is high time that I clarify my statement. . . . Let’s create the possibility of a culture rooted in open discussion” (Bob Price, Breitbart, 1 August). Although some students defended her, there followed a maliciously careful and detailed attempt to impose upon Sethi a protracted public humiliation. Shane Smith, president of the SGA, was allowed to sidestep the usual procedures and come up with a five-part punishment. I quote Neff again:

• A 50-day suspension from SGA starting August 1. This suspension will be unpaid (she currently receives a stipend of about $700 a month).
• A requirement to attend a three-day diversity workshop in mid-August.
• A requirement to attend three “UH cultural events” each month from September through March, excluding December.
• An order to write a “letter of reflection” about how her harmful actions have impacted SGA and the UH student body.
• An order to put on a public presentation Sept. 28 detailing “the knowledge she has gained about cultural issues facing our society.”

Furthermore, “If Sethi refuses or fails any of the requirements, she will be kicked out of SGA entirely.” Sethi commented, “I disagree with the sanctions taken against me by my SGA . . . . I have apologized for my words . . . . Even so, I will abide by the sanctions for as long as they are in place.”

Last example. It will be remembered that nine black mothers whose children had died, some in circumstances involving the police, were invited onto the stage at the Democratic National Convention. Bob Goosman, his feelings doubtless exacerbated by the fact that he was then a meteorologist in the Dallas area, took to Facebook: “As many of you have probably noticed, I’ve stayed away from politics on FB. The DNC parading the mothers of slain thugs around on their stage has me furious.” Two days later he was out of a job. I have found two sets of comments made by Goosman about his use of the word “thug,” published within a day of each other. Although this appears second (1 August, gop.usa, but originating in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram), perhaps it was made first: “It was frustration that I believe the DNC party will do anything, like using these mothers, to garner votes . . . . Some have said the word ‘thug’ is a racial term. [But] it means a violent person, as in a criminal. It does not mention color. Anyone can become a thug. If some want to make this statement out to be something else, I cannot control that.” The second (theblaze.com 31 July) is more sensitive to contemporary susceptibilities:

Regarding his use of the term 'thugs,' Goosman said he wasn’t aware it carried racial overtones for some.

'I thought a thug was just a violent person. The definition of thug does not mention any race . . . . I will say that I talked with an African American acquaintance and he told me that he feels like when he hears the word, it is in reference to an African American individual. I had NO IDEA.'

Goosman confirmed his resignation as well but said he would’ve been fired 'and rightly so.'

'What I say online, no matter where, reflects upon my station and employer. KRLD is a great station . . . and I am sorry if they have had to deal with all the repercussions.'

Brought to heel. For what it’s worth, I’ve lived in the US for twenty-seven years and thought I understood American English. I too had NO IDEA that the word “thug” implies an African American but then “The unfortunate host would be quite unaware of the parasite until a witch doctor pointed it out.”

My three examples above all deal with race, a subject of notorious sensitivity in today’s US. A couple of months ago I was in a local convenience store. The guy behind the counter, picking up on my English accent, asked me if I’m interested in soccer. He then immediately assured me that he wasn’t being “racist.” (Oh, and I “happen to be” white, incidentally.) I understood him. Say the wrong thing, no matter how innocently, and you could lose your livelihood, as Bob Goosman found out (he apparently doesn’t intend to try for another job in the media), and perhaps your savings, and your house, and your reputation. Our society’s “witch doctors” are vigilant, and getting far more for their pains than the occasional goat. But I could easily have chosen three, or three dozen, illustrations of the dangers of misspeaking about what I’m apparently supposed to call gender: feminism, homosexuality, and, nowadays, transgenderism. On another occasion, perhaps.

Let’s look on the bright side. Howard and Sethi and Goosman have been taught their place, doubtless a cause of grim satisfaction or even unabashed jubilation to their tormentors. However, they haven’t had sharpened stakes hammered up their arses. But that’s just because the aforementioned tormentors haven’t thought of that yet.

Thursday, June 9, 2016

Black History Month 2016: Celebrating American Heroes

by ROTW Contributor Mary Grabar

The slobbering over the treasonous, pompous, braggart Muhammad Ali, in a reprise of radical chic (especially on Fox News), [I was] reminded of some true American heroes who upheld American patriotism and unity in an American identity. There was no marathon television coverage of Fred V. Cherry, but there should have been. And George Schuyler's name should be recognized by every student in the nation.

Posted originally February 25, 2016 on Dissident Prof:

While PBS was releasing its whitewash of the Black Panthers and spoiled college students were protesting because of imaginary slights put out by Black Lives Matter, a true American hero passed away. I had never heard of him, but came across this story in the Washington Post that begins,

Fred V. Cherry, an Air Force fighter pilot, was downed by enemy fire over North Vietnam in 1965, and he spent more than seven years as a prisoner of war.

He had grown up in the Jim Crow South, and his captors made it clear that he could mitigate the harshness of his incarceration, including routine torture, and improve his living conditions by speaking out against the racial injustice and discrimination he had faced as an African American in the United States.

He refused to do so. The communists, who have been instigating racial tensions here in the U.S. for almost a hundred years, tried the tactic on Cherry:

When beatings failed to bring him around, his jailers tried another tactic. They assigned a self-described “Southern white boy” as his cellmate, hoping that racial antipathy between the two men would weaken his resolve and produce a propaganda triumph for North Vietnam.

The strategy failed and the two became best friends, saving each other's lives. Read the rest of the amazing story here.

While textbook writers and curriculum companies continually present negative lessons about American history, from slavery through the Michael Brown shooting, they rarely (if ever) present such stories about friendship and patriotism.

Today is the birthday of George S. Schuyler (1895-1977), the writer who dared to go against the grain as the civil rights movement promoted resentment and violence. I wrote about him in 2012 and in 2013. Now I am writing a book about him, "George S. Schuyler: America's First Black Conservative Intellectual."

A few words from Schuyler's 1966 autobiography, Black and Conservative. Here is the opening:

A black person learns very early that his color is a disadvantage in a world of white folk. This being an unalterable circumstance, one also learns very early to make the best of it. So the lifetime endeavor of the intelligent Negro is how to be reasonably happy though colored. Certainly this requires considerable doing and, like all other people, the colored are not equally endowed with alertness, resourcefulness, ingenuity, and adaptability. Some have been unable to triumph over the vicissitudes of varying environments while others have. On the whole it is remarkable that the "race" has survived and prospered beyond the wildest imaginings of their forebears who stumbled ashore tethered by the Founding Fathers.

Race is in quotations because Schuyler believed that it was an irrelevant category.

Black and Conservative, unfortunately, did not sell that well, and has been long out of print. But it is an enjoyable read, and one that gives great insight into what it was like to be black in early and mid-twentieth century America. Schuyler educates:

Contrary to the pundits on the Negro (or Caucasian!) problem who bewail the American racial facts of life, most of the colored brethren do not go about perpetually enveloped in gloom and despair. . . .

I shall jump to the last page:

There are forces in the world that want us to fail, and conspire toward that failure, which means disunity and destruction.

Schuyler advocated "relegating spurious racism to limbo" and stressing "the importance of the individual of whatever color." These are the kinds of patriotic words that described the resolve Fred Cherry had. George Schuyler wrote that there would be "no color war" if we work together:

We do not need to share the wealth as much as we need to share our heritage so that all may proudly claim ownership in it. We need to strive to become one people in our resolution, determination, and achievement instead of two peoples, colored and white.

Forthcoming from me will be an essay in a collection called Literature and the Conservative Ideal, in which I focus on Schuyler's serialized fiction.

But here in his autobiography, Schuyler leaves us with these words:

We are here blessed with the right of mobility, the right of ownership, the privilege of privacy and development of personality, and the precious machinery of peaceful change. These gifts and gains it is the purpose of the conservative to defend and extend, lest we perish in the fell clutch of collectivism. These gifts and gains I have been trying in my small way to preserve.

And so I hope in my small way to preserve the memory of this inspirational American.

Thursday, December 31, 2015

2015: The year of self-criticism for leftist speech codes?

By ROTW Guest Contributor: Mary Grabar

**This blog post was originally published December 23, 2015 at FrontPage Mag **

In 2015, leftists in the media and academia began criticizing the leftist mobs seeking to shut them down. Kirsten Powers, the left-of-center commentator at Fox News, came out with a book titled, The Silencing: How the Left Is Killing Free Speech.

Northwestern University film professor Laura Kipnis, after being slapped with a Title IX lawsuit for her essay “Sexual Paranoia Strikes Academe,” made it to The Chronicle of Higher Education’s “2015 Influence List.” The 1972 law was intended to protect against sexual discrimination and misconduct. Kipnis’s crime was to criticize new consensual-relations codes governing professor-student dating. For opining that the codes infantilized students and increased the power of administrators, she was accused of creating a hostile environment and was greeted by mattress-carrying protesters (following Columbia art student, Emma Sulkowicz who claimed an ex-boyfriend raped her).

After the kangaroo court proceedings, Kipnis wrote “My Title IX Inquisition” for the Chronicle, expressing surprise that students would protest someone like herself, a feminist who hadn’t sexually assaulted anyone. Kipnis had assumed that “academic freedom would prevail.”

“The whole thing seemed symbolically incoherent,” she mused, claiming that most of her academic colleagues, including “feminists, progressives, minorities, and those who identify as gay or queer,” live “in fear of some classroom incident spiraling into professional disaster.”

This rang true. A piece in Vox titled “I’m a Liberal Professor, and My Students Terrify Me” by an anonymous professor had gone viral.

Kipnis noted, “It’s astounding how aggressive students’ assertions of vulnerability have gotten in the past few years. Emotional discomfort is regarded as equivalent to material injury, and all injuries have to be remediated.”

Todd Gitlin, proud veteran leader of the 1960s “youth movement,” also criticized the youth, after some students at Columbia had proposed that syllabi contain “trigger warnings.” He told them “You Are Here to Be Disturbed.” By “here” he meant the college classroom, a place where many veterans of the 1960s campus takeovers found themselves comfortably ensconced with tenure. Gitlin himself is at Columbia. In character with those of his generation, he referred back to the “changes for good” they had instituted, including recognizing that speech acts can lead to a hostile environment and accordingly changing word usage, for example, replacing “girl” with “woman,” and “Negro” with “African-American.” But, Gitlin warned, that does not justify “censorious policy.”

Kirsten Powers, who was born at the height of the “youth movement,” in 1969, believes the grizzled veterans, and writes,

“While watching the illiberal left in action, it’s easy to forget that it was the political left that championed free speech in America. During the Vietnam War era, the targeting of left-wing anti-war activists at the University of California-Berkeley for their dissent launched what came to be known as ‘The Free Speech Movement.’”

Powers takes the self-defined “free speech movement” at Berkeley as true to its name, perpetuating myths promulgated in school lessons and in the media—by veterans of the movement, Todd Gitlin, being one of the most influential. What we are seeing today as we close out 2015 with the forced or attempted ouster of insufficiently politically correct faculty and administrators, is a continuation of the policies of the 1960s New Left.

“Silencing” is in the DNA of the New Left and its progeny, today’s student protesters.

Mario Savio, the Berkeley student credited with beginning the free speech movement, admitted that the issue of “free speech” was a “pretext” to “arouse the students against the existing role of the university.” That existing role is the search for truth through reasoned debate and evidence, and the appreciation for higher and beautiful things.

The acquiescence to Savio’s demands to use university space for political mobilizing led to waves of student protests. But “debates” were conducted through bullhorns. Negotiations were conducted by commandeering buildings and taking hostages. Scientific labs and scholarly papers were destroyed. People were hurt, sometimes killed.

The goal was to subvert the academy, and its methods, and make it into an adjunct for activism. Todd Gitlin easily segued from leader of the largest student activist group, SDS, to teaching a self-glorifying history of the SDS. History professor Howard Zinn did the same. Today, City University history professor Angus Johnston describes himself as both a “historian and advocate of American student organizing.”

In his recent article in the Chronicle, “Student Protests, Then and Now,” Johnston attributes the resurgence of student protest to racial discrimination, sexual assault and harassment, and rising tuition and debt. He and the student protestors, however, give little empirical evidence of discrimination or harassment. He states,

“The origins of today’s student complaints are deep and in many cases intractable, and the more accustomed activists become to protesting, the more readily they will mobilize in response to new provocation.”

Indeed. It is a wonder that left-wing professors should complain now that their intellectual progeny have turned the p.c. microscope on them, and increasing its magnification.

The tenured leftists ignored or disparaged warnings of those like New York University Philosophy Professor Sidney Hook, who wrote in 1968,

“If the university is conceived as an agency of action to transform society in behalf of a cause, no matter how exalted, it loses its relative autonomy, imperils both its independence and objectivity, and subjects itself to retaliatory curbs and controls on the part of society on whose support and largesse it ultimately depends.”

Hook, in that same article, stated a truth that few dare utter today: “it is preposterous for callow and immature adolescents who presumably have come to the university to get an education to set themselves up as authorities on what research by their teachers is educationally permissible.” Yet, many of the 1960s student protestors retain their youthful arrogance into old age.

One of these is Mark Rudd, leader of the Columbia takeover in 1968, co-founder of the terroristic SDS offshoot group Weatherman, and retired math professor. Writing in his 2009 memoir, Underground: My Life in SDS and the Weathermen, the then 61-year-old Rudd sees nothing wrong with his actions as an undergraduate student who refused to listen to professors who were refugees from Nazi Germany. They pled for free speech as students planned to block CIA recruiters on campus. Believing in the “’neutral’ and ‘objective’ character of the university,” the refugees “identified SDS’s antiwar activities with the actions of Nazi students at German universities in the thirties.”

Rudd recounts, “This was a frightening image, even to us in SDS. ‘What if every small group had the power to silence whomever they wanted—such as you?’ asked the old liberals. ‘Isn’t there an absolute right to free speech?’”

Rudd, however, aligns CIA recruiters with the Nazi SS, citing the Nuremberg Trials that “established that it is the legal and moral responsibility of the individual not to comply with orders that constitute war crimes.” Blazing forward with the false analogy, Rudd bars further discussion. The intervening decades have brought him no enlightenment or humility.

Like many of his generation, Rudd spent his career proselytizing to the young, captive audiences in his classroom. He brags about it in his memoir. His website features photos of his 1968 mug shot and the Columbia takeover, and description of his work organizing student activists for environmental justice, unionization, and Palestinian rights, and against “war and militarization.”

The eight-day occupation of Columbia University was repeated metaphorically in faculty votes in the ensuing decades. As dissenting professors like Sidney Hook retired they were replaced by hires who put up barricades to traditionalists. They even held workshops on how to get past the old “mossbacks” on hiring committees. I experienced this as a graduate student at the University of Georgia in the 1990s. The Chronicle of Higher Education gave space in the 1980s and 1990s to “Ms. Mentor” for a column in which she advised aspiring feminist academics on how to get through the academic gates with subterfuge that ranged from altering modes of dress to scholarly papers. As a result, the humanities have been transformed. History specialization that focuses on the environment, gender, and sexuality predominates. My field, English, is now an auxiliary for gender and ethnic studies.

Ironically, on the Chronicle’s “influential list,” next to Kipnis, are such notables as “Trigger-Warning Catalyst” Bailey Loverin, “Sexism Fighter: Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett,” and “Silence Breaker: Concerned Student 1950.” The last is a group that used megaphones to make “demands” at the University of Missouri, which spurred a nationwide rash of similar “demands,” so far at 73 campuses. They forced out the president. The clenched fist is their symbol.

I must admit to feeling a bit of schadenfreude as I read about leftist professors and administrators being in fear of their students. As a traditionalist and an adjunct professor, I lived in fear too—of department chairs and administrators. These fears proved real, when I was told no classes were available for me, after my dissenting views became known to higher-ups.

In contrast, Kipnis, rather than losing her job, received kudos from fellow liberals. Conservative outlets came to her defense. It was a conservative publishing house, Regnery, that published Kirsten Powers’ book.

But without fundamental changes, we can expect to see more inquisitions. Another inquisition is underway against Harvard University professors for daring to question the accuracy of a documentary about rape on campus. But I wonder: Will liberal academics defend the free speech of conservatives and allow them on campuses?

Or will the mobs of “callow and immature students” finally shut down the little fiefdoms that leftist academics have carved out for themselves? I would not be sad about that.