Black Professor Barely Reprimanded for Horribly Racist Tweets

Do you want actual racial equality? Do you desire actual racial harmony? I have news for you: you’re in the minority. It seems even the most ardent champions fighting against racism are often avowed racists. Case in point: Dr. Saida Grundy, a black professor set to start teaching at Boston University on July 1.

She decided it was a good idea to get on Twitter and pontificate in a most scholarly fashion concerning the obstacles that need to be destroyed in order to achieve racial equality. Unfortunately, one of those obstacles is apparently the entire white male population. Below are some calm, well-reasoned tweets, absolutely none of which were written in ALL CAPS!!!!!!! or without any punctuation at all, and all of which avoid hasty and/or sweeping generalizations. Because that wouldn’t be fitting for a college professor. /sarcasm

why is white america so reluctant to identify white college males as a problem population?

every MLK week i commit myself to not spending a dime in white-owned businesses. and every year i find it nearly impossible.

looting is just poor black ppl’s best impression of Wall Street [thanks for capitalizing that … no pun intended] and the *entire rest of america*. wanting unearned goods is not a black trait

WAIT, WITHDRAW MY SUPPORT. HOW ARE YOU A *REPUBLICAN* TRANS WOMAN, BRUCE [Jenner] ????

dear white people: u are all ben affleck. those euphemisms for ur ancestors like “farmers” & “pioneers” means owned humans & killed natives

I have to be honest. I don’t think these tweets are forwarding racial discourse much. Just flip these tweets to be about black people, and it becomes even more painfully obvious how racist they are. If a white male professor had made similar comments about black people (or Bruce Jenner), I can tell you he would already have lost his job at Boston University, and would probably not be able to get a job anywhere else.

All Dr. Grundy got was an indirect and rather sedate admonition in an open letter from Boston University president Robert Brown:

I understand there is a broader context to Dr. Grundy’s tweets and that, as a scholar, she has the right to pursue her research, formulate her views, and challenge the rest of us to think differently about race relations. But we also must recognize that words have power and the words in her Twitter feed were powerful in the way they stereotyped and condemned other people.

Yeah. I’m pretty sure a white racist would not be given the same leeway to pursue “research” as a “scholar.” This is not research, people! This is bigotry, plain and simple. And racism in return is not the answer. Everybody needs to step back, take a deep breath, and realize that supremacy, black or white, is not the answer. Racism is racism. And whatever the context, whatever the history, it’s ugly, wrong, ignorant, and unhelpful.

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