NYTimes | A
Duke University professor criticized for an online post comparing
blacks and Asians said Monday that it's not racist to discuss what he
sees as differences in how the groups have performed in the U.S. over
the past few decades.
Political
science professor Jerry Hough has been sharply criticized for a
response he posted in the online comments section of the New York Times
editorial "How Racism Doomed Baltimore," dated May 9. The 80-year-old
professor, who is white, has been on an unrelated academic leave for the
past school year.
In
his online comments, Hough wrote that Asians have been described as
"yellow races" and faced discrimination in 1965 at least as bad as
blacks experienced. Of Asian-Americans, he wrote: "They didn't feel
sorry for themselves, but worked doubly hard."
The
posting goes on to say: "I am a professor at Duke University. Every
Asian student has a very simple old American first name that symbolizes
their desire for integration. Virtually every black has a strange new
name that symbolizes their lack of desire for integration."
In
an email Monday to The Associated Press, Hough defended his comments
but said it's difficult to be subtle in a post on a newspaper's comments
section with a limited word count.
"I
only regret the sloppiness in saying every Asian and nearly every
black," he wrote in the email. "I absolutely do not think it racist to
ask why black performance on the average is not as good as Asian on
balance, when the Asians started with the prejudices against the 'yellow
races' shown in the concentration camps for the Japanese."
Hough
described himself as a disciple of Martin Luther King Jr. in the 1950s
who supported integration. In his lifetime, he said, he's observed
prejudice ranging from the World War II-era internment camps for
Japanese-Americans to segregation in the South, and he's dismayed that
more progress hasn't been made.
"My purpose is to help achieve the battle of King's battle to overcome and create a melting pot America," he said.
