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.
6 comments:
Harris Faulkner tickle me bugging her eyes before pronouncing "white men" at the beginning of that set piece.
speaking of intercessory celebrities, I just knew you were going to put up this Guardian piece about Oprah. The current incarnation of the American Dream narrative holds that if you acquire enough cultural capital (skills and education) and social capital (connections, access to networks), you will be able to translate that capital into both economic capital (cash) and happiness. Cultural capital and social capital are seen as there for the taking (particularly with advances in internet technology), so the only additional necessary ingredients are pluck, passion, and persistence— all attributes that allegedly come from inside us.
The American dream is premised on the assumption that if you work hard, economic opportunity will present itself, and financial stability will follow, but the role of cultural and social capital in paving the road to wealth and fulfilment, or blocking it, may be just as important as economic capital. Some people are able to translate their skills, knowledge, and connections into economic opportunity and financial stability, and some are not—either because their skills, knowledge, and connections don’t seem to work as well, or they can’t acquire them in the first place because they’re too poor.
Today, the centrality of social and cultural capital is obscured (sometimes deliberately), as demonstrated in the implicit and explicit message of Oprah and her ideological colleagues. In their stories, and many others like them, cultural and social capital are easy to acquire. They tell us to get an education. Too poor? Take an online course. Go to Khan Academy. They tell us to meet people, build up our network. Don’t have any connected family members? Join LinkedIn.
It’s simple. Anyone can become anything. There’s no distinction between the quality and productivity of different people’s social and cultural capital. We’re all building our skills. We’re all networking.
This is a fiction.http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2015/may/09/oprah-winfrey-neoliberal-capitalist-thinkers
priceless..., I have that article bookmarked, but wasn't moved to put it on the table yet thinking instead in simultaneously simpler and loftier terms about the distributed collective meaning of celebrity. My thinking about Oprah goes back to an article I actually wrote in 2005 at Visioncircle at least partially in response to this http://www.blackcommentator.com/127/127_oprah.html
Ass clown's a decent tag for this one as well. He seems shallow for a professor. Who the hell goes to Duke that doesn't work hard? I'm guessing he annoys the hell out of his students. What's with these lame whites thinking Asians are so damn special?
The funny part is he was in the comment section, not the person who wrote the editorial...
lol, I see y'alls last post before I make my next post and sometimes that's all the push or priming that's required...,
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