Abusing the Legacy

Parents will be surprised — at times shocked — to learn that leading colleges and universities have used the February Black History Month to lash out angrily at whites, to spread socialist ideas, and to honor the Black Panthers, according to a statement released by the Young America’s Foundation.

They claim that missing from many Black History Month campus activities were positive messages and discussions about the accomplishments that blacks have made in business, education, government, and science. They also complain that “too few black conservative speakers, such as Ward Connerly, Walter Williams, and Star Parker, were invited to provide a balanced and uplifting message of Black Americans.”

Fewer even mention such African-American luminaries as Secretary of State Condi Rice and General Colin Powell.

Young America’s Foundation researched the Black History Month calendars of 83 leading colleges and universities in the United States. The 12 schools listed below highlight the most flagrant instances of left-wing activism’s hijacking of an entire month. Instead of applauding the accomplishments of blacks in history, students were fed a steady diet of “victim politics” and anti-white sentiment.

The list will shock some, but most conservatives and moderates have come to expect such politically-motivated shenanigans from the institutions of higher learning in America.

1. In what has to be the most egregiously biased commemoration of Black History Month, the University of New Mexico celebrated the Black Panthers’ 40th Anniversary. Speakers included Elaine Brown, who clearly endorsed socialism when she intended to help “poor population[s] through redistribution of massive revenues.” Another speaker, Mark Rudd, a white Marxist from the 1960s, was a member of Students for a Democratic Society, a group affiliated with the Weather Underground – -known for several bombings during the 1960’s and 1970’s. Rudd was president of the Columbia chapter of Students for a Democratic Society during the 1960’s, which served as an umbrella organization for socialists, radical feminists, Maoists, communists, and Marxists

2. Tennessee State brought conspiracy theorist Dick Gregory, who claims that the CIA knowingly allowed minority neighborhoods in Los Angeles to be flooded with crack/cocaine. Gregory believes that “the major white media continue to ignore the possibility that the CIA knew the Nicaraguans were raising money by selling drugs in black communities.”

3. University of Maryland’s Protest and Revolution in the Black Community: Where Do We Go From Here? featured rapper M-1 of the group Dead Prez. M-1 refers to America as “Amerikkka” and believes in a “conscious world wide struggle with decisive victory won in the area of defeating capitalism and imperialism which is our main enemy.” “Where I’m coming from,” M-1 continues, “the critical part of revolutionary struggle is concerned with taking power out of the hands of people who stole it [whites] from us all these years and returning back those resources.”

4. Brown landed Julian Bond, Chairman of the NAACP, to address the campus community. Bond has stated that conservatives’ “idea of equal rights is the American flag and the Confederate swastika flying side by side.” Bond doesn’t believe that America has made progress abrogating racial barriers. “Everywhere we see racial fault lines which divide American society,” he said, “as much now as at anytime [sic] in our past.”

5. Filmmaker Keith Beauchamp led discussions at Notre Dame on the 1955 brutal murder of Emmitt Till, a 14-year-old black boy living in Mississippi. To Beauchamp, this brutal murder is not just about racism during segregation, but it’s “going to help with reparations, it’s going to help with affirmative action, [and] it’s going to help with other civil rights cases that need to be reopened.”

6. UCLA brought author Randall Robinson to campus. Robinson is famous for saying that “Whites don’t give a sh-t what we [blacks] think. Never did. Never will” and that whites are “little more than upper primates.” Robinson authored the book, The Debt, a slavery reparations manifesto.

7. Stanford brought the rapper and founder of the hip-hop label Public Enemy, Chuck D, to campus. In addition to serving as spokesman for organizations such as Rock the Vote and the National Urban League, Chuck’s Enemy Board on the Public Enemy’s website has called the Bush Administration a “wolf in sheeps [sic] clothing,” posited that the Patriot Act “overrides our Constitution,” contends that Jesus Christ came to violently overthrow capitalists, and refers to Justice Thomas as “Clarence ‘Uncle’ Thomas.”

8. Columbia invited University of California at Santa Cruz professor Tricia Rose to address the student body. Rose’s claim to fame came to life when she created an oral narrative discussing black women’s sexuality in America. The story, entitled Longing to Tell: Black Women Talk About Sexuality and Intimacy, is supposedly the first oral history of black women’s sexual testimonies. Rose is no stranger to racist commentary, stating on her website that “many whites do not see (some refuse to see) that whiteness carries multiple kinds of privileges” and that “white racial advantage and privilege” are alive today.

9. Northwestern brought Bell Hooks, a self-identified feminist, who told the Third World Viewpoint that she is “concerned that there are not more Black women deeply committed to anti-capitalist politics.” She also admitted that Marxism “is very crucial to educating ourselves for political consciousness.”

10. Smith College brought Tim Wise, another white Marxist to campus. Wise likes to rattle on about white privilege in the United States and serves as director of the Association for White Anti-Racist Education (AWARE). He wrote, White Like Me: Reflections of Race from a Privileged Son.

11. Cornell’s keynote speaker was former New Orleans Mayor Marc Morial. Morial ran on the ticket as an unapologetic liberal saying that the left monopolizes the values of “equity, equality, and inclusiveness on which this nation was founded.”

12. Georgetown University went the direction of a poetic racist. Sonia Sanchez discussed her vision of America. She’s famous for penning “Right On: White America,” a tear-jerker on America once being “a pioneer land” eliminated by the intolerance of all those that it saw different. Sanchez writes that “there ain’t no mo indians, no mo real white all American bad guys.” Sanchez believes that black people need to “check out,” for the guns and shells are ready to destroy them.

Judging from this sample — Young America’s Foundation claims they documented 83 such programs — one would be safe in assuming the topic of discussion was more about whites than about blacks.

Jim Kouri is currently fifth vice-president of the National Association of Chiefs of Police and he’s a staff writer for the New Media Alliance (thenma.org). Kouri’s own website is located at http://jimkouri.us