George Yancy

The White Bad/Black Good Derangement Syndrome

“Should I Give Up on White People?” is Professor George Yancy’s latest New York Times op-ed.  Just about everyday, the Times publishes at least one white bad/black good op-ed.  All the news that fits the narrative!  I’d written Yancy several years ago and sent the cartoon I’d sketched on him, as well as the  counter op-ed I’d written vis-a-vis his “Dear White America” op-ed also published in the Times (2015).  He, of course, did not/would not respond, nor would the Times.  

Yancy begins his article with complaints—“a wave of white hatred and dehumanization”—of being threatened and otherwise mistreated by mostly faceless internet anti-black racists, who of course exist… as do faceless internet anti-white racists.  Sadly, however, he does not recognize the latter.  He says he shared one critical letter he received with his grad students and ended up in tears and walked out of the class for a moment.  “Looking back, I wish that I had said: “To hell with it all! It is not worth it. Too many white people will never value my humanity. So many whites in America will never be honest about their hatred of black people.”  

Well, why should I value the humanity of a person who makes his living by constantly judging those like me on the color of our skin?   To paraphrase Yancy, so many blacks in America will never be honest about their hatred of white people.”  Now, how does that sound, Mr. Yancy?  And at least I have had some personal experience with that regard.  Three blacks attacked and robbed me in Baton Rouge, for example… and The Advocate would not even publish my account of that racist occurrence.  Thankfully, the black student editors at Grambling State University, where I was teaching at the time, were open-minded and thus willing to do so!  

Evidently, Yancy has benefitted partly thanks to his skin color.  He now has a hefty salary and lifetime job security as a tenured academic at Emory University.  As for me, I never did get tenure… because I chose and choose to speak rude truth even and especially when that perturbs academics like Yancy and especially their narrative.  I was fired from my last job in academe (American Public University) because I disobeyed my chairperson’s order to cease engaging in vigorous debate.  

Yancy notes when he came back to class his students “bore witness to my vulnerability, my suffering, the sting of unmitigated hatred. And they saw the impact in an otherwise safe academic space.”  What to say about that?  Well, if you can’t take the heat, then stay out of the limelight!  Don’t keep publishing anti-white stereotype articles in the Times!  Or accept that not everyone is going to love what you write.  

“I wanted to model for my students what it is like to be a contemporary philosopher who remains steadfast in the face of hatred,” declares Yancy in typical Yancy half-truth fashion.  For in reality, he reinforces that very hatred by joining in the PC-stereotyping of whites.  And yet, he seems to think he is some kind of modern-day Jesus: “I was pushed to rethink what I assumed was a mission of love, the kind of love that refuses to hide and requires profound forms of vulnerability.”  

Until Yancy embraces reality, he will remain just another tenured fraud.  If he is going to blather about white privilege, then he needs to examine poor white people w/o privilege and white farmers in South Africa and the realities of slavery, which the PC-crowd seek to coverup.  He needs to take a close look at black on white crime.  But of course he will not/cannot do that.  

“I am convinced that America suffers from a pervasively malignant and malicious systemic illness — white racism,” he declares.  Political correctness demands adherence to that conviction.  Truth, on the other hand, demands non-adherence to ideology.  PC demands turning a blind eye to Affirmative Action black privilege, the existence of wealthy blacks like Yancy himself, black race baiters like Sharpton and Jackson, who make a living off of that, and overt black racism (think of South Africa, Nation of Islam, BLM, etc.).  

“People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction, and anyone who insists on remaining in a state of innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster,” wrote James Baldwin.  Yes, Yancy actually quoted that line in his article, but is so blind that he cannot see his own eyes are amongst those shutting to reality.  Victimization always causes cecity!  

Yancy’s reasoning is simplistic—black and white without nuance—and certainly is surprisingly lacking for a grad school professor.  For Yancy, because whites sold slaves long ago, then all whites today are guilty and should be shamed if not punished.  Yet, blacks sold slaves to whites long ago in Africa.  Should not all blacks thus be shamed if not punished?  And what about Muslim slaveowners who exist today?  Should not all Muslims be shamed if not punished?  And what about Aztec ritual murder and Spanish slaughter of Mexican autochthones?  Should not all Mexicans be shamed if not punished?  Yancy is so simplistic in his thinking that these things—and many others, including the many black Americans who owned and traded slaves—are not to be evoked.  They are to be erased from history.  The narrative demands it!  

In conclusion, Yancy’s own anti-white racist stereotypes not only evoke but promote anti-black racist stereotypes.  With so many Yancys out there today, the racial divide will ever increase.  Yancy’s wo-is-me victim op-ed reminds of Hillary and Comey’s wo-is-me victim books, book tours, and book interviews.  It’s the sales, stupid!  In fact, Yancy is pushing his own wo-is-me victim book:  Backlash: What Happens When We Honestly Talk About Racism in America."  Honestly?  Bullshit!  Ideologically would be a hell of a lot more accurate!  And so I send this counter-essay to the Times, Yancy, his Philosophy Department colleagues, and Editor-in-Chief Michelle Lou, Executive Editor Richard Chess, and Editorial Page Editor Madeline Lutwyche of The Emory Wheel, the student newspaper.  If all of them are inline with groupthink requisites, then I shall hear nothing at all… or perhaps a little ad hominem.  Will the student editors possess the independence and courage to publish it?  And how about the Times?   Full disclosure:  I am not a Nazi.  I do not believe in socialism.  During my past career as gypsy college professor, I knew far too many Dr. PhDs in the Humanities to hold any respect at all for the title—I too hold a PhD.  Instead, my respect is held for the rare few staunch individuals on the left or right who not only brook, but encourage vigorous debate and freedom of speech…