An Arizona State University
professor is embroiled in controversy after a journalism student
complained about an English course on race theory was announced.
Appearing on Fox News, Lauren Clark said she was disturbed by
the class offered in the Spring 2015 catalog because it singled out
white people as “the root cause of social injustices for this country.”
White supremacist groups, including the
National Youth Front — an arm of the white nationalist organization
American Freedom Party— were awakened and objected to a class called
“Race Theory & the Problem of Whiteness.” According to Talking Points Memo,
Professor Lee Bebout has been subjected to death threats and other
menacing messages after his personal contact information and photos of
his mixed-race family were shared on message boards.
New Jersey-based Angelo John Gage, a
prior service Marine who chairs the NYF, called Bebout’s course “racist”
and a clear indication that white people were again being victimized.
“We’re an oppressed majority,” he said, quizzically. “But we’re becoming
a minority, and that’s the concern I have with the future.”
He also maintained that his group is
non-violent and not behind the flurry of e-mail threats sent to the
professor. “We’re pressing on [the university] because what they’re
doing is completely racist and hypocritical.” He questioned why ASU did
not offer similar studies about a “blackness problem” or a “Jewishness
problem.”
ASU defended the course and in a
statement said the “problem of whiteness” class would “examine how
people talk about – or avoid talking about – race in the contemporary
United States.” It also defended the course as “designed to empower
students to confront the difficult and often thorny issues that surround
us today and reach thoughtful conclusions rather than display gut
reactions.”
No comments:
Post a Comment