Memo from the PC police: "African-American" now offensive

You can't make this stuff up. Not the Bee reports that super-woke Brandeis University has updated its widely mocked list of "violent" and "identity-based" terminology ahead of the start of its fall semester.

Added to the compendium of politically incorrect words and phrases that must not be uttered on the Brandeis campus is the term "African-American".

What's wrong with that? Here's what the Brandeis PC police say: "For Black folks born in the United States, hyphenating their identity can be interpreted as othering. Some folks do prefer to use African-American, particularly in connection to their ancestral roots, while others may identify with other ethnicities. We recommend using Black as a default, but being open to adjusting if asked to."

Walt would like to know: What's "othering"? Does it mean identifying someone as different, when they (more or less) obviously are different? Is it a form of bullying? "Hey, you! You're not 'same'! You must be 'other'!" I guess that can cut in any direction. I would expect to be "othered" if I strolled through the South Side of Lori Lightfoot's Chicago. I don't know if it would happen at Brandeis. Maybe I just won't go there!

Kamala Harris: about as Black as Barack Obama

Much is being made by the Dumbocrats and the running dogs of the liberal media about the supposed "Blackness" of Kamala Harris, the one hoping Joe Biden gets elected and then dies. But, as Walt has pointed out in "Parsing the blackness of Kamala Harris" (WWW 28/8/20), Ms Harris ain't all dat Black!

She is not the first "African-American" politician to be painted as more black than is the case. [I notice you restrained yourself from saying "touched with the tar brush". Ed.] Here's a short excerpt from Obama's America, by Dinesh D'Souza (Regnery 2012).

From the liberal side: he is the first African-American president. This is probably the most common way that Obama is understood. It is certainly the way that Obama biographer David Remnick understood him in his admiring book, The Bridge. Yet there are others who insist that Obama is not really black. That's because he never sat at a segregated lunch counter, nor are any of his ancestors descended from slaves.

This is in sharp contrast with Michelle Obama, who traces her roots back to a Carolina slave plantation. Her husband, however, grew up in Hawaii and Indonesia with multiple visits to Kenya, Indonesia and Pakistan. By his own achowledgment, he didn't live the typical Black American experience.

Interestingly, as president, Obama has shown virtually no interest in black issues, from affirmative action to hate crimes to inner-city poverty. He ignores those issues, raising the hackles of black activists like Tavis Smiley, Ishmael Reed, Michael Eric Dyson and Cornel West.

Reed charges, "It's obvious by now that Barack Obama is treating black Americans like one treats a demented uncle, brought out from his room to be ridiculed and scolded before company from time to time." West contends that Obama "doesn't care about the black poor.... His policies are generating misery amongst poor people, disproportionately black and brown." West terms Obama's policies "the new Jim Crow."

Let's see. "Ancestors descended from slaves": not in Ms Harris' family tree. "Never sat at a segregated lunch counter": nope, nor any other lunch counter, probably. And as a state prosecutor in California, she usually sat on the other side of the courtroom from the black folks. Walt, along with all those black activists, can hardly wait for Kamala Harris to expound at length on how she has "lived the typical black American experience."

Parsing the blackness of Kamala Harris

Make no mistake. The 2020 election, more than any election since the Glorious War of the Secession, is going to be about race. Nothing else. The notion that the US of A somehow became "postracial" with the election of Barack Hussein Obama is an illusion, or should I say delusion of the guilt-ridden liberals who are wilfully oblivious to the onset of a racialized civil war.

I have been thinking about the imminence of an us-vs-them war while reading Dr Randall Kennedy's The Persistence of the Color Line (Vintage Books 2011), a critical examination of racial politics and the Obama presidency. Dr Kennedy was Michael R. Klein Professor at Harvard Law School, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a member of the American Philosophical Association. He is no "Uncle Tom", nor is he an African-American incapable of seeing any fault in any Black politician. His book, which I recommend, "offers an incisive view of Obama's triumphs and travails, his strengths and weaknesses, as they pertain to the troubled historyof race in America."

Dr Kennedy begins with an examination of Mr Obama's self-identification as "black" and "African-American" -- a claim from which (the author says) he rarely wavered in spite of the "birther" controversy and a life story far removed from the typical black "lived experience" (to use the current buzzphrase). The more I read about the ex-President's life history, the more parallels I saw with the back story of Kamala Harris, who is now being touted as the first "woman of colour" to run for the nomination of a major American party.*

Two weeks ago, in "What kind of 'American' is Kamala Harris", I questioned the Dem nominee's self-identification as "African-American". Even then, the (((controlled media))) and others fearful of Ms Harris being thought too black were pointing out that she could also be called an "Asian American", or, better, just a "woman of colour". Not really black, y'understand, just, errr, non-white. So let's do a comparison between the Veep wannabe and the Prez.

Like Kamala Harris, Barack Hussein Obama had a black father. Neither father was American. Obama père was African, from Kenya. Ms Harris's father was Jamaican. Both black fathers bailed out on their non-black partners when their progeny were just kids, leaving the baby mamas to raise the kids alone.

Thanks to the efforts of their mothers, both Mr Obama and Ms Harris spent some of their formative years outside of the USA, going to elite private schools where the majority of their classmates and friends were non-black. Unlike the majority of African-Americans, both went on to university and earned degrees in law. Arguably, neither of them had what talk-show host Tavis Smiley, quoted by Dr Kennedy, called "the quintessential black experience in America." Their "lived experiences" were unlike those of the majority of minorities who voted for them.

And yet, both Mr Obama and Ms Harris claim, with pride, to be "African-American". But here, according to Dr Kennedy, is the acid test, or rather the litmus test, which the Prez passes and Ms Harris... does not. Barack Hussein Obama married Michelle Robinson, a black woman. Ms Harris married Douglas Emhoff, an attorney who happens to be, errr, white.

Why is this important? The author of The Persistence of the Color Line (who, let us remember, is black) writes:
Given the dismal state of the marriage market for black women, the shrinking number of black married couples, and the perception that successful black men often marry outside their race, Barack Obama's marriage has won for him large amounts of goodwill among blacks. 

Lawrence Otis Graham, another African-American Harvard Law School alumnus, memorably highlights the importance he attaches to the marital choices of fellow blacks. Nothing that he and his friends regularly engage in "race checking", Graham confides:
We flip through glowing profiles in People, Ebony, or Business Week quietly praising the latest black trailblazer or role model. Then we look for what we consider the final determinant of this person's black identity -- that thing that will allow us to bestow our unqualified appreciation. We look for the litmus test of lyalty to the race: the photo of the person's spouse or significant other"

For some blacks, nothing was more important as a clue to Obamas's racial loyalty than his demonstrated commitment to "a sister". For them, few political images packed more of an emotional wallop than seeingr Obama onstage in the affectionate emgrace of his beautiful black wife and their two adorable children.

In a footnote (p. 81), Dr Kennedy asks us to "Consider the following observation: 'Why do black people love Obama? In large part it's because of the dark-skinned woman on his arm.... Had Barack married a white woman, hiw candidacy would've never gotten off the ground with black people." ... "He may only be half black but he is married to a black woman and his children are black. That says a lot to me because he could have married a white woman...."

Ed. had to search a bit to get information about Ms Harris's spouse. The Dumbocrats aren't exactly putting him out front and centre. It will be interesting to see how often he appears with their V-P nominee, and how his non-blackness... and her black(ish)ness... play out on the campaign trail.

* This is not true. Dr Kennedy points out (pp. 57-58) that Shirley Anita Chisholm, the first really black woman elected to Congress, presented herself as a presidential candidate in 1972. She never posed a real threat to the Democratic Party front-runners and figured only marginally at the convention that nominated George McGovern, who went on to lose to Richard Nixon.

Apartheid comes to USA: UConn opens segregated dorm

We begin a new month with a story which has to be true, because you couldn't make up something this ironic. Half a century after LBJ's great "civil rights", designed to end once and for all discrimination against anyone on he basis of race and ensure equality for all -- especially as regard accommodation in housing -- a blacks-only dormitory is being built at the University of Connecticut, with the official endorsement of that school's "progressive" authorities.

The segregated accommodation -- separate but equal, you understand -- will be called "SCHOLA2RS House". "SCHOLA2RS" stands for the "Scholistic [sic] House Of Leaders who are African Amercian [sic] Researchers and Scholars". Of course these "schola2rs" have a website. Here's a screen grab.

You may think that a couple of them don't look, errr, African-American, but you don't have to be black to get into the dorm. You only have to "identify as African American/Black". You know, like Rachel Dolezal, the former head of the NAACP in Spokane WA, a white girl who somehow felt black.

You might wonder why, in an America where (according to the Prez) great strides have been made in overcoming racism, a "black living space" would be not just tolerated but deemed a necessity. Dr. Erik M. Hines, Faculty Director and Assistant Professor in the Department of Educational Psychology at UConn, has the answer. The good doctor says it's because blacks do so poorly at academics that he believes they will do better "in an African-American environment."

Walt kids you not. He really said that, and somehow managed to escape being hauled in front of a "human rights" commission. What would have happened if Mark Steyn had said it? But Dr. Hines is no Mark Steyn! Dr. Hines is a certified (or certifiable) progressive. He explained that "African-American males graduate at a lower rate than their peers."

He went on to say that SCHOLA2RS House is "a space for African-American men to one, come together and validate their experiences that they may have on campus. [sic] umber two, it’s also a space where they can have conversation and also talk with individuals who come from the same background who share the same experience."

Translated into plain English, Dr. Hines is actually sayings that just being in the presence of whites somehow makes blacks do poorly at school, and that the only way this can be remedied is for blacks to have their own dorm. Need we add that all the UConn students and academics who turned out late last year to protest what they called "white racism" have remained completely silent on this project, which reeks of black racism.

Thanks to Agent 3 for alerting us to the original report in The New Observer.