A Good Try

In a closing argument as a defense attorney, John Adams once argued "Facts are stubborn things. They cannot be altered by our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions.”

Fact #1: There is nothing which more thoroughly assumes today's Republican Party than its campaign against voter fraud.

In the cagily termed "audit" it conducted of the 2020 presidential vote in Maricopa, County, a group of Arizona Republicans

A group of Arizona Republicans engaged a private cybersecurity firm, whose "CEO is a known election conspiracy theorist," to conduct an "audit" of the 2000 presidential vote in Maricopa County, which produces by far the greatest number of Democratic votes in the state. Nonetheless

Despite the obvious partisanship of the audit, they found 99 more votes for Biden and 261 fewer votes for Trump — a negligible difference which nonetheless nullifies any claims that Trump should have won the county. Yet Trump has falsely reiterated that they found evidence of fraud and many Republicans in other states, such as Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, are pushing for similar audits.

Democrats and even many Republicans have spoken out against these partisan audits. Nonetheless, Trump and his supporters continue to push for them and perpetuate the lie that the 2020 election was stolen. In fact, according to a CNN poll, six out of 10 Republicans said that believing that Trump would win the 2020 election was a significant part of what being Republican meant to them.

Earlier this year, Senate Republicans blocked consideration of the pro-democracy Freedom to Vote Act because- well, it was freedom to vote.  Then, at the insistence, and assistance, of West Virginia's center-right Democratic senator Joe Manchin, the bill was weakened and transformed into the For the People Act, which was successfully filibustered by the GOP.

The John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act passed the House, with support from zero (0) Republicans, a truly impressive wall of opposition to a bill named after one of their recently deceased and allegedly revered colleagues. Even Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger voted against it because, well, they are Republicans. On Wednesday, November 3, that bill drowned in GOP filibuster.

A group of Arizona Republicans in April had engaged a private cybersecurity firm, whose "CEO is a known election conspiracytheorist," to conduct an "audit" of the 2000 presidential vote in Maricopa County, which produces by far the greatest number of Democratic votes in the state. Nonetheless

Despite the obvious partisanship of the audit, they found 99 more votes for Biden and 261 fewer votes for Trump — a negligible difference which nonetheless nullifies any claims that Trump should have won the county. Yet Trump has falsely reiterated that they found evidence of fraud and many Republicans in other states, such as Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, are pushing for similar audits.

Democrats and even many Republicans have spoken out against these partisan audits. Nonetheless, Trump and his supporters continue to push for them and perpetuate the lie that the 2020 election was stolen. In fact, according to a CNN poll, six out of 10 Republicans said that believing that Trump would win the 2020 election was a significant part of what being Republican meant to them.

Most Republican-controlled states since the election of 2020 have enacted laws to make voting more difficult, and others are trying, though there is virtually no voter fraud.  Roughly eight years ago

24 journalism students at twelve universities reviewed some 2,000 public records and identified just six cases of voter impersonation between 2000 and 2012. • Under Republican President George W. Bush, the U.S. Justice Department searched for voter fraud. But in the first three years of the program, just 26 people were convicted or pled guilty to illegal registration or voting. Out of 197,056,035 votes cast in the two federal elections held during that period, the rate of voter fraud was a miniscule 0.00000132 percent.

 A few years later, the Carnegie-Knight News21 initiative

reviewed cases in Arizona, Ohio, Georgia, Texas and Kansas, where politicians have expressed concern about voter fraud, and found hundreds of allegations but few prosecutions between 2012 and 2016.

Attorneys-general in those states successfully prosecuted 38 cases, though other cases may have been litigated at the county level. At least one-third of those cases involved nonvoters, such as elections officials or volunteers. None of the cases prosecuted was for voter impersonation.

Reputed audits done in several states following GOP whining about the 2020 presidential election revealed similar results.

Voter impersonation fraud, the target of suppressive election laws and subject of GOP ire, is virtually non-existent. But the Republican Party is obsessed with proving to the American public that it does exist. And so it shouldn't be surprising that, as fact #2

The 17-year-old son of Virginia Gov.-elect Glenn Youngkin (R) tried to cast a ballot in Tuesday’s gubernatorial election twice despite being too young to vote, Fairfax County officials said in a statement released Friday.

The statement, which identified the teen as Youngkin’s 17-year-old son, emphasized that he did not end up voting and stated that he did not violate any state election laws. The Washington Post is not publishing the teen’s first name because he is a juvenile and has not been charged with a crime.

The teen walked into the voting precinct inside the Great Falls Library on Tuesday, presenting his driver’s license to election officials when asked for a proof of identity, according to Jennifer Chanty, the precinct captain there.

Chanty said in an interview with The Post that she realized who the teen was when she looked at his ID. Upon seeing his age, she said she informed him that he must be at least 18 to be eligible to vote in Virginia. Under Virginia’s election laws, the only time 17-year-olds can vote is in a primary election if they’ll be 18 by the time of the general election.

She said she offered to register him to vote for the next election, but the teen declined and walked out.

About 20 minutes later, the teen returned, insisting that he be allowed to vote, saying that a friend who was also 17 had been allowed to cast a ballot, Chanty said.

“I told him, ‘I don’t know what occurred with your friend, but you are not registered to vote today. You’re welcome to register, but you will not be voting today,’ ” Chanty, a Democrat, recalled saying. A copy of Chanty’s notes she took at the time showed she recorded the encounters as occurring in the morning.

There is virtually no voter fraud in the USA Despite the constant, ongoing efforts of prosecutors, Republican think tanks, Republican pundits and donor class, and the rest of the GOP machinery to prove to the American people voter fraud is rampant, it barely exists. Yet, of all the young people in the state of Virginia, the son of a Republican standing for governor is found to have tried to vote illegally.

This might well have been a Project Veritas operation, if it were a little less clumsy. If young Mr. Youngkin had succeeded, the GOP would flooded conventional and social media with the news (proof!) that Democrats win elections because of massive voter fraud. And because he was caught in the act, the office of the incoming governor gets to blame it on Youngkin's "political opponents." Whomever in the GOP orbit was behind it, the ploy should not have been unexpected, a clever idea poorly executed.

There are coincidences, and there are coincidences. This is neither.

 

 

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A Party Not Out Of Control

Something significant is occurring in Republican politics, although as the Buffalo Springfield would have put it, "what it is ain't exactly clear."

You might remember when in January, 2019 then-Representative Steve King of Iowa was removed by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of committee assignments following

bipartisan condemnation of King’s recent interview that appeared to lament that the term “white supremacist” is considered offensive.

McCarthy announced that the House Republican Steering Committee – which oversees committee assignments – met Monday night and made a decision that King “will not be serving on committees in this Congress.”

The move is just the latest reaction to King’s comments, which have outraged both sides of the aisle, and spurred calls for more actions against the conservative Iowa congressman, who has a lengthy history of incendiary comments related to race and immigration.

Such decisive action by the GOP minority has not become the norm.  In May, one of its members, U.S. Representative Marjorie Taylor

Greene tweeted an article about a grocery store chain allowing vaccinated employees to go maskless and wear a vaccination logo displayed on their name badge. Greene compared the vaccination logo to the yellow Star of David badges that Jews were forced to wear by Nazi Germany.

It's not the first time Greene made remarks comparing rules on COVID-19 masking to the atrocities of the Holocaust, where Nazis killed 6 million Jews.

Just days ago, she appeared on a conservative podcast and said Pelosi's decision to continue masking requirements for House members on the chamber floor is "exactly the type of abuse" Jews experienced under the Nazi regime.

Greene was stripped of her committee assignments, but only after a resolution introduced by a Democratic congressman passed with the unanimous support of Democrats and eleven- 11 of 210- Republicans.  

On Monday, following a visit to the D.C. Central Detention Facility, Representative Greene posted a thread of 17 tweets praising not only the January 6 insurrections- no surprise there- but also Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam for opposing Covid-19 vaccination and supporting Ivermectin as a treatment for the coronavirus. 

Minister Farrakhan long ago became known for reprehensible remarks, including this from 2006:

These false Jews promote the filth of Hollywood that is seeding the American people and the people of the world and bringing you down in moral strength. … It’s the wicked Jews, the false Jews, that are promoting lesbianism, homosexuality. It’s the wicked Jews, false Jews, that make it a crime for you to preach the word of God, then they call you homophobic!

Charming.

It's unlikely action will be taken against Greene, as it is improbable that Representative Paul Gosar of Arizona will face consequences even though on Sunday he posted a

roughly 90-second video (whch) is an altered version of a Japanese anime series, interspersed with shots of border patrol officers and migrants at the southern U.S. border.

During one roughly 10-second section of the video, animated characters whose faces have been replaced with Gosar and fellow Republican Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Lauren Boebert of Colorado are seen fighting other animated characters.

In one scene, Gosar's character is seen striking the one made to look like Ocasio-Cortez in the back of the neck with a sword.

Twitter later attached a warning to the tweet saying it "violated the Twitter Rules about hateful conduct. However, Twitter has determined that it may be in the public's interest for the Tweet to remain accessible."

It is tempting to suggest cynically that King went down and Greene and Gosar will not because the latter two are among members of the House of Representatives who reportedly collaborated with the insurrectionists plotting the attempted coup of January 6. However, two other explanations are more plausible.

After he was cut down a peg or two by his fellow House Republicans, King went on to lose a primary as his opponents "honed in on his waning influence in Washington." McCarthy may have observed that drawing attention to the controversial remarks and general repulsiveness of a member of your caucus is an effective way to castrate politically that member while drawing further attention to the party's troubles. Better to let the matter blow over.

But there is another possible explanation, one which would, not coincidentally, line up with one of the themes of this blog.  

Greene is a brazen anti-Semite but even though it tolerates her, the GOP has somewhat immunized itself against charges of anti-Semitism because of the extreme and unwavering support it has given to the Israeli government the past several years. Additionally, Democratic hands are not completely clean on this. (See Omar, Ilhan; Tlaib, Rashida.)

Gosar has merely promoted the assassination of one of his colleagues. However, that is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a boogeyman of the right, so no biggie.

By contrast, Steve King, in condoning white supremacy, was legitimately characterized as a racist while his party is vulnerable to the charge of racism. Like their voters, GOP politicians do not like to be called racists in instances in which the charge is justified, and in the greater number in which it is not.

Admittedly, the Law of Parsimony would suggest merely that the Republican Party, loathsome a couple of years ago, is more so now.  While an easy and reasonable explanation, others should not be readily dismissed.

 

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Tweet Of The Day- The W Word

As it's usually meant, I'm less "woke" than is Soledad O'Brien. But she does ask a good question.

Wtf does she even mean by “woke”. Literally—what does that mean? Our political reporters are frequently pretty awful. https://t.co/9ExOgh1eyT

— Soledad O'Brien (@soledadobrien) November 7, 2021

Senator Warner's complete answer on CNN"s "State of the Union" was

Listen, I don't support defund the police.

Matter of fact, I think you saw Democrats all around who were successful -- the new mayor of New York, who you're going to have on, has talked about investing additionally in our police forces. Are there ways that we need to make that policing more community-based?

Absolutely. The notion of what happened in Virginia -- there is not a school in Virginia that teaches Critical Race Theory. But the governor-elect, Governor Youngkin, stirred up the cultural pot there.

Youngkin did stir up the cultural pot and there are ways in which policing can be made more community-based. However,  Bash didn't ask Warner whether he supports defunding police and "I don't support defund the police" is a lousy answer .

It was a lousy answer because Democrats do not publicly support defund the police.  (I'm getting tired of writing that sentence.) By responding to the "woke" question by stating at the top "I don't support defund the police," the Virginian is implying that Democrats, who are frequently excoriated as being "woke," do support defunding the police.

The best reply would have been, as O'Brien implies, "what do you mean by 'woke,' Dana?"  When reporters confront a Democrat with a gotcha question, the proper response is to throw it back at them. That's especially important when a colloquialism like "woke" is invoked. It may mean one thing to Bash, another to her viewers, still another to Warner. We simply don't know.

Yet, there is yet another reason to turn the question around on the inquisitor. The dirty little secret is that the dominant factor in  "wokeness," is race. Thus, if Bash were asked what she meant by "woke," she'd probably shrink from answering. If she instead did acknowledge that race is the primary component, she'd be in the uncomfortable position of appearing to question the importance of racial justice. That is a hole no one from CNN would dig herself. No one.

There seems to be an understanding between broadcast media and Democrats.  Reporters and talk show hosts are expected to ask whatever questions they wish, sometimes to the effect of reinforcing the media's Democrats in Disarray theme. They allow Democrats (as they do with Republicans) plenty of time for an answer.  In return, Democrats are never to question the validity or objectivity of the question or the questioner, while they are permitted to repeat politely their talking points.

These are the talking points of the individual, not of the Party, lest a member of Congress such as Mark Warner suggest that Democrats, as a whole, oppose defunding the police.  That must not be done- it might be viewed as partisan, impolite, and, well, God forbid.

Newsmen and newswomen realize they are not allies of the Democratic Party. Too few Democrats realize that and until they do, they still will refuse to defend their Party against media personalities more interested in soundbites than in clarity.

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Guilt And Elections

At first glance, it seems dissonant that we elected, then re-elected, a black Democrat as President, a few years later electing a racist to the office, But only at first glance.

When right-wing Winsome Sears gave her speech Tuesday after winning the lieutenant governor's race in Virginia, she minimized racial disparities in the USA. The black Republican, who views her own victory as affirmation of racial equality in society, declared "we can live where we want, we can eat where we want, we own the water fountains. We have had a black president elected not once, but twice."

The last remark echoed a comment made to Axios in June, 2020 by White House advisor Larry Kudlow, who denied the existence of systemic racism in the USA, maintaining "you have as evidence of that view, our first black president, just a few years back, won two terms, and I regarded that with pride as an American."

I'll go out on a limb and speculate that both Kudlow and Sears voted against Barack Obama- as Sears would put it, "not once, but twice."

In an opinion piece recently in The New York Times, African-American linguistics professor John McWhorter defended the statement in which  Condoleezza Rice criticized critical race theory with “I don’t have to make white kids feel bad for being white.” McWhorter wrote

What’s more, I don’t completely trust white guilt. It lends itself too easily to virtue signaling, which overlaps only partially, and sometimes not at all, with helping people. I recall a brilliant, accomplished, kind white academic of a certain age who genially told me — after I published my first book on race, “Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America,” two decades ago — “John, I get what you mean, but I reserve my right to be guilty.” I got what he meant, too, and did not take it ill. But still, note that word “right.” Feeling guilty lent him something personally fulfilling and signaled that he was one of the good guys without obligating him further. The problem is that one can harbor that feeling while not actually doing anything to bring about change on the ground.

The problem is that one can harbor that feeling while not actually doing anything to bring about change on the ground. That has played out, dangerously, in the past thirteen years. Four years after John Kerry was defeated and eight years before Hillary Clinton would be defeated, Barack Obama was elected President with the assistance of moderate and/or independent white voters trying to assuage their guilt.

After a reasonably successful first term, Obama was re-elected, but by a lesser margin. The next Democratic candidate was handed a loss, in part by independent-minded voters whose guilt already was assuaged. They had, Kudlow and Sears would argue, eight years earlier proven that neither they nor their country is racist. Mission accomplished, they were now free to  usher out of power the party that brought them that black president.

McWhorter was not in any way referring to the presidential election of 2008. But as he understands, white guilt can be powerful and pervasive- and it can help explain more than the controversy over critical race theory. 

 

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Education At The Forefront (Or Not)

Yascha Mounk, a professor of international affairs described here as  "one of the world's leading experts on the crisis of liberal democracy and the rise of populism," emphasizes the primacy of education in the defeat of Democrat Terry McAuliffe by Republican Glenn Youngkin in Virginia. He argues that he initially "struggled to generate any enthusiasm for his campaign" but

Then Youngkin started to home in on a new theme: education. Responding to widespread anger among parents across the commonwealth, he lambasted public schools for failing to reopen for in-person classes for most of the pandemic. Then, capitalizing on growing unease about curricular content—which parents who were home with their kids could eavesdrop on via Zoom—he warned that teachers were trying to indoctrinate students with radical political ideas, collectively referring to them as “critical race theory.”

The pivot worked. Voters usually consider education to be one of many important issues and tend to trust Democrats to handle it better than Republicans. This was the case in Virginia as late as September, when voters who prioritized education favored McAuliffe by 33 points. But, especially after McAuliffe said, “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach,” the wind turned. A week before the election, a Washington Post poll found that a plurality of voters in Virginia ranked education as the election’s most important topic. Among those who did, Youngkin was now up by nine points.

Other polls taken in the run-up to the election provide further evidence that Youngkin owes his victory to his focus on education. According to one poll taken in the week before the election, for example, Youngkin led McAuliffe by three percentage points among all likely voters. But among K–12 parents, the Republican led the Democrat by 15 points.

Mounk is blowing smoke up our posteriors. That is not evidence because "education" means different things for different people. For Glenn Youngkin, who advocated in his closing argument an immediate and dramatic increase in charter schools, neglecting to mention that would mean big profits for private companies at taxpayers' expense.  (However, some people are easily fooled.)

Not so, though, is Will Bunch, who wrote

If the American voter truly thought that education is a front-burner issue, we would have seen a robust debate in 2021 not over anti-racism instruction but over the Democrats’ failure to enact free public community college — which over time would reduce the education gap in U.S. politics because millions more could become better educated. I find it scandalous that while voters and the media were going gonzo over “critical race theory” that’s not actually being taught in grade schools, no attention was paid to California’s Long Beach City College allowing 70 students to live in their cars, because they can’t afford tuition and a roof over their heads at the same time.

That's because, as Bunch recognizes, this wasn't primarily about education. One thing which Bunch does not understand- and there is very little- if this were truly about education and Youngkin et al. were determined to keep schools open, they'd say: open schools and ditch the masks because they interfere with learning.

But they don't say that, because it wasn't primarily about education- or at lest not learning, which is nary a concern for the many conservatives who disconnect education from learning.

Bunch emphasizes the lamentable, but real, growing support for GOP politicians among the white working class, especially prominent in Youngkin's victory. He notes "In many ways, today’s so-called culture war issues become a proxy for much deeper anxieties and resentments over who has social status in modern America, and why."

As Bunch seems to realize, those resentments are not necessarily the product of "white privilege," nor are they manifested in what may blithely be characterized as "racism." Yet, it is only five years since Donald Trump was elected President, fewer than eighteen months since millions of people marched in the streets against systemic racism, and only one year since Donald Trump was almost re-elected. It would be comforting to conclude that centuries of American racial history magically vanished. It would be naive to conclude, in a time when critical race theory suddenly became front and center, that a concern about "education"  is prompting the stunning Republican surge.

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When They Go Low, We Must Go Lower

Democrats had a bad day on Tuesday.  Republicans exploited critical race theory, a tactic deplorable not because critical race theory needs to be taught to youngsters, because it doesn't. but instead because the ginned-up hysteria convinced many voters (contrary to evidence) that CRT is coming to a school near them.

The strategy recommended by two pundits, one (RB) a political strategist, the other (AJ) a chief of staff for then-Senator Harry Reid, differ from another.

CRT is coming to every House race in 2022. Dems cannot ignore race and talk about more popular issues because Republicans will force race into the conversation, as they’ve been doing since Nixon. Dems need a strategy that isn’t: whistle past the graveyard then blame progressives. https://t.co/p17yIG5kdF

— Adam Jentleson 🎈 (@AJentleson) November 3, 2021

Republicans will force race into the conversation, though 8-9 months from now it probably will be something other than critical race theory. Moreover, blaming progressives is not only unhelpful, but unjustified.

I realize this won't be popular but the fact is, Republicans win by weaponizing racism & Democrats lose by obliging them the issue instead of launching their own culture war offenses on issues they can win via fear & emotion. Only fear can offset fear. https://t.co/BNuJVY1ZZK https://t.co/TO5SwNhJZr

— Rachel Bitecofer 📈🔭🍌 (@RachelBitecofer) November 3, 2021

Republicans do win by weaponizing racism and Democrats oblige them on the issue. However, while Jentleson advised Democrats to ignore race, Bitecofer recommends they launch their own culture war.

It might seem to the culturally leftist, racially tolerant that Democratic politicians and pundits are ignoring race. But be assured that white people, of whom I have been one for several decades, do not believe that Democrats have been ignoring race.

They heard Democrats, recognizing and emphasizing racial bias in policing, loud and clear in the summer and fall of 2020. Polls then indicated that voters were responding to George Floyd protests and acknowledging discrimination throughout American society.

Or at least that's what it seemed.  Pew found in June, 2020 that the vast majority of voters supported the "Black Lives Matter movement." A few months later, support dropped to a small majority, where it remains.

Many whites no doubt interpreted the question as inquiring about support or opposition to the notion that black lives matter. Respondents were not asked whether they supported the Black Lives Matter protest but whether they agreed that black lives matter. You should not be surprised that a great many whites will not admit to a stranger or even an automated caller that they oppose black lives.

In a dirty little secret of American politics, most voters do not look wistfully upon the days of the George Floyd protests. They remember violence as greater than it was. And they hear Democratic heavyweights (such as House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn) scold Democrats for supporting "defunding the police." Few do, of course; but Clyburn and others inadvertently identify members of their own party with that unpopular position.

Bitecofer calls it "racism"; others may call it "fear" or simple opposition to protests which turned violent, not always instigated by the protestors themselves. This response is not going to come as in the old days, in a white sheet or with a governor denying an African-American admission to an institution.  It will come disguised (as it has already)- as discouragement about education or another high-minded issue.

Jentleson appears unaware that Democrats have been engaging on race. They have not been ignoring it, and it's clear to the American people (blacks and whites (and possibly others), which side they come down on. 

They come down on the side of- take your pick- racial justice or racial preferences. Black Americans, who constitute the base of the Democratic Party, know this. So do white Americans and, as Democrats in Virginia and New Jersey have discovered this week, they are not amused.

It's unsurprising that poor and working-class whites are especially displeased when they learn from unsympathetic, even condescending, liberals and progressives that they have benefitted unfairly from "white privilege." Opportunistic right-wing politicians have raised the specter of the spread of critical race theory, which examines American history not through the lens of class or truth but through race. And Democrats are amazed that they have lost so many white working-class voters.

One of the dirty little secrets of American politics is that most voters, whatever they tell pollsters, do not look wistfully upon the days of the George Floyd protests. Rather, they recall the violence surrounding them and respond emotionally when told by opportunistic right-wing politicians that their children will be subjected to critical race theory. Struggling economically, perhaps with health problems that they are economically ill-equipped to handle, they hear- or believe they hear- from some politicians, academics, and activists that they stand in the way of progress for blacks. 

When you're explaining, you're losing. Democrats will lose by emphasizing that critical race theory is taught only in college. They will lose worse if they take the advice of this comedian, who argues Democrats are "paying a price for looking the other way at the subtle (and not so subtle) racism of white suburban life for too long."

They have not been looking the other way. They have been harping on it. Engage voters even more on race, and the electoral problem Democrats face will only grow. Their best option is the one advocated by Rachel Bitecofer, who realizes Democrats must begin "launching their own culture war offenses on issues they can win via fear & emotion. Only fear can offset fear."

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Bringing The Hate

Bigotry can come from an individual of any ethnic group, from government, business, the public at large, academe, or anywhere. In this case (video below), it comes in a five minute-plus segment edited from a chat on The Root.

The professor of Women and Gender Studies at Rutgers University, regrettably the state university of New Jersey, did get one thing right, remarking "but I do think that all of us can sort of agree that a politics that says, like, "there are superior and inferior human beings just isn't the way to go."  Unfortunately, everything  else she says suggests that she doesn't believe that. Cooper continued

And that's the thing that white people don't trust us to do because are so corrupt, you know their thinking is morally and spiritually bankrupt about power, that they can't let-you know, they can't- they fear viscerally, existentially, that letting go of power because they cannot imagine there's another way to be. It's that you either dominate or are dominated.

Cooper doesn't not specify racists or Republicans or politicians, let alone name names of individuals determined to dominate. Bigots do not. Instead, it is "white people."  They're wealthy, they're poor, they're middle class. The only thing they may in common may be their whiteness.

And that they are- well, "so corrupt," the morally and spiritually bankrupt people of society. Moreover

and it's like, no, that's what white humans did, white human beings thought they're the world here, and we own it. Prior to that, black and brown people had been sailing across oceans, interacting with each other for centuries without subjugation, domination, and colonialism.

That's what the professor would like us to believe. However, history does not agree because, as an historian and former mayor of Ghana's capital city explains

Europeans weren’t going out and capturing Africans. They couldn’t — they got sick and died from illnesses like malaria. Some African ethnic groups went into business, warring with other groups so they could capture prisoners they sold as slaves to the Europeans. Amarteifio says they were organized and intentional about it.

“To pursue slavery successfully, you need a highly organized group because somebody has to go out there — somebody has to locate the victims; somebody has to lead an army there; somebody has to capture them, transport them to the selling centers; all the time, keeping an eye on them to make sure they don't revolt,” he said. “And then sell them, and move on.”

Someone often was black, truly an inconvenient truth proving that neither virtue nor vice resides in any one race alone. But aside from excusing the corporate and politically powerful- but I repeat myself- Cooper simply makes things up. She claims

It's not that white people don't know what they have done. They know. They fear there is no other way to be human than the way in which they are human, which is- so you talk to white people and you have a reckoning about it, they say stuff like "It's just human nature. If you all had this power, you would have done the same thing.

"It's just human nature- if you had all this power, you would have done the same thing: said no white person ever.  And again: it's the whole group of "white people," evil knowing what they have done while weak and cowering in fear.

It does no good to point out the obvious- that if any professor (white or otherwise) had made Cooper's arguments in reverse, she would have been promptly fired and probably blacklisted. Aside from whatever protection for hate speech there may be in the contract between the union and the college, Rutgers University is a public institution and the First Amendment of the US Constitution may be applicable. Moreover, cancel culture has gone far enough, and too far. 

Still, Rutgers University, which will retain Brittany Cooper without hesitation, does have a responsibility. It is responsible to declare that these remarks do not represent the college's views and that Ms. Cooper will remain a professor there as long as she fulfills the terms of her contract, and only because she fulfills the terms of her contract. If it does not- and we all know it will not- it will be a de facto endorsement of bigotry at a state university.

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