Cornell Black Student Group Complains: Too many Africans
If I made up stories about the lunacy of the Left, I couldn’t compete with the truth.
In yet another showcase of crazy, Leftists blacks now complain that there are too many Africans at their school.
You read that right. So-called “African-Americans” at Cornell complained about Africans. This came in the form of a letter from “Black Students United” to school administrators.
The student complained,
“The Black student population at Cornell disproportionately represents international or first-generation African or Caribbean students,” claimed the hand-wringing letter.
I can’t help but laugh as blacks in America now see to find racism in admitting the most “African” of blacks into school. How exactly do you sell that plight to Leftists?
After all, Leftists love their imports, particularly African refugees. And Africa has its refugees, as people from the Dark Continent flee from Rwanda, Nigeria, the Congo, Darfur, and other hot spots, pardon the pun.
Perhaps at Cornell there just isn’t enough racial strife to go around? Did Cornell put a quota on black suffering? I do offer this suggestion: take something more from the white Cornell students. I’m sure they would happily give up some white privilege to accommodate black students’ angst.
Further ironies abound.
Before getting to the brewing racism of African versus African-American, the Black Student Union address the racism of Cornell, in general.
“I would found an institution where any person can find instruction in any study”. With this bold statement, Ezra Cornell declared an idea of a diverse and inclusive school, far ahead of its time. However, 152 years later, that university struggles to uphold this ideal. While Cornell University takes pride in its academic and demographic diversity, the campus environment does not reflect these views.
We attend a university where our professors, who are by all accounts scholars in their various fields, undervalue our intellectual contributions to our coursework; where they teach that communities of color have little or nothing to offer than a brief honorable mention on their syllabus. We attend a university where our peers believe we do not belong here; where they decry the usefulness and necessity of affirmative action; where they claim we segregate ourselves because we lean on each other to survive. We attend a university that is obsessed with the optics of our black and brown faces but is indifferent to the justice we seek.
This is not an indictment of white people; this is an indictment of a system that perpetuates white supremacy and shelters our peers under the warm blanket of white privilege – all the while, we are left to freeze in our frigid reality of racist epithets, essentialist curriculum, and apathetic governance. In post-racial America, our classmates call us n*ggers from their pickup trucks in broad daylight. In post-racial America, we are berated by airborne bottles on our own campus…we are told we have a chip on our shoulder. We are called everything but our name. Above all else, in post-racial America we are bombarded by the deafening silence that allows the centuries-old hum of white supremacy to grow louder. Silence is violence.
The want of Ezra Cornell was for students to “find instruction in any study”. Apparently, the study for black students is the study of racism.
Is Cornell an Historically Black College or University? I think not.
The students deem self-segregation, essentially “leaning on each other for survival.” What a cop out for saying, “I refuse to assimilate or to have my knowledge and thoughts tested by people other than blacks.”
Next, the students–focused on blackness–accuse the university of doing the same. I suspect that Cornell prefers that black students do what other students do…learn.
Nice touch, the “calling us n*ggers from their pickup trucks”. If that rings a bell, that’s exactly what the claim was by black students at the University of Missouri that got the top two administrators to resign at that institution. Who could overlook the symbolism of the “pickup trucks”. By the way, was it one truck or ten trucks these black students heard the dogwhistle of racism? I declare there were no trucks. Nor were there any Confederate flag-waving Southerners driving these imaginary truck(s).
Then the black students mention the “deafening silence” of white supremacy and allude to the violence therein. Because though these blacks have never experienced water cannons blasting their skin like sandpaper, nor have they felt the bite of German shepherds, they understand racism. These kids have never seen or certainly encountered “Whites Only” signs, nor have they felt the snap of a whip across their backs. Nevertheless, they are oppressed, right?
And let’s not forget their real grievance with their Ivy League plantation owners: they want fewer Africans, and more African-Americans.
