CONGRATULATIONS TO F.I.R.E.: The University of Delaware has abandoned its controversial “thought reform” program.
I had printed out all the online texts that were provided by Delaware University and gave them to the Black members of my family. My Aunt Carmen (PHD in Math from Columbia), was affronted by the material, though, she may not be the best indicator of the absolute rubbish of their content, she never went for the whole “Your a Black Woman, you have no place here” kind of mentality the producers of these booklets presumed.
She found it laughable to assume that Black people could not hold prejudiced thoughts, and she was really annoyed at the assumption that set asides were just about a mandatory item for race relations. Oh Well. Anecdotally at least, race relations are pretty good.
ETA: MORE ON THE UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE, from Fritz Schranck.
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Anyone can hold such thoughts. It’s a problem when you use those thoughts to affect others. And yes Bill, both ways. Using it against people or for your cause.
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Of course. In these cases, race is just the vehicle.
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But to be honest, I have met more than a few people who are racist, they were of the pink color, and only a small handful of Black people who were racist. It might be the proportion of population though and in the end, when things are normalized for percentages, it might work out as a wash.
LOL. When I was running a large BBS in Manhattan, there was this lady who was the most racist person I had ever dealt with, she hated white people, not just people who did her wrong, but every, single person who was white. The most vitriolic stuff would come out of her mouth and no matter how reasonable you were with her, it would be returned as a hate filled diatribe. Despite that I enjoyed her conversation, as she was so rational in her hate, and obviously, she spent all of her time engaged in finding evidence to back up all of it.
So, I am getting rid of a bunch of hardware, I had just upgraded the CPU’s and I was giving them away to users. She contacts me. Even the contact message was pretty hateful, I was the white devil, I had economically enslaved her people, I had had a part in inventing AID’s to kill the Black man. But, she wanted a computer.
I had her over to the brownstone and on meeting her was amazed to see this little old gray haired Black lady. Looking at her, you could not guess she was so filled with hate. She refused to shake my hand, but was happy to look over the computers. Selected the one she wanted, it was a Compaq server (Still a pretty good machine at the time!) and went to lift it. Nope, she couldn’t budge it. I stood by for a solid 5 minutes as she tried attacking it from different directions. I finally asked her if she would like a hand, and she thought about it for a solid 30 seconds, I could see the internal struggle going on. Finally she agreed to take help and I did. I wound up grabbing a cab and taking it for her (and her) up to 176th street, where I carried it into her place. She had “Kill Whitey” posters and Malcom X posters and Black Panther posters covering her walls.
The upshot of the story, she offered me a glass of water and asked if I could help her setup the computer. I took her up on the water and we spent an hour or so chatting about the world in general, she had seen a lot in her life and had some excellent stories to share.
After that, she was still the fire brand on the Boards, but she was pretty nice to me, when I had my first child, she made the trek down to 19th street and brought my wife flowers. Ah, memories.
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Ah, the wonders of a personal experience. That’s the truth that can’t be denied. Funny you mention Malcolm X. Too bad he died soon after he found out that all white men weren’t the devil.
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