White Education Blogger ..... Fired for Calling Black Studies ‘Left-Wing Victimization Claptrap' [View all]

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White Education Blogger Naomi Schaefer Riley Fired for Calling Black Studies ‘Left-Wing Victimization Claptrap’
May 9, 2012 By Janet Shan 1 Comment


White Education Blogger Naomi Schaefer Riley Fired for Calling Black Studies Left Wing Victimization Claptrap


Naomi Schaefer Riley was fired after characterizing black studies as “left-wing victimization claptrap” from her blogging job at The Chronicle for Higher Education. Riley’s essay entitled ‘The Most Persuasive Case for Eliminating Black Studies? Just Read the Dissertations’ prompted a petition signed by 6,500 people calling for her dismissal from the Chronicle of Higher Education. The racially charged post was published on April 30, in response to an earlier article which listed the dissertation topics of five PhD students, which ranged from the history of black midwifery and housing policy.

You’ll have to forgive the lateness but I just got around to reading The Chronicle’s recent piece on the young guns of black studies. If ever there were a case for eliminating the discipline, the sidebar explaining some of the dissertations being offered by the best and the brightest of black-studies graduate students has made it. What a collection of left-wing victimization claptrap. The best that can be said of these topics is that they’re so irrelevant no one will ever look at them.

Then there is Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, author of “Race for Profit: Black Housing and the Urban Crisis of the 1970s.” Ms. Taylor believes there was apparently some kind of conspiracy in the federal government’s promotion of single family homes in black neighborhoods after the unrest of the 1960s. Single family homes! The audacity! But Ms. Taylor sees that her issue is still relevant today. (Not much of a surprise since the entirety of black studies today seems to rest on the premise that nothing much has changed in this country in the past half century when it comes to race. Shhhh. Don’t tell them about the black president!) She explains that “The subprime lending crisis, if it did nothing else, highlighted the profitability of racism in the housing market.” The subprime lending crisis was about the profitability of racism? Those millions of white people who went into foreclosure were just collateral damage, I guess.

But topping the list in terms of sheer political partisanship and liberal hackery is La TaSha B. Levy. According to the Chronicle, “Ms. Levy is interested in examining the long tradition of black Republicanism, especially the rightward ideological shift it took in the 1980s after the election of Ronald Reagan. Ms. Levy’s dissertation argues that conservatives like Thomas Sowell, Clarence Thomas, John McWhorter, and others have ‘played one of the most-significant roles in the assault on the civil-rights legacy that benefited them.’” The assault on civil rights? Because they don’t favor affirmative action they are assaulting civil rights? Because they believe there are some fundamental problems in black culture that cannot be blamed on white people they are assaulting civil rights?

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We should note that Naomi Schaefer Riley is married to Wall Street Journal columnist Jason Riley, who has also insulted the black community in an article critical of historically black colleges and universities. I guess birds of a feather flock together.

Here’s the Twitter stream on Naomi Schaefer Riley’s column:

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