No Campus for White Men
American college campuses are almost uniformly hostile to white men. Although this is commonly known, the pervasiveness and insidiousness of the situation is easy to overlook.
Scott Greer is one of the founders of the libertarian online newspaper "The Daily Caller." He has written a systematic analysis of the problem. He investigates the intellectual history of the animus against white men and goes into significant detail about how it plays out on campus.
Greer does not include any personal experience in his account. He also fails to mention the low key, day-to-day hostility that a white male experiences on a modern campus. I experienced it firsthand when returned to the University as a graduate student in 2003, at the age of 60. At that stage in my life I was not looking forward to starting a career, so I could look upon the abuse I took with amused detachment. It was, however, quite real. I include anecdotes of my experience as Comment 1 below.
Race and sex are the two dominant themes in the anti-male campaign. The suppositions that can never be disproved or dismissed are that white men are inherently sexist and racist. The system is constructed in such a way that no amount of apology, reparations or groveling can compensate for the injustices supposedly suffered by the victims. Greer's chapter organization frames the discussion quite well:
1 Cult of Diversity
Without any proof, and in fact quite conspicuously evading any attempt at proof, campuses have adopted the premise that diversity is a good thing. Anybody who questions the premise is assumed to be a bigot of the worst sort. For an amusing incident that corroborates Greer's argument Google "Bucking the College Diversity Cult."
2 Political Correctness in the Age of Microaggressions
The "gotcha" that campus progressives invariably use is the unfalsifiable claim. If they call you a racist, you are powerless to prove that you are not. The tag sticks and you are ostracized. Microaggressions are the same thing. If a member of some protected minority – anything but a straight white male – accuses you of saying something that they find offensive, you have no defense. Google "how to get offended unilad" for a satire on the topic.
Nonetheless, they take microaggressions extremely seriously on campus. I have been prompted to put trigger warnings on some of the stuff on my website. It is ridiculous, and I do it tongue-in-cheek, but that is where our society has gone.
The result has been to absolutely stifle discussion of controversial issues on the premise that even talking about them constitutes an aggression.
3 Victimhood Culture
Greer does a great service in this chapter by providing a probing analysis of the intellectual basis for the culture of victimhood. It goes like this.
Societies historically valued honor as a supreme virtue. In honor-based societies the man had to defend his reputation and that of his family, even to the point of deadly fights. Honor-based societies were characterized by weak or absent authority. The individual had to take the task of enforcing justice upon himself. The American West is the example that Greer sites.
Once government structures came in place, honor-based societies were replaced by dignity-based societies. We no longer fought one another, but we expressed our dignity through self-sufficiency and adherence to the law. Once again, reputation was paramount.
The third ethic is one which Greer calls the culture of victimhood. He traces its intellectual roots back to Nietzsche's "Slave mentality." In a culture of victimhood there is no hierarchy of moral or ethical values. It is a free-for-all of competing claims for special treatment to reverse past offences. The assumption is that straight white males have committed almost all of the offenses.
It is worth buying the book for this chapter alone. It explains why the problem is so dangerous and difficult to grapple with.
4 Identity Politics
Identity politics is the opposite of the melting pot theory. It was once assumed that we all came together into a single American polity and we would put aside our selfish, parochial group interests to seek the common interest of the country. Now it is the opposite – each group seeks its own gain, at the expense of the others.
Part and parcel of this theory is "white privilege." Because whites have supposedly been on top in the past, they and they alone are forbidden from looking out for their own interests. Every campus in America has a Black Student Union. No campus has a White Student Union – it would be supremely racist.
5 Guilty of Being White
Even Greer apologizes more than I think necessary for the darker chapters in man's history. While it is true that Europeans and Americans practiced slavery, it is equally true that just about every culture in the world did likewise. Moreover, a great many whites figured among the slaves in America, and a not insignificant number of Blacks figured among the slaveholders. Also incontrovertible is that the treatment of black slaves in the United States was far more humane than their treatment by Portuguese in Brazil –see my English review of [[ASIN:B003S8U6HS Historia Da Escravidão]] or by the Arabs. The Arabs, for instance, prevented interbreeding by the simple expedient of castrating their African slaves. Americans did not do that.
Forcing whites to apologize for being White, acknowledging their suppose it privilege has been going on since the 1960s. Read Tom Wolfe's [[ASIN:0312429134 Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers]]. It has worked extraordinarily well. Observe the way the Germans continually beg forgiveness for the Holocaust, whereas the people they victimized are singularly unrepentant about their genocides they have led in Ukraine and Palestine. See [[ASIN:1859844421 Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict]] and [[ASIN:B005646E32 The Jewish Century]] [[ASIN:0465031471 Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin]].
6 Rape Culture Feminism
The campus rape epidemic is a totally manufactured phenomenon. Rape has always been a factor wherever young men and women are together, but it was and remains less of one on campus than elsewhere. Though Greer does not make this argument, it is only common sense. Rape is strongly correlated with at least three factors: socioeconomic status, intelligence and race. The admissions process ensures that college men come from the demographics least inclined to rape by these measures. Google "The Color of Crime" for more detail.
The rape meme is already rather long in the tooth. For a picture of the situation in the 1990s, when the madness started, read [[ASIN:0316754323 The Morning After: Sex, Fear, and Feminism]], There was nothing there, there is nothing there, and yet the drumbeat is relentless.
It is a fact that campus athletes, predominantly African-American, have participated in a greatly disproportionate number of campus rapes. However, this is played down by all parties concerned. Administrators want to protect their football teams, and they want to protect the myth that rape is a white problem. That is the opposite of the case.
There have been a vast number of hoaxes with regard to rape: the Duke University lacrosse team, the Jackie Coakley hoax, and many other that Greer enumerates.
Greer does not mention the single headline case of rape which actually resulted in a conviction. Stanford varsity swimmer Brock Turner went to jail for raping a woman whose identity is still unknown. Social justice warriors celebrated the win, but were hugely disappointed that it resulted only in a three month sentence. They made a strong attempt to have the judge who handed out such a lenient sentence disempaneled.
Reading the details of the case on the Internet, one finds that both Turner and the woman had drunk far too much that night. She was unconscious. The two were lying on the grass someplace on the campus and he had her panties down and was fingering her genitals. It would be impossible to know whether or not his fingers penetrated – the textbook definition of rape – but DNA tests showed that nothing else did. I can assure you, dear reader, that 50 years ago this would have been no big deal. And even in 2017 it probably would've been no big deal except that Turner had the bad luck to become a Great White Male Defendant.
7 Greeks under Siege
The fraternity/sorority system is a legacy of the days in which white men dominated the American campus. It has been an institution that instilled civic values, gave young people an opportunity to rise to campus leadership positions, and gave young men and women of a certain social class a milieu in which they could meet and marry.
As an emblem of supposed white privilege the system is under siege on almost every campus. Campus administrations bend over backwards to persecute them, as in the Duke lacrosse team case. Greer provides a number of examples.
8 Art of the Hoax
Since white males do not reliably commit a sufficient number of egregious offenses, the victim classes feel obliged to make things up. The chapter on rape describes hoaxes in the realm of sex; this chapter covers mainly racially oriented hoaxes.
9 Whither Will Campus Insanity Take America?
This is the concluding chapter. The most optimism it can offer is that this is a passing phase. White men have to tough it out.
The first thing is to recognize that a college education is not the value proposition that it used to be. College educations are hugely expensive. Parents have to recognize that it involves a significant investment in a product of dubious worth while at the same time subjecting children to several years of intense brainwashing about social justice issues. Why would you pay for that?
Greer offers some alternatives. I recommend [[ASIN:B0099CUNIO Hacking Your Education: Ditch the Lectures, Save Tens of Thousands, and Learn More Than Your Peers Ever Will]] and [[ASIN:B00EZCR9S0 The Nearly Free University and the Emerging Economy: The Revolution in Higher Education]].
I also recommend from personal experience attending university far from America. Canada and Europe are not far enough. They are overwhelmed with the same race and sex issues, the same anti-male bias as America. I sent one daughter to college in Ireland only to have her emerge as a radical social justice warrior. No – you need to go farther. I would recommend Eastern Europe, where sex roles are still more or less traditional. Men are appreciated. I would even recommend Ukraine, where I now live. Granted that the degree will not carry much prestige in the United States, one can still receive a good education from the top universities here. The cost is extremely reasonable. But most important to a young man, the campus women are still feminine, still interested in marriage. A secondary benefit would be becoming fluent in another language. This is also a business opportunity. I include as Comment 2 a business plan that I outlined for delivering an American education in Ukraine.
Epilogue: Trump Win’s And Campus Insanity
Trump's win represents a sea change in America. He got 63% of the white male American vote – more than two thirds of the white male Gentile vote. America is fed up.
Europe is also fed up. One of the most encouraging books you can read [[ASIN:B00CS8PUG6 Generation Identity]] is, the call to arms of the Millennial revolt in Europe. Scott Greer is one of many voices making a similar call in America.
Here are some pieces I have written on my experience as a graduate student, first in the College of Education, then Statistics, and on study abroad programs at the University of Maryland, College Park, 2003-2006
The College of Education vomited me up forceably. Too old, too worldly, certainly not black enough or feminist enough, not in sympathy with their goal of social justice, and my interest in educating individual children to the best of their ability was clearly not their top priority.
Two professors, King and Perna, went out of their way to tear my papers apart. I was an experienced writer, having published four books. No matter. They ripped my written work to shreds. Two classic examples are posted on my web site.
Coming into the program I had had some experience with American Indians. While there I spent a month with the Kayapó, a pristine Amazonian tribe, on an anthropology course. I had been the only Porgutuese speaking student on the trip, and did quite a bit of research for the long term paper I wrote – also available on my web site. However, my presentation in Dr. King's class, observing the fact that their performance might reflect the fact that American Indians are not culturally adapted to American style education, was not well received.
I took a course in the area of international education and was taught by a member of the "Critical Left," Stephen Klees. Despite the fact that we disagreed radically we got along quite well. I cannot say the same for the students in his class. There were some groupies, real Kool-Aid drinkers, who could not stand my guts. High school friend Dan Bryant recommended two very enlightening books, [[ASIN:0231134177 Theory's Empire: An Anthology of Dissent]] and [[ASIN:0300069200 Literature Lost: Social Agendas and the Corruption of the Humanities]] to help explain what I was witnessing.
Rather than fight the educators, I switched to a PhD program in statistics, where facts matter. I can speak with authority about the magnitude of the problem on campus ten years ago. In this connection I recommend an excellent book by David Gelernter, Unabomber victim and Yale professor, [[ASIN:1594036063 America Lite]], offering his analysis of how the radicals took over American academia starting in the 1950s and the power they now have.
I would characterize the few males among my fellow students in the College of Educationas white rats. They literally shook, they were so demure and inoffensive. Many of the female students were openly hostile. Some, however were merely curious. it was as if they had never hear an honest male opinion in their lives.
I can see from Philip you got a lot of kickback. Not exactly an honest assessment. You reported your reality, your perception. Nothing wrong in that. I can't say I ever saw what you saw given I was an engineering student and almost all early general courses were in UofMd overseas, military base courses among other GIs, mostly men (1960's).
I do see that we are trending toward fractions that divide society in a return to tribalism that can damage any cohesive ability to organize. The push to equity and diversity is part of that. We can never achieve anything other than equality. Diversity nearly requires force fitting people into slots that produce resentment. OTOH, I see that the woke mind virus is arriving at a logical end state. It is simply too internally inconsistent. The wokerati will eliminate each other.
Graham
What Bullshit!!
I personally know plenty of white men that are either currently enrolled or just graduated College
All of them have said (and we have talked about it) that they have enjoyed their college experience, never felt discrimination and are glad for the diversity. Now if you are a racist, sexist white man be prepared for pushback from most people on most campuses including other non racist non sexist white men. My daughter Carly went to a school West Virginia University on a full ride Where racism, sexism any Semitism, homophobia and bigotry were pervasive. She tried pushing back on her own but got very little support from her white classmates and from the administration. She left and West Virginia University lost a great student with a good brain and heart and the 4.0 GPA they wanted to pull their stats up. I was happy to pay $200,000 to get her out of that hateful school to get her to a school that there was much much less of that hate. She was much happier at Penn State. Money well spent.
Treatment of black slaves more humane? Imperceptibly. Tell that to the black slaves who were crammed like sardines into ships, separated from their families, whipped for minor transgressions and maimed fir trying to escape to freedom. You are just sinking to new lows here when you imply American slavery wasn’t so bad or as bad as other places.
Would you go back in time and try living their lives?
No individual white American should feel guilty or owe an apology for slavery but collectively we as a Country do owe an apology and o have no problem with sone things being done to help assuage or collective sins.
You have absolutely no sympathy or empathy for the people of other races or sex or sexual preference that do actually regularly feel discrimination on a regular basis.
None.
Shame.
All the best,
Phil
Sent from my iPhone
On Dec 14, 2022, at 2:09 AM, Graham Seibert from Graham’s Newsletter <grahamseibert@substack.com> wrote: