Now What About Those Duke Professors

by Dinesh D'Souza - June 18th, 2007 - Townhall.com

So Nifong is going to resign, and maybe get his license taken away too. Now what about the mau-mau artists at Duke, influential figures on the faculty, who whipped the campus up into a racial hysteria? What happens to the people who helped to create a mob mentality against students, rendering their lives miserable for more than a year, when their guilt was never established, never even probable, and now they have been shown to be innocent?

From the time the first reports of sexual assault at Duke University surfaced, these intellectual vigilantes went to work. Houston Baker, a professor of English and Afro-American Studies, issued a public letter condemning the "abhorrent sexual assault, verbal racial violence and drunken white male privilege loosed among us." He seems to have simply presumed the students guilty.

Shortly after that, 88 members of the Duke arts and science faculty--the so-called Gang of 88--signed a public statement praising campus demonstrators who had distributed a "WANTED" poster that branded the lacrosse players as "rapists."

A presumption of guilt. That is what is now the biggest problem with racism in the Inner Banks. Their are many whites who are guilty of what Dinesh calls " . . . Recovering Southerner Syndrome. This is the ailment, first named on [his] blog, in which Southerners feel so guilty about slavery and segregation that they perform undignified backward somersaults to prove that they are 'not really Southern'."

What he avoids mentioning, what is part and parcel of this outrageous problem, is the willingness in the black community to label anyone who disagrees with them on any issue as a racist. Think that poor test scores mean we are not spending our school money smartly? "How dare you criticize a black superintendent. You are just a racist."

This makes it impossible to have an intelligent conversation on any topic. We have serious problems here in the Inner Banks and as long as white conservatives walk around terrified of being called racist honkies and black conservatives walk around terrified of being called Uncle Toms, NOTHING can be fixed.

Last year we contacted all the blacks in the Republican Party of our area to hold a meeting to talk about how to help conservatives in the black community get their message out on some of the serious problems we face. As Angela McGlowan has pointed out, most blacks in our area are conservative and have more in common with the Republican Party than with the Democrat Party. Every single one refused to attend any public gathering. The reason? If anyone found out they were registered as Repubicans they would be blackballed in their community. This intimidation is contemptible. However you cannot pretend it is not real.

Freedom of speech has been destroyed by the willingness of extreme racists in the black community to attack and humiliate anyone who disagrees with them. If you are white you are a "racist honky". If you are black you are an "uncle Tom". Insults are their first resort the minute you disagree with black leadership.

It is time for us here in the Inner Banks to acquire a thick skin. The culture of the south is to be non-confrontational. However it is time to stop trying to be non-confrontational. It is time to start calling these liberals, black and white, what they are. Bigots and racists. Worse bigots than the old style racists that they learned from. America has changed but liberals in the South cannot see the change. It is time for them to come into the 21st century. Their tactics and insults are disgusting. It is time for us to get into their face and call them what they are.

Dinesh calls them "intellectual vigilantes". They are worse than that. They are what they are so quick to call others. Racists.