Recently, a Georgetown law professor made the comment that many black students were at the bottom of her class.
She stated that this was driving her crazy.
Not surprisingly, the “woke but not really” crowd had her fired.
Did this professor make a racist comment?
Or did she merely state an observation?
If I looked at a large group of basketball players and then said: “Gee, it doesn’t look like the white basketball players can jump very high. It seems like they’re always at the bottom when it comes to jumping ability,” is that a racist comment?
Or am I merely stating an observation?
This professor’s observation no more makes her a racist than my observation makes me a racist. All we are doing is stating an observation.
This professor’s observation makes no comment at all upon the general ability or biological ability of black people. In fact, one might argue that her not stating her observation hurts black people.
We can never remediate an issue unless we can make observations and have the courage to state them.
There might be any number of legitimate reasons why black people are at the bottom of her class; and those reasons may have nothing to do with innate intellectual ability of black folk.
As it so happens, I do not believe that there is any intellectual disparity between white people and black people.
Proceeding forward then, what might some of those reasons be. I’ll make up a few.
1. Maybe the brighter black kids saw through Georgetown as a racist school and decided to go somewhere else.
2. Maybe Georgetown, being a politically correct university, went overboard to demonstrate to the world how diverse they are and started offering generous law scholarships to black youth who may have been only remotely interested in law.
3. People who have parents in the same field generally do better in professional schools. They do better because their parents can give them their own life experience as a guide. Perhaps the black students who attend Georgetown don’t have parents who are lawyers.
As you can see, there may be any number of non-racist reasons why black youth may have not been performing in her class.
Teachers and administrators need to be able to state those observations so that they can ask questions as to why those observations might be so.
Intimidating professors into not making uncomfortable statements doesn’t help anyone.
Unfortunately, generations of Americans are now being taught that making an observation upon racial disparities is an act of racism or discrimination.
That teaching is wrong.
Because that teaching is wrong, because so many young Americans now believe that, they will be afraid to ask the questions that need to be asked in order to fix things.
Sincerely,
Archer Crosley
Copyright 2021 Archer Crosley All Rights Reserved
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