white<\/em> people\u2014apparently African Americans and Latinas get a pass) admire something so much they want to do it themselves? How horrid! How imperialistic!<\/p>\nAs others have pointed out, substitute \u201cblack\u201d for \u201cwhite\u201d in Jarrar\u2019s speech and writing, and there\u2019d be no doubt about her racism. So Jarrar flatly poses the question: is it OK to be a racist in the university, so long as it is whites you hate? Can someone who hates white people even be recognized as a racist in the university?\u00a0 Does Randa Jarrar get a moral pass because she hates the right people?<\/p>\n
I hope the answer to that question is no, because hate simply produces more hate in response. Ethnic hatred is the curse of many places on this planet, not least of all the Middle East, where Jarrar was born and grew up. But it is especially out of place among artists of all kinds. Richard Wright admired Albert Camus; Toni Morrison was hugely influenced by Virginia Woolf, Ralph Waldo Ellison by T. S. Eliott and James Joyce. How many white jazz musicians got started because of their admiration for African-American musicians? There is so much in the humanities that is positive to build on, and nothing can be built on the basis of hatred and rage but more hatred and rage. Art, one of the great endeavors where racial difference is bridged, becomes for Jarrar, in her evil white belly-dancer pieces, the wall that shall not be breached.<\/p>\n
My experience at Fresno State, after thirty years, is that the students are among the most decent and racially unprejudiced people I have ever met. I taught Shakespeare, the old dead white guy, and people from all ethnic groups, Chicano, Hmong, African-American, Jewish, among others, found something there of value. Our students seem to get along just fine. They listen to each other with respect, no matter who is speaking. They are charitable. It seems to me that the constant propaganda barrage about diversity, which the administration aims at faculty and students, is something our students don\u2019t really need. They have moved into the future while the faculty is mired in a past defined by the sixties and seventies\u2014the same past that Randa Jarrar never experienced, but out of which she romanticizes her desire to throw grenades into people\u2019s houses.<\/p>\n
Maybe there is a reason to fire Jarrar. She did give the number of an Arizona State University mental health crisis line as her personal number after she started receiving calls about her Bush tweet, and these apparently jammed the lines of that health center. Her puckish sense of irony was, no doubt, at work.<\/p>\n
What can Randa Jarrar teach our students? That hate is efficacious? That it does something positive? That grenade-throwing terrorism is good? I don\u2019t want Fresno State to stand for that. I want a university where everyone can thrive and no one is made to feel guilty because of their color. I want a country where white women belly-dance, Arab women rock and roll, Venezuelans knock baseballs out of the park, and the Chinese come to play basketball. I want a world where love wins out over hate.<\/p>\n
Craig Bernthal has taught in the English Department at Fresno State for 30 years. He is retiring in two weeks.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The following piece is by my colleague,\u00a0Craig Bernthal. Since Randa Jarrar fired off her disgusting tweet about \u201cthe witch,\u201d Barbara Bush, being a racist, I, like other members of the Fresno State English Department, have received about a dozen emails asking, alternatively, how we could have participated in hiring her, and then, what we would […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1181,1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-2TV","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":823,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/target-ann-romney\/","url_meta":{"origin":11155,"position":0},"title":"Target: Ann Romney","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 19, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online Recently a Democratic operative, Hilary Rosen, was furious that Mitt Romney had made reference to his wife\u2019s opinions on women\u2019s issues and the economy. 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