This anonymous letter was allegedly sent to several history professors at the UC
Berkeley. Its authenticity has been confirmed by one of the professors mentioned
in it, Kentucky State University Assistant Professor of Political Science Wilfred
Reilly, who says he was sent a copy of the letter along with Stanford University
economist Thomas Sowell. The Department of History at UC Berkeley has
denounced it and said it “has no evidence it was written by a History faculty
member.” We are publishing the letter as it first appeared online.
An anonymous letter, purportedly by a UC Berkeley professor, is calling out things
impossible to openly discuss on campus, including the Democratic Party co-opting Black Lives Matter and the suppression of dissenting voices.
Dear profs X, Y, Z
I am one of your colleagues at the University of California, Berkeley. I have met
you both personally but do not know you closely, and am contacting you
anonymously, with apologies. I am worried that writing this email publicly might
lead to me losing my job, and likely all future jobs in my field.
In your recent departmental emails you mentioned our pledge to diversity, but I am increasingly alarmed by the absence of diversity of opinion on the topic of the recent protests
and our community response to them
In the extended links and resources you provided, I could not find a single
instance of substantial counter-argument or alternative narrative to explain the
under-representation of black individuals in academia or their over-representation
in the criminal justice system. The explanation provided in your documentation, to
the near exclusion of all others, is univariate: the problems of the black community are caused by whites, or, when whites are not physically present, by the infiltration of white
supremacy and white systemic racism into American brains, souls, and institutions.
Many cogent objections to this thesis have been raised by sober voices, including
from within the black community itself, such as Thomas Sowell and Wilfred Reilly.
These people are not racists or ‘Uncle Toms’. They are intelligent scholars who
reject a narrative that strips black people of agency and systematically
externalizes the problems of the black community onto outsiders. Their view is
entirely absent from the departmental and UCB-wide communiques.
The claim that the difficulties that the black community faces are entirely causally
explained by exogenous factors in the form of white systemic racism, white
supremacy, and other forms of white discrimination remains a problematic
hypothesis that should be vigorously challenged by historians. Instead, it is being
treated as an axiomatic and actionable truth without serious consideration of its
profound flaws, or its worrying implication of total black impotence. This
hypothesis is transforming our institution and our culture, without any space for
dissent outside of a tightly policed, narrow discourse.
A counternarrative exists. If you have time, please consider examining some of
the documents I attach at the end of this email.
Overwhelmingly, the reasoning provided by BLM and allies is either primarily
anecdotal (as in the case with the bulk of Ta-Nehisi Coates’ undeniably moving
article) or it is transparently motivated. As an example of the latter problem,
consider the proportion of black incarcerated Americans. This proportion is often
used to characterize the criminal justice system as anti-black. However, if we use
the precise same methodology, we would have to conclude that the criminal
justice system is even more anti-male than it is anti-black. Would we characterize
criminal justice as a systemically misandrist conspiracy against innocent American men? I hope you see that this type of reasoning is flawed, and requires a significant suspension of
our rational faculties. Black people are not incarcerated at higher rates than their
involvement in violent crime would predict. This fact has been demonstrated
multiple times across multiple jurisdictions in multiple countries. And yet, I see my
department uncritically reproducing a narrative that diminishes black agency in
favor of a white-centric explanation that appeals to the department’s apparent
desire to shoulder the ‘white man’s burden’ and to promote a narrative of white
guilt.
If we claim that the criminal justice system is white-supremacist, why is it that
Asian Americans, Indian Americans, and Nigerian Americans are incarcerated at
vastly lower rates than white Americans? This is a funny sort of white supremacy.
Even Jewish Americans are incarcerated less than gentile whites. I think it’s fair to say that your average white supremacist disapproves of Jews. And yet, these alleged white
supremacists incarcerate gentiles at vastly higher rates than Jews. None of this is
addressed in your literature. None of this is explained, beyond hand-waving and
ad hominems. “Those are racist dogwhistles”. “The model minority myth is white
supremacist”.“Only fascists talk about black-on-black crime”, ad nauseam. These
types of statements do not amount to counterarguments: they are simply arbitrary
offensive classifications, intended to silence and oppress discourse. Any serious
historian will recognize these for the silencing orthodoxy tactics they are, common
to suppressive regimes, doctrines, and religions throughout time and space. They
are intended to crush real diversity and permanently exile the culture of robust
criticism from our department.
Increasingly, we are being called upon to comply and subscribe to BLM’s
problematic view of history, and the department is being presented as unified on
the matter. In particular, ethnic minorities are being aggressively marshaled into a
single position. Any apparent unity is surely a function of the fact that dissent could almost certainly lead to expulsion or cancellation for those of us in a precarious position, which is
no small number.
I personally don’t dare speak out against the BLM narrative, and with this barrage
of alleged unity being mass-produced by the administration, tenured professoriat,
the UC administration, corporate America, and the media, the punishment for
dissent is a clear danger at a time of widespread economic vulnerability. I am
certain that if my name were attached to this email, I would lose my job and all
future jobs, even though I believe in and can justify every word I type.
The vast majority of violence visited on the black community is committed by
black people. There are virtually no marches for these invisible victims, no public
silences, no heartfelt letters from the UC regents, deans, and departmental heads. The message is clear: Black lives only matter when whites take them. Black violence is expected
and insoluble, while white violence requires explanation and demands solution.
Please look into your hearts and see how monstrously bigoted this formulation
truly is.
No discussion is permitted for nonblack victims of black violence, who
proportionally outnumber black victims of nonblack violence. This is especially
bitter in the Bay Area, where Asian victimization by black assailants has reached
epidemic proportions, to the point that the SF police chief has advised Asians to
stop hanging good-luck charms on their doors, as this attracts the attention of
(overwhelmingly black) home invaders. Home invaders like George Floyd. For this actual, lived, physically experienced reality of violence in the USA, there are no marches, no
tearful emails from departmental heads, no support from McDonald’s and
Wal-Mart. For the History department, our silence is not a mere abrogation of our
duty to shed light on the truth: it is a rejection of it.
The claim that black intraracial violence is the product of redlining, slavery, and
other injustices is a largely historical claim. It is for historians, therefore, to explain
why Japanese internment or the massacre of European Jewry hasn’t led to
equivalent rates of dysfunction and low SES performance among Japanese and
Jewish Americans respectively. Arab Americans have been viciously demonized
since 9/11, as have Chinese Americans more recently. However, both groups
outperform white Americans on nearly all SES indices — as do Nigerian
Americans, who incidentally have black skin. It is for historians to point out and
discuss these anomalies. However, no real discussion is possible in the current
climate at our department. The explanation is provided to us, disagreement with it
is racist, and the job of historians is to further explore additional ways in which the
explanation is additionally correct. This is a mockery of the historical profession.
Most troublingly, our department appears to have been entirely captured by the interests of the Democratic National Convention, and the Democratic Party more broadly. To
explain what I mean, consider what happens if you choose to donate to Black
Lives Matter, an organization UCB History has explicitly promoted in its recent
mailers. All donations to the official BLM website are immediately redirected to
Act Blue Charities, an organization primarily concerned with bankrolling election
campaigns for Democrat candidates. Donating to BLM today is to indirectly donate to Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign. This is grotesque given the fact that the American cities with the
worst rates of black-on-black violence and police-on-black violence are
overwhelmingly Democrat-run. Minneapolis itself has been entirely in the hands
of Democrats for over five decades; the ‘systemic racism’ there was built by
successive Democrat administrations.
The patronizing and condescending attitudes of Democrat leaders towards the
black community, exemplified by nearly every Biden statement on the black race,
all but guarantee a perpetual state of misery, resentment, poverty, and the
attendant grievance politics which are simultaneously annihilating American
political discourse and black lives. And yet, donating to BLM is bankrolling the
election campaigns of men like Mayor Frey, who saw their cities devolve into
violence. This is a grotesque capture of a good-faith movement for necessary
police reform, and of our department, by a political party. Even worse, there are
virtually no avenues for dissent in academic circles. I refuse to serve the Party,
and so should you. The total alliance of major corporations involved in human
exploitation with BLM should be a warning flag to us, and yet this damning
evidence goes unnoticed, purposefully ignored, or perversely celebrated. We are
the useful idiots of the wealthiest classes, carrying water for Jeff Bezos and other
actual, real, modern-day slavers. Starbucks, an organisation using literal black
slaves in its coffee plantation suppliers, is in favor of BLM. Sony, an organisation
using cobalt mined by yet more literal black slaves, many of whom are children, is
in favor of BLM. And so, apparently, are we. The absence of counter-narrative
enables this obscenity. Fiat lux, indeed.
There also exists a large constituency of what can only be called ‘race hustlers’:
hucksters of all colors who benefit from stoking the fires of racial conflict to secure administrative jobs, charity management positions, academic jobs and advancement, or personal political entrepreneurship
Given the direction our history department appears to be taking far from any
commitment to truth, we can regard ourselves as a formative training institution for this brand of snake-oil salespeople. Their activities are corrosive, demolishing any hope at
harmonious racial coexistence in our nation and colonizing our political and I
nstitutional life. Many of their voices are unironically segregationist. MLK would likely be called an Uncle Tom if he spoke on our campus today. We are training leaders who intend,
explicitly, to destroy one of the only truly successful ethnically diverse societies in modern history. As the PRC, an ethnonationalist and aggressively racially chauvinist national polity with null immigration and no concept of jus solis increasingly presents itself as the global
political alternative to the US, I ask you: Is this wise? Are we really doing the right
thing?
As a final point, our university and department has made multiple statements
celebrating and eulogizing George Floyd. Floyd was a multiple felon who once
held a pregnant black woman at gunpoint. He broke into her home with a gang of
men and pointed a gun at her pregnant stomach. He terrorized the women in his
community. He sired and abandoned multiple children, playing no part in their
support or upbringing, failing one of the most basic tests of decency for a human being. He was a drug-addict and sometime drug-dealer, a swindler who preyed upon his honest
and hard-working neighbors.
And yet, the regents of UC and the historians of the UCB History department are
celebrating this violent criminal, elevating his name to virtual sainthood. A man
who hurt women. A man who hurt black women. With the full collaboration of the
UCB history department, corporate America, most mainstream media outlets, and
some of the wealthiest and most privileged opinion-shaping elites of the USA, he
has become a culture hero, buried in a golden casket, his (recognized) family
showered with gifts and praise. Americans are being socially pressured into
kneeling for this violent, abusive misogynist. A generation of black men are being
coerced into identifying with George Floyd, the absolute worst specimen of our
race and species. I’m ashamed of my department. I would say that I’m ashamed
of both of you, but perhaps you agree with me, and are simply afraid, as I am, of
the backlash of speaking the truth. It’s hard to know what kneeling means, when
you have to kneel to keep your job.
It shouldn’t affect the strength of my argument above, but for the record, I write as
a person of color. My family have been personally victimized by men like Floyd.
We are aware of the condescending depredations of the Democrat party against
our race. The humiliating assumption that we are too stupid to do STEM, that we
need special help and lower requirements to get ahead in life, is richly familiar to
us. I sometimes wonder if it wouldn’t be easier to deal with open fascists, who at
least would be straightforward in calling me a subhuman, and who are unlikely to
share my race
The ever-present soft bigotry of low expectations and the permanent claim that the solutions to the plight of my people rest exclusively on the goodwill of whites rather than on our
own hard work is psychologically devastating. No other group in America is systematically demoralized in this way by its alleged allies. A whole generation of black children
are being taught that only by begging and weeping and screaming will they get
handouts from guilt-ridden whites. No message will more surely devastate their
futures, especially if whites run out of guilt, or indeed if America runs out of whites. If this had been done to Japanese Americans, or Jewish Americans, or Chinese Americans, then
Chinatown and Japantown would surely be no different to the roughest parts of
Baltimore and East St. Louis today. The History department of UCB is now an
integral institutional promulgator of a destructive and denigrating fallacy about the
black race.
I hope you appreciate the frustration behind this message. I do not support BLM.
I do not support the Democrat grievance agenda and the Party’s uncontested
capture of our department. I do not support the Party co-opting my race, as Biden
recently did in his disturbing interview, claiming that voting Democrat and being
black are isomorphic. I condemn the manner of George Floyd’s death and join you in calling for greater police accountability and police reform. However, I will not pretend that
George Floyd was anything other than a violent misogynist, a brutal man who
met a predictably brutal end.
I also want to protect the practice of history. Cleo is no grovelling handmaiden to
politicians and corporations. Like us, she is free.
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