An avalanche of criticism and even accusations of racism have greeted an essay co-authored by a University of San Diego law professor.
The editorial by the University of Pennsylvania’s Amy Wax and USD’s Larry Alexander, which appeared in The Philadelphia Inquirer, appropriately criticizes America’s embrace of birth control and divorce. That would be enough to stir opposition in a society that is quick to deem traditional morality “offensive.”
But the authors also defend America’s lost “bourgeois culture” for its embrace of “family values” and assert that “all cultures are not equal.” They decry the rise of children being born out of wedlock and immigrants resisting assimilation.
Abovethelaw.com has disparaged the piece as “laughable swill” and a “thinly veiled avatar for white male supremacy.”
According to Insider Higher Ed, a column signed by 54 UPenn students and alumni labeled the piece “steeped in anti-blackness and white hetero-patriarchal respectability, i.e. two-hetero-parent homes, divorce is a vice and the denouncement of all groups perceived as not acting white enough, i.e., black Americans, Latino communities and immigrants in particular.”
Alexander strongly denies the charges of racism.
“There’s not a single racist claim in it,” he said. “I have a multiracial family. This is the kind of thing—when you don’t have an argument that deals with the claims made, you just make claims like it’s racist, it’s sexist, it’s homophobic. That’s a sure sign you don’t have an argument.”
“Offense is largely manufactured,” he continued. “This is another thing people can cite in order to claim power. …This is another way to arrogate power, by claiming you’ve been offended.”
Full story at Cardinal Newman Society.
I really think it’s time that some people start looking inside themselves at their own white guilt and racist tendencies and stop projecting them onto others.
Equality depends upon what is discussed. If one uses certain metrics with which to measure two cultures and those two cultures measure differently, how can anyone say they’re equal in regard to those metrics.
I think it was Alan Bloom who once said, “Their minds were so open — that their brains fell out.”
Chesterton said that the only purpose of an open mind was to close on the truth. Otherwise one becomes but a connoisseur of popular ideas, in the words of St. Paul “always looking, never learning”.
The professor should have been accused of morality.
Overreliance on technology and the ascendancy of leftist paradigms have supplanted rational thought with emotional manipulation. Don’t try making rational arguments for the sake of the country anymore; they won’t work. All someone has to do is yell, “Racist! Bigot! Hater!” or other similar labels, get a crowd and social media to go along, and the power of mass hysteria wielded by emotional manipulation will crush even the most well-reasoned position. Dig yourself a bunker and prepare to ride out very difficult times for Christians and logical thinkers. Logic is dead, and they’re coming after God.
The so-called students are brainwashed by their communist followers and are making complete fools of themselves. Calling names is silly and certainly doesn’t impress anybody with a brain.
Is it racism to state an observable scientific fact?
Well, there is not much more to say. The professor and his co-author are certainly correct. Adversely affected people, perhaps minorities, simply reject the conclusions reached, not the reasoning provided. True Believers, after all can only believe in what they are told by their Leader as true; objective truth and reason mean nothing, except possibly harmful abstractions.
Modern liberalism is certainly poison to its adherents. The readily available statistics on everything from educational levels attained, to work prospects, to retirement security, to family structure, to the prevalence of drugs, illegitimacy, and the like paints a simply bleak and difficult to believe social story. Protestors against truth offer nothing to the…
(Part Deux) ” . . . downtrodden except slavery and ultimate damnation.
Yet, it is up to “the people” to stand up and fight back. Recall that the Chinese were given a very rough time of it in the mid-19th Century. Yet, today, Chinese students and other Asians, are among the leaders in all academic attainment categories, and often go on to become doctors and the like in large numbers. Why is that? Time to face reality, especially for minority group members.
I hate to say this, but many of them support the abortion industry and limit their families that way. That could be why so many of their women are college grads, and there is a high rate of suicide in Japan from the stress of trying to get into the best colleges. Japan also has a “youth dearth” from so many abortions, and most in China do not even have brothers and sisters.
It would be much better to limit ones family through Natural Family Planning after marriage. Many Filipinos do this now and get a college education. It is far safer for the woman, and of course any children conceived later, as the body is not being bombarded with unnatural hormones.
Anyone who dares claim a mother/ father married nucleus is superior to all other “family” arrangements is deemed old school at best. But more likely, racist and homophobic and shoving religion down their throats. Did I miss a few?
When the world turns its back on God, they are basically asking God to turn His back on them. And then they look for someone to blame for their misery.
It’s easy to tell where these criticisms are coming from (the trash can), with the liberal-secular mumbo-jumbo they use. No need to take them seriously from my experience as an assistant adjunct professor at the University of Colorado. The editorial by Wax and Alexander would be unusual if it did not draw criticism by the usual suspects; therefore, it was well said. Please keep up the good work. Dr. Kelch
Thank you for running this article and including the link to the essay. Almost every sentence in the essay is a hypothesis that would need to be supported with facts. It seems they are using the term bourgeois in its literal meaning of middle class so semantics alone could cause problems. Sometimes the word is used to mean snobby, materialistic or even shallow. It is often used as a mild insult of disgust. It also can be used to mean the upper middle class.
I did not catch racism in the essay as much as a general judgmental smear of anybody who does not share their values. Every sentence is highly arguable.