What I would say to UCSB’s Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs about Free Speech, blacks, and abortion
National Review’s Alex Torres has unearthed a really disgusting example of academic-think over at UCSB. That’s where Mireille Miller-Young, who gets paid to teach students about porn and sex work, with a little bit of “black culture” on the side, not only aggressively stole a sign from a pro-Life display in a Free Speech area, but also physically attacked a teenage girl who tried to recover the sign. Michael Young, UCSB’s Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs, finally waded into the fray and . . . attacked the pro-Life people who had properly set themselves up in the university’s oh-so-limited “Free Speech space.”
To do Young justice, he did say that the Founders, despite being slaveholders, had the right idea with Free Speech. It’s just that he really doesn’t think that people who disagree with his world view should exercise it. It’s so . . . rude of them!
After reading the claptrap and tripe emanating from Mr. Young’s computer, I sat down and, in a fine frenzy, wrote him the type of letter that he’d never read and that I, after read it, realized that I would never send. It’s a very brutal letter, and I’ve learned the hard way that the brutal letter is the first draft that never actually goes out. I still want to say what I have to say, though, and that’s why we have blogs. So — here is the letter that I would have sent Mr. Young if I were a less polite person than I am in real life:
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Mr. Young:
I don’t usually pay attention to what goes on in America’s campuses, having been fortunate enough to have walked off the last one almost 30 years ago. However, your recent email to UCSB students regarding Mireille Miller-Young’s decision to physically attack a teenage girl with whom she disagreed is so extraordinary that I believe you deserve to hear from one of the people who pays your salary (i.e., a California resident).
I couldn’t help but notice that you’re black. Did you happen to know that New York City and Mississippi abort black babies in numbers far in excess of blacks’ representation in those respective populations? The number of black babies aborted in New York in 2012 (that would be 31,328) was greater than the number of black babies born in New York in 2012 (a mere 24,758). Moreover, although blacks are only 25% of the New York population, 42% of all New York abortions were black babies.
Meanwhile, down in Mississippi, between 1994 and 2010, black women aborted 39,000 fetuses. Over the same period, white women aborted 14,500 fetuses. Put another way, over a 16 year period, black women had abortions at a rate more than twice that of white women. While blacks make up 37% of Mississippi’s population, they accounted for 72% of its abortions.
Did you know that Margaret Sanger, Planned Parenthood’s founder, was a eugenicist who promoted abortion primarily as a way of ridding America of blacks and other “undesirables”?
Knowing all this, are you sure you want to attack as divisive those people who are shocked that the most dangerous place in America for a black child is the womb?
One of the things that consistently amazes me about black Americans is that they embrace policies that have been manifestly disastrous for them. Welfare, by making black men unnecessary, destroyed the black family structure. Being a university type, you probably know that study after study shows that the surest way out of poverty is a traditional family. I wouldn’t be surprised, though, if it turns out that you would rather be run over by a truck than turn your back on the welfare state, despite the appalling damage it has wrought.
I’m willing to bet you were horrified when Paul Ryan said that people of good will need to work on the disastrous pathology of inner city neighborhoods in which young men — almost invariably young black men — prey on each other and on all the men, women, and children unlucky enough to be caught in the crossfire. I’m equally willing to bet that you were not horrified when President Obama said that the federal government needs to work on the disastrous pathology of inner city neighborhoods. Considering that these deadly pathologies escalated dramatically with LBJ’s great society, I’d be much more scared of Obama’s threatened federal help than I would be of Paul Ryan’s suggestion that a societal change would be a good thing.
Frederick Douglas accurately predicted what the Great Society would do to black society:
“What shall we do with the Negro?” I have had but one answer from the beginning. Do nothing with us! Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us. Do nothing with us! If the apples will not remain on the tree of their own strength, if they are worm eaten at the core, if they are early ripe and disposed to fall, let them fall! I am not for tying or fastening them on the tree in any way, except by nature’s plan, and if they will not stay there, let them fall. And if the Negro cannot stand on his own legs, let him fall also. All I ask is, give him a chance to stand on his own legs! Let him alone!
And so it goes. You’re not the only group in America that has sold its soul to a political ideology that is profoundly damaging to its best interests. As a Jew, I’m equally appalled by the way in which American Jews consistently embrace political parties and politicians that are hostile to Jews — and spend hundreds of thousands of dollars per family at campuses rife with blatant antisemitism. The Democrat party is kind of like the mafia: once you’re in, you don’t leave, even when it becomes deadly to you and yours.
All of which gets me to your utterly appalling attack on pro-Life people. First of all, you should be agreeing with those pro-Life people, since the Democrats who so rabidly support abortion are the same Democrats presiding over the slow extinction of the black race in America. Second of all, as a high level functionary in a university, you should be embracing people who challenge the stifling orthodoxy of American academia. It’s this groupthink that has rendered you and Miller-Young incapable of using anything other than violence and invective to challenge ideas with which you disagree. My strong suspicion is that you’re deeply afraid that, if you had to confront these disagreeable ideas on their merits, you might have to rethink your own values.
To coddle students because they feel “outrage, pain, embarrassment,” etc., is a gross failing on your part. The world is a cruel place. (Indeed, I’m being intellectually cruel to you now by calling you on your ignorance, prejudice, and fear.) To take tens of thousands of dollars per student from parents and taxpayers in order to produce scared little bunny rabbits who are afraid to think, confront, challenge, and analyze is a form of fraud. You promise to educate and develop the young mind, even as you’re actively complicit in turning those same youngsters into bland piles of Leftist mush, swinging wildly between anger and hurt, with no pause in between for rigorous thought.
The most narrow-minded, stultifying place in America today is a university (or perhaps they would be better called monoversities, since the orthodoxy of group think permeates every department). Both you and the students under your care deserve more than the pabulum all of you are currently imbibing at UCSB.