Dukes of hatred
26th May 2015 · 0 Comments
By Edmund W. Lewis
Editor
Some Duke Blue(eyed) Devil is at it again.
Dr. Jerry Hough, the Duke University professor to whom I am referring, might actually have brown or green eyes, but his recent remarks about Black people bring to mind another Duke — former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke.
Down here in the Big Uneasy, there were those who used to joke about how they could never root for Duke University in the annual college basketball tournament because it had the energy and feel of a school named for the unapologetic white supremacist.
Never mind that Duke could boast of attracting some of the best Black college basketball players and always seemed to be ready for the challenges and pressures of March Madness. Rooting for Duke was simply not an option.
Rooting for Duke will be even more impossible after learning of Dr. Jerry Hough’s remarks comparing Blacks to Asian Americans. In response to a New York Times op-ed piece titled “How Racism Doomed Baltimore,” Hough wrote that Asians have been described as “yellow races” and faced discrimination in 1965 at least as bad as Blacks experienced. Of Asian Americans, he wrote: “They didn’t feel sorry for themselves, but worked doubly hard.”
“I am a professor at Duke University,” Hough added. “Every Asian student has a very simple old American first name that symbolizes their desire for integration. Virtually every Black has a strange new name that symbolizes their lack of desire for integration.”
In a May 18 email to The Associated Press, Hough wrote, “I only regret the sloppiness in saying every Asian and nearly every black. I absolutely do not think it racist to ask why Black performance on the average is not as good as Asian on balance, when the Asians started with the prejudices against the ‘yellow races’ shown in the concentration camps for the Japanese.”
Ironically, Hough, who has been teaching at Duke for four decades and earned a doctorate from Harvard University, sees himself as part of the solution and expressed disappointment that more progress hasn’t been made in closing the racial divide.
“My purpose is to help achieve the battle of King’s battle to overcome and create a melting pot America,” he said.
One has to wonder how Hough might compare the racial struggles of Asian Americans and Blacks as he did without referencing the kidnapping, enslavement and sale of enslaved Africans for several centuries.
Like every group of color on the planet, Asians were negatively impacted by global white supremacy as evidenced by contact with European explorers like Marco Polo, the Opium Wars in China that caused the nation to collapse, European colonization of Asian countries, the bombing of Hiroshima, Japanese-American concentration camps and the mistreatment and exploitation of Asian workers in the building of the U.S. railroad system out West.
But respectfully one has to ask if that could be compared to being kidnapped, bought and sold like cattle, warehoused in slave fortresses, loaded into the bellies of slave-trading vessels in spoon-like fashion, beaten, branded, robbed of one’s name, history, culture and religion, forced to work from dusk to dawn until death, not being allowed to have a family, declared “three-fifths human,” lynched, castrated, forced to work as sharecroppers, denied the right to vote, denied basic civil and human rights, subjected to domestic terrorism at the hands of the police and others, deprived of an education, subjected to mass incarceration and racial profiling and gunned down like animals by law enforcement officers.
Despite the many atrocities and indignities Black men, women and children continue to suffer today, Dr. Hough can’t understand why Blacks haven’t made the progress our Asian-American brothers and sisters have made in America.
Even though Hough has earned multiple college degrees, it sounds like he has been deprived of an education. It sounds like the professor failed miserably to take advantage of African-centered courses that could have opened his eyes and expanded his understanding of the world in which we live.
Tragically, Dr. Hough has passed on his warped view of the world to several generations of Duke University students, undermining efforts to bring Dr. King’s dream of a just and humane society to fruition.
Like his former students, Dr. Hough is a victim of an intricate system that seeks to give whites an unfair advantage over people of color, regardless of the cost to communities of color or white people themselves.
Sadly, there are a lot more Dr. Jerry Houghs out there — some of whom know better than to publicly air their ideas and perspectives.
As myopic and frustrating as Dr. Hough’s online comments were, they also presented a teachable moment for those working to bring about equity and justice in the U.S.
We can all take from this sobering realization that there will always be people in this nation — some of them well-meaning and convinced that they have all the answers — who, for whatever reason, will never fully grasp the plight and the struggle of people of African descent in the United States.
There are certainly people of color — African and Caribbean immigrants among them — who do not understand the complex history and struggle of descendants of enslaved Africans in America.
Dr. Hough’s remarks are reminiscent of comments by whites who say their European ancestors came to America with nothing and made something of themselves and wonder why Blacks can’t do the same.
European immigrants earned their place in America by becoming “white.” Enslaved Africans had no such opportunity.
We were literally stripped of our humanity and snatched out of history. Any connections we had to our ancestral homeland were destroyed, as were the African nations we once called home, which were besieged with European invaders and colonizers seeking natural resources and human chattel.
Many of the immigrants who come to the United States will never fully grasp the sacrifices made by enslaved Africans and Blacks that make possible their freedom and opportunities. Like Hough, many of them will assume that Blacks haven’t made more progress in America because we are lazy, disinterested in education and not willing to work hard to achieve the American Dream.
Why should we be shocked or surprised that someone of European descent — even someone who says he is a disciple of the late Rev. Dr, Martin Luther King Jr. — doesn’t get it?
Because there are white people for whom the perspectives or observations of Black people have very little validity or significance, we need our white brothers and sisters who get it to share their understanding of the global system of white supremacy with less-enlightened European Americans.
Perhaps we could then begin to discuss white supremacy openly and move towards a more just, equitable and humane society.
All power to the people.
This article originally published in the May 25, 2015 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
