Claudine Gay Betrayed the American Values of My Black Elders to Exploit White Guilt

Hi all,

Hope your new year is off to a good start.

Yesterday afternoon, Batya Ungar-Sargon of Newsweek asked me to contribute my thoughts on Claudine Gay’s resignation from her role as Harvard’s president and it was just published.

Here is the link to the full article:

The opening paragraphs:

After weeks of speculation about whether Harvard University's president, Claudine Gay, would be forced to resign amid a plagiarism and antisemitism scandal, Gay announced that she was stepping down. In her resignation letter, Gay spoke of "personal attacks and threats fueled by racial animus," and made no mention of her failure to properly address antisemitism or the never-ending allegations of plagiarism against her rather limited record of scholarship.

Gay, who exploited race to reach the pinnacle of Harvard, chose to blame racism on her way out the door.

When I first learned of Gay's fate, I thought back to one of the earliest lessons of my youth. The women and men that visited my parents at our Bay Area home always told me to never use race as an excuse. They said that the same attitude went for the profound hearing loss that I was born with. These adults had grown up under segregation and suffered grievous human indignities. They would not have been wrong in the eyes of many to blame racism for any unfair obstacles placed in their paths.

Yet my black elders knew on an instinctual level that to give in to race and racism was to give immutable characteristics power over individual identity and character. As one of my elders told me, "I'm not the n****r they call me. That's all them." They knew that giving in, identifying with the race that the racist saw, would have led them into the trap of endless victimization. And it is to their credit that these doctors, dentists, professors and filmmakers always insisted on finding the path of success somehow.

Needless to say, Claudine Gay comes from a different stock. She aimed for tenure at Stanford University despite an academic record that would make most think twice, and shot for the presidency of Harvard despite achievements that fell far short of past presidents'. The power of white guilt would compensate for any shortcomings she may have and propel her to the top.

Whether she was conscious of it or not, Claudine Gay's entire life was organized around race. Race was the excuse for all of her shortcomings. It was America that made her existence and path in life possible.

We've made diversity our most prized virtue, believing that if we lift it high enough, we can hide the stink of America's racist past. We wanted that first black female president of Harvard because we believed that a spectacle of race, rather than a monumental achievement of merit, would show the goodness of our country.

How desperate were we for racial innocence? So desperate that we betrayed the American principles that enabled countless blacks to reach a place in life that was an improvement upon the world they were born into! It is a sad reflection of America that we elevate the Claudine Gays of this world and not the meritorious women and men I grew up admiring.

The link to the full article.

I hope you enjoy the read. Have a great rest of the week.

All my best,

Eli