Education

Fired Higher Ed Writer: Outcry Is Proof That ‘There Is No Legitimacy’ in Race Studies

Fired Higher Ed Writer Naomi Schaefer Riley Outcry Is Proof That There Is No Legitimacy in Race Studies

Image source: Fox News

The higher education writer fired this week for criticizing the dissertations of black studies students defended her writing Wednesday and said the resulting outcry is proof that “there is no legitimacy” in race studies.

Naomi Schaefer Riley, a now-former blogger at the Chronicle of Higher Education, said during an appearance on Fox News that her original post was to question the dissertations of several black studies students profiled by the publication last month.

The dissertations, she said, “seemed to me less than academically rigorous. Mostly they were partisan in the sense that they blamed anything that was wrong with the black community on white and institutional racism.“ Others were focused on ”perfectly irrelevant and obscure topics” like a history of black midwifery.

While reader outrage — and cries of racism — were swift, the Chronicle stood by Riley and said her post was an invitation for debate, even having her pen a follow-up. The Chronicle‘s support didn’t last long, however; Riley was fired several days later.

“It seemed like they caved to public pressure, these people who were calling me names and saying horrible things about me,” said Riley, a former Wall Street Journal editor. “I guess the Chronicle just couldn’t take the pressure.

“Racism in this case is employed as a charge for anybody who disagrees with the liberal orthodoxy on the issue of race,” Riley said. “Race studies and black studies on college campuses have become a political cause. They’re not an academic discourse where you get to ask questions, they’re a cause where we already know the answers, and the answer is always if you criticize us you’re a racist.”

Riley, who is married to a black man, noted she did not engage in an attack on any of the students themselves.

“This was an attack on an academic discipline,” she said. “This kind of response to me demonstrates that there is no legitimacy here. If this is your response, it’s so weak, why then should I believe this is a substantive area to study?”

Watch Riley’s full appearance below, via Fox News:

Comments (61)

1 2
  • mauijonny
    Posted on May 10, 2012 at 4:25am

    Dems/libs/progs are very hung-up on skin color. Sorta creepy, if you ask me.

    Report Post » mauijonny  
    • HowardSternIsABigot
      Posted on May 10, 2012 at 7:00am

      I agre. I always wondered why people so sickened by racism designed a system that tracks race of individuals and rains down privilege based solely on race. Then i noticed women favoring women, blacks favoring blacks, etc etc. RACISTS AND SEXISTS all. IT IS ALL A BIG LIE.

      Report Post »  
  • FromSeaToSea
    Posted on May 9, 2012 at 11:03pm

    Me thinks there racists. Most of us are color blind and stick to the real issue.

    Report Post »  
    • Tree_Butcher
      Posted on May 10, 2012 at 12:07am

      when debating any on the left, and they have no basis in logic or fact, they call you ‘racist’ to “get you off your game” fluster you, get you off topic to defend yourself against a charge of no foundation at all. My response is: “prove it, or admit you are wrong”.

      Report Post » Tree_Butcher  
  • kikassmofo
    Posted on May 9, 2012 at 9:12pm

    There shouldn’t be “african-american studies“ or ”hispanic american studies” in school, it should just be american history. Thats the problem in this country. Its a kids first day of school, teacher says ” what color are you? black? ok your an “african-american”, your a minority. and what color are you? brown? ok youre a “hispanic-american”, youre a minority. What color are you? white? ok your an a-hole…I mean your just a regular american. When we‘re young in school we don’t care about race, we know nothing about it until its taught to us. I can remember detailed descriptions in school about slaves and slave ships and how bad white people treated black people, after all that crap is force fed to us we turn and look at each other and we’re like “your grandad was mean to my grandad so f*** you!” next thing you know we graduate high school and black people look at white people funny and white people look at black people funny. My blood has only been here 2 generations but because my skin is white I’m a regular american and black peoples blood has been here since the beginning and they are african-americans. Racism will never go away at this rate.

    Report Post »  
    • Flagstaff
      Posted on May 9, 2012 at 9:44pm

      Sounds right.

      Report Post »  
    • hoarsemom
      Posted on May 9, 2012 at 10:14pm

      I agree. To take it one step further, what difference does it make what my ancestors have done. I had no control over that. I have not been a slave holder or condone the act. Quit blaming me for an act that I had nothing to do with.

      Report Post »  
  • SerikFox
    Posted on May 9, 2012 at 9:06pm

    A friend of mine who is black coined the best phrase on this issue I think. He said, “Ain’t no white man ever kept you from reading a f****** book”.

    Report Post »  
    • Flagstaff
      Posted on May 9, 2012 at 9:48pm

      Unless you go to a public school that doesn’t teach you how to read.

      Report Post »  
    • Hades
      Posted on May 10, 2012 at 3:49pm

      LOL! I wish more black people were like your friend. I worked with a particular black kid (he was 20) and he told me race is the main factor in his (and his family’s) life. All whites are to be distrusted and looked down upon because all they desire is to return the black people to slavery. He is all for any and all black people to take over white people’s homes and businesses as “payment” for the slavery “we” have caused his race. The fact that he told me all of this with a straight face is mind boggling to me. He was really taught this. From who, I’m not sure. But if this is how race is taught to the black community by either family or peers… there is going to be a huge problem in the near future.

      Report Post »  
  • Captain Curvy
    Posted on May 9, 2012 at 7:57pm

    Oh great, she is married to a Black man………..Just shut up you worthless B!tch….Your opinion means nothing now………Somebody else needs to take up this cause. I think it is a joke, these studies..No wonder we have so many Black Dr.s these days………

    Report Post »  
    • VTDave
      Posted on May 9, 2012 at 10:21pm

      Go crawl back under the rock you came out from under…….

      Report Post » VTDave  
  • RetAF
    Posted on May 9, 2012 at 7:20pm

    Of course the European studies degree makes you employable, CLMSADJMAN. It makes you employable as an Occupy Wall Street protestor, you have to understand the “evil rich white banker”. Also, a European Studies degree is highly sought after when applying for rioter positions or professional protestor anytime a summit comes to town.

    Report Post »  
    • Captain Curvy
      Posted on May 9, 2012 at 8:02pm

      Oh great, she is married to a Black man, just shut up you Worthless B!tch……..Your opinion means nothing now…..Somebody else needs to take up this cause. I am sick of Blacks getting a degree in something worthless that they didn’t even have to work for…….Pathetic & of course don’t forget their free ride!

      Report Post »  
    • mauijonny
      Posted on May 10, 2012 at 4:11am

      Okie Dokie. CAP’T. I‘m guessing you don’t actually watch GB.

      Report Post » mauijonny  
  • LetThereBeLight
    Posted on May 9, 2012 at 7:17pm

    The “racist” who is married to a black man, WAIT, wouldn’t that make her for sure a Non-racist?!?

    Report Post » LetThereBeLight  
    • lukerw
      Posted on May 9, 2012 at 7:56pm

      My car is faster… than yours… which makes me a Rac-ist :)

      Report Post » lukerw  
  • Sue Dohnim
    Posted on May 9, 2012 at 7:08pm

    Much of the social history of the Western world, over the past three decades, has been a history of replacing what worked with what sounded good.

    ~ Thomas Sowell

    Report Post » Sue Dohnim  
    • lexington_green
      Posted on May 9, 2012 at 7:30pm

      marxism, welfare and affirmative action all look swell on paper…well maybe not marxism…but in practice all three are nightmares.

      Report Post » lexington_green  
  • thegodfather
    Posted on May 9, 2012 at 6:56pm

    Dat white beeoch, doesn’t know da pain we been tru. She’s not down wif the black struggle. She be a racist *******. Now let’s get brother or sister in dere, sows we be getting some “A‘s’

    Report Post » thegodfather  
  • hagar
    Posted on May 9, 2012 at 6:43pm

    When you are intellectually bankrupt the only response is to yell racism

    Report Post »  
  • drattastic
    Posted on May 9, 2012 at 6:41pm

    Looks like a lib got eaten by her own for a moment of lucidity. Isn’t political correctness grand.

    Report Post » drattastic  
    • hillbillyinny
      Posted on May 9, 2012 at 7:12pm

      Did you watch the video? She’s not “a lib”! She’s an educator, with a brain, asking good questions and getting attacked. Sad commentary on our society today–and it seems to have happened so quickly. . .

      Report Post »  
  • Goldenyears22
    Posted on May 9, 2012 at 6:30pm

    We have made allowances for black people for so many years. They have been put into the work place over others, given scholarships over others. Why is that? What does that say for educations? Why doesn’t education do their best to bring them up to standards instead of putting them in inferior classes? There are those that are just as smart as anyone, and there are those that are willing to slide by and be happy with inferior. The same can be said for some white people, but it seems especially true that blacks have been given every opportunity. The Al Sharptons, Jackson’s and others do their race no good, they harm them. It seems they are happy to live in the blame Whitey instead of working hard and overcoming.

    Report Post »  
    • Bill Rowland
      Posted on May 9, 2012 at 7:41pm

      Why do we have black history month but no white history month? A department of black studies but no department of white studies?
      Did the blacks settle this country? With very few exceptions did blacks invent any machines or make any great medical discoveries? Did blacks make the cotton gin or the model T. Did they make any great industiral leaps?
      The answer is NO!!!
      White men did all these things. While they were being done the blackman was still living in a tribal society and carrying out warts with clubs and rocks. The losers got to come to America as slaves, they were not enslaved by the white man but by other blacks.
      Slavery is wrong in all its manifistations but was abolished by our civil war. The black man has had an opportunity to advance himself since 1865, and many have done well but most haven’t and blame it on others.

      OMG 2012

      Report Post »  
    • Shasta
      Posted on May 9, 2012 at 7:42pm

      And if the NBPs have their way, their blame game is going to get violent. Not to worry though, Eric Holder and Obama will be denouncing the NBPs very soon

      Report Post » Shasta  
    • forthepeople
      Posted on May 9, 2012 at 7:58pm

      Amen : Since the dawn of history the ***** has owned the continent of Africa – rich beyond the dream of poet’s fancy, crunching acres of diamonds beneath his bare black feet and yet he never picked one up from the dust until a white man showed to him its glittering light.
      His land swarmed with powerful and docile animals, yet he never dreamed a harness, cart, or sled. A hunter by necessity, he never made an axe, spear, or arrowhead worth preserving beyond the moment of its use. He lived as an ox, content to graze for an hour. In a land of stone and timber he never sawed a foot of lumber, carved a block, or built a house save of broken sticks and mud.
      With league on league of ocean strand and miles of inland seas, for four thousand years he watched their surface ripple under the wind, heard the thunder of the surf on his beach, the howl of the storm over his head, gazed on the dim blue horizon calling him to worlds that lie beyond, and yet he never dreamed a sail.” — Charles Darwin

      Report Post » forthepeople  
  • Clmsadjman
    Posted on May 9, 2012 at 6:06pm

    She’s right what legitimate reason would you have a program like it. We used call programs like this underwater basket weaving degrees totally usless skill set. I talk to this kid I met at my cousin’s house he was in law school the next year I saw him a year later I asked him how law school was going. He as dropped out and was getting his degree in European studies now that makes you employable.

    Report Post »  
    • Independent4233
      Posted on May 9, 2012 at 6:51pm

      “…….they blamed anything that was wrong with the black community on white and institutional racism.“

      If they don’t have a white scape goat to blame for their lack of ability to compete on an equal basis, they would have to admit that the failure of their race is strictly due to their own inabilities and nothing else, which is EXACTLY what tens of thousands of tests verify, which, by the way, they try their level best to keep from becoming known.

      Knowledge of those that do get out is demonized as being “irrelevant” or proven wrong.

      Too, citing actual facts and test scores is loudly denounced by them and their radical liberal supporters as racism.

      They would also have to admit that leftist academic cowards….afraid of black violence….curried favor with the black leadership by instituting black studies, because….even with gimmie AA policies…..blacks weren’t able to gain positions on university faculties unless a subject was introduced that…for all intents and purposes….was on a level with something like majoring in physical education.

      This brave lady is 100% right. Most everybody knows she’s right also. They demonize her, because she’s not playing along with their game of “let’s pretend.”

      She committed a No-no. She told the truth, and that’s not permitted in this AGE of LIARS.

      Report Post »  
  • IDONTTHINKSO
    Posted on May 9, 2012 at 6:04pm

    Sad thing is the jesse jacksons, spike lees, and al sharpton’s of the world are pushing the race lie everyday making money and laughing at the idiots that believe their rhetoric. How or who will they blame when it is only the black race left. Racism and mob rule is the exact same thing, a few who claim to be in charge tell the others what they need to do and then the leaders set back and do nothing but take credit for what their minions have done! The death of one of their own kind is the stage for their hate baiting! Caring is the least of their motives, because the more dead and poor of their kind is a willing sacrifice for the advancement of their poor me, mentality!

    Report Post »  
  • BurntHills
    Posted on May 9, 2012 at 6:00pm

    one good thing about the race war obama wants, we will not have to wear uniforms to tell who is who.

    Report Post » BurntHills  
  • Rowgue
    Posted on May 9, 2012 at 5:51pm

    Their reason for firing her is clearly idiotic, but a private business can fire anybody anytime for any reason or no reason at all as long as it’s not a violation of anti-descrimination statutes.

    Report Post »  
  • Dougral Supports Israel
    Posted on May 9, 2012 at 5:47pm

    The world of academia presents itself as a place of higher learning and thinking and claims tenure is to protect those with unorthodox or unpopular ideas. In reality there is probably a no more rigid hierarchy than that in a university. Riley killed a sacred cow and is discovering that is not tolerated by the so-called thinkers in our society. These people have exposed themselves as the close-minded bigots that they really are.

    Report Post »  
  • spirited
    Posted on May 9, 2012 at 5:44pm

    She is a racist like Elizabeth Warren is Charokee Indian.

    The lie about Naomi Schaefer Riley is more evidence of Obama’s distort & destroy.

    Report Post » spirited  
  • pavepaws
    Posted on May 9, 2012 at 5:41pm

    A victim of an agenda. She dared to question something shrouded in political correctness.

    Report Post »  
  • Ray2447
    Posted on May 9, 2012 at 5:40pm

    The “race, class, and gender” propaganda of the Marxist/Leninist agenda is used by left wing, academic thugs (professors) to create dissension and brainwash naive students in America’s colleges and universities – - – as shown in “Marxist Valley College” at Youtube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7iVmh0VCkL4 The U.S. Dept. of Education is the enemy of traditional America, and the Liberal Arts curriculum is the primary weapon used by these Marxist/Leninist apparatchiks to push their America bashing agenda. :-/

    Report Post »  
  • forthepeople
    Posted on May 9, 2012 at 5:39pm

    Since the dawn of history the Black Man has owned the continent of Africa – rich beyond the dream of poet’s fancy, crunching acres of diamonds beneath his bare black feet and yet he never picked one up from the dust until a white man showed to him its glittering light.
    His land swarmed with powerful and docile animals, yet he never dreamed a harness, cart, or sled. A hunter by necessity, he never made an axe, spear, or arrowhead worth preserving beyond the moment of its use. He lived as an ox, content to graze for an hour. In a land of stone and timber he never sawed a foot of lumber, carved a block, or built a house save of broken sticks and mud.
    With league on league of ocean strand and miles of inland seas, for four thousand years he watched their surface ripple under the wind, heard the thunder of the surf on his beach, the howl of the storm over his head, gazed on the dim blue horizon calling him to worlds that lie beyond, and yet he never dreamed a sail.” — Charles Darwin

    Report Post » forthepeople  
  • Lloyd Drako
    Posted on May 9, 2012 at 5:38pm

    Riley has admitted that she did not actually read the dissertations in question. Had she done so, she would have a stronger case.

    That said, she is right that “race studies” usually devolve into “victimization studies,” in which either the sufferings of a particular minority are endlessly raked over, or rare individuals who “rose above” are singled out for extravagant praise.

    The lives of African-Americans are of course worthy of serious academic study; it’s more questionable whether entire academic departments should be given over to them, or whether, like affirmative action, they‘re a legacy of the ’60s that should be retired.

    Report Post » Lloyd Drako  
    • lexington_green
      Posted on May 9, 2012 at 7:35pm

      the cultures of all sorts of americans should be studied, but with balance, broad discourse and critical thinking – not with bigotry and indoctrination.

      Report Post » lexington_green  
    • Walkabout
      Posted on May 9, 2012 at 8:09pm

      Lloyd Drako

      Do you have to read a whole book to know it is bad?

      You know that if she had read all of the dissertations , she still would have been pilloried & fired.

      Do you suppose that maybe the blogger had read some of Thomas Sowel’s work on Townhall.com
      & therefore knew a priori that the doctoral student was full of it?

      Report Post »  
  • weknewbetter
    Posted on May 9, 2012 at 5:38pm

    Do any of you need more proof that different races can not exist within the same borders?
    If we do not separate our selves from those that wish to erase us from history, we deserve to be extinct.

    Report Post »  
    • Lloyd Drako
      Posted on May 9, 2012 at 5:47pm

      “If we do not separate our selves from those that wish to erase us from history, we deserve to be extinct.” OK, you leave. Go back to Europe. Odds are that the average African-American’s ancestors arrived here before most of yours did.

      Report Post » Lloyd Drako  
    • Independent4233
      Posted on May 9, 2012 at 7:09pm

      Lloyd Drako
      Posted on May 9, 2012 at 5:47pm
      “Go back to Europe. Odds are that the average African-American’s ancestors arrived here before most of yours did.”

      What good would it do for any of us to go to Europe, Lloyd, they would just follow us over there with their hands out. All you have to do is look at Africa and almost any black run city in this country to know they couldn‘t any more run a successful state or country than they’ve demonstrated for 5000 years now. They couldn’t produce sufficient numbers of qualified professionals to keep things above a Zimbabwe setting.

      And whether blacks might have been here before the ancestors of some whites I can’t see has any bearing on the fact that they DO NOT want to assimilate uinto the mainstream, unless it means they have perpetual privileges and rights over every other group.

      They’re totally engrossed in blacks and all things black over and above their non-black countrymen and care not whit for anything else. Everything with them begins and ends with race. They’re….for the most part…. the most hate filled people of all the races on earth.

      Report Post »  
    • weknewbetter
      Posted on May 9, 2012 at 9:40pm

      Its really sad when I speak of saving our people from extinction through multi-cultrual genocide, and the responce i get is “go back to europe then”

      Most of the land mass of this planet is inhabited by non-whites…….only a few countries have a majority white population. So why is it that only White countries need to combat “racisim” by allowing a flood of different races ?
      Why is nobody suggesting that africa needs a lagre portion of Whites living there for the sake of diversity?

      The term racist is nothing but a code word for anti-White.

      Save your children …..Seperation now!

      Report Post »  
  • 13th Imam
    Posted on May 9, 2012 at 5:30pm

    Go Figure
    It‘s whitey’s fault.

    Report Post » 13th Imam  
    • Ray2447
      Posted on May 9, 2012 at 5:41pm

      The “race, class, and gender” propaganda of the Marxist/Leninist agenda is used by left wing, academic thugs (professors) to create dissension and brainwash naive students in America’s colleges and universities – - – as shown in “Marxist Valley College” at Youtube.

      The U.S. Dept. of Education is the enemy of traditional America, and the Liberal Arts curriculum is the primary weapon used by these Marxist/Leninist apparatchiks to push their America bashing agenda. :-/

      Report Post »  
    • VanceUppercut
      Posted on May 9, 2012 at 6:02pm

      @13th Imam

      So you admit it!!!

      Report Post »  
  • bassist237
    Posted on May 9, 2012 at 5:25pm

    I agree with her, does that make me a racist?

    Report Post » bassist237  
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