Redhawke, I don’t think your example of Leonard Jeffries actually counters the objections that were made to sail’s original claims. Remember, sail hypothesized a black professor claiming that “all whites are evil” and a feminist one claiming that “all men are evil” and expressed incredulity that they would run into job difficulties on account of their views. Well, the very article about Jeffries that you linked to is all about the job difficulties that Jeffries has run into on account of his views! While I agree that there is often more tolerance for criticism of white males than for criticism of minorities and women, I don’t think you or sail has a snowball’s chance in hell of being able to substantiate that racism or sexism on the part of blacks or women (respectively) is generally considered acceptable.
IzzyR: *In your opinion, does a person have more freedom in the academic world to express negative views about Whites and men as they do about Blacks and women, or are all these groups treated equally in this regard? *
I think you have to draw a finer distinction in terms of what you’re asking about. I’ve spent many years in the academic world, specifically in institutions on the left end of the political spectrum, and I have never seen any more acceptance for criticism of whites or males on the grounds of race or sex than for criticism of blacks or women. How is that reconcilable with the statement at the end of my first paragraph? Read on.
Namely, in all my experience, anybody who denigrates whites or men as intrinsically inferior or evil is just as likely to get called on their bigotry as someone who denigrates blacks or women in that way.
There is, however, more criticism of white males on the grounds of cultural inequalities than there is of blacks or females. That is, it’s one of the hot intellectual trends these days to examine ways in which society’s deck has been and still is stacked in favor of white males, as a legacy of the days when Western societies were frankly racially and sexually anti-egalitarian.
This seems to have originated as a reaction against persistent biases that portrayed Western societies and cultures as primarily objective, benevolent, just, and admirable. Finally some folks succeeded in pointing out that the emperor was a little less well-dressed than he thought he was, and subsequently an anti-oppression feeding frenzy commenced. These days, every aspect of Western culture is being turned inside-out by academics to examine it for the influence of sexism and racism. While I think it’s in general a very good thing to do this sort of historical and cultural self-questioning, I think that a good deal of the research on this topic is crap. (To be fair, there aren’t many academic fields, or fields in any line of work for that matter, where there isn’t a good deal of research that’s crap.) After all, what’s the point of doing, say, a study of colonial science education policy in 1920’s Orissa only to conclude that—(gasp!)—the policy was influenced by racial prejudices? Wow, no fooling? :rolleyes: I could have guessed that for myself, and I don’t even read Oriya.
So yes, there’s a lot of heated criticism of the ways white males have had unfair advantages in our society and have used them to dominate and oppress others. And that sort of criticism often does get so indiscriminate and heavy-handed that it comes across as mere “white male bashing”, which is not a good thing. However, it’s not the same thing as actual racist or sexist bigotry against whites or males, i.e., a belief that they’re intrinsically evil or inferior. Saying that the “liberal academy” in general condones that sort of bigotry would be, from all that I have seen or read of it, a lie.
Indeed, these two figures are so frequently invoked to justify outlandish claims that “most” universities contain all kinds of ruthless male-bashers and anti-white hatemongers that one wonders what such declaimers of the university would do if these two quit their jobs, or became Republicans.