The latest in the saga of black conservatives & campus outrage

The latest in the saga of black conservatives & campus outrage June 19, 2016
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I guess Hollywood isn’t the only tough place to be black and conservative in America today. In fact, by the sound of it, college campuses might be even more difficult.

Just ask Jason Riley, a Wall Street Journal columnist and senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. Jason Riley is a black man in America, and he’s conservative. And he has the gall to challenge college students indoctrinated to believe that racial disparities in the U.S. can only be explained by racism. As he recently explained in aWSJ column:
The Obama presidency, high-profile police shootings, the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement and the national debate surrounding mass incarceration have led to more invitations from schools to offer my opinion on race relations. Many of the students I encounter tend to believe that white racism largely explains racial disparities in the U.S. I encourage them to consider other possible explanations given black history. Large parts of these speeches are devoted to what was happening in black America in the first half of the 20th century with respect to employment, schooling, crime and parenting and why so many positive black trends either slowed dramatically or reversed course beginning in the 1960s.
Students who disagree with my lectures don’t hesitate to speak out during the Q&A. The back-and-forth is spirited but civil, and I have never been shouted down or physically threatened.

But it seems that this was too much for Virginia Tech. In the face of no actual protests AND NOT EVEN ANY ACTUAL THREATS OF PROTESTS, Virginia Tech was pressured by the liberal orthodoxy to cancel an invitation to Mr. Riley to speak as part of a certain lecture series.

Riley is simply the latest in a long line of canceled college speaking invitations to a diverse array of speakers who all aren’t actually even that conservative, necessarily, including Condoleezza Rice (I guess because she thought Saddam Hussein should be removed from power), Ayaan Hirsi Ali (I guess because she speaks out against radical Islamic terrorists), and Christine Lagarde (I guess because she heads the International Monetary Fund and, according to liberals, money to countries to fight poverty is evil?!?).

It’s absurd really. So Riley wasn’t surprised, and he used his platforms to fight back.

And eventually, his invitation that was canceled was eventually offered back to him. After Virginia Tech lied about inviting him in the first place. They didn’t want any protests from Black Lives Matter.

How insulting! I’m tired of universities and certain groups of my fellow black Americans acting like black people can’t hear things they might disagree with. Let’s all just get some sense into our heads.

Black conservatives like myself are used to hearing things we disagree with. Most conservatives on most college campuses are too. It’s part of life. Get over it.

It’s almost as if liberals are afraid of hearing other viewpoints. I wonder why – maybe they realize just how wrong their ideas are after all.

 

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