The Progressive Legacy of Bill Ayers: Sloppy Seconds for Social Justice
Posted on | April 27, 2010 | 32 Comments
Van Helsing calls attention to a little-noted clause in the ’60s peace-and-love agenda: “Do it with my roommate, or you’re a racist!”
It was at the Undergraduate Library at the University of Michigan on a Friday night in November 1965. I was a sophomore and was living in a sorority house — Alpha Epsilon Phi. . . . Billy Ayers was standing on the first floor and started talking to me . . .
I was politically idealistic back then and believed in Tikkun Olam – that we had to do something to make the world better . . .
He asked me to go to a party with him and I did. . . . I think he got quite drunk and I suppose I drank too. . . .
I met Bill’s roommate who also worked at the children’s school. I also met Bill’s younger brother Rick. Bill was a year older than I and his brother was a year younger. He spent a lot of time at Bill’s apartment. . . .
I guess it was one of those evenings — maybe on the way back from the library, maybe just to get out of the sorority house, I don’t remember exactly. What I do recall is that when I was getting ready to leave Ayers told me I couldn’t go until I slept with his roommate and his brother. At this point Bill and I had slept together just once. I was sexually inexperienced, having had only one serious boyfriend with whom I had recently broken up.
At first I thought Ayers was joking. I got up; and went to the door. He moved quickly to block me at the doorway. He locked the door and put the chain on it. I went to the couch and sat down and told him that I had no intention of having sex with his roommate and his brother or him. He said that I had no choice but to do as he said if I wanted to get out of there. He claimed that I wouldn’t sleep with his married roommate because he was black — that I was a bigot. I had gone to school with black kids and had them as friends all my life. I couldn’t believe he was saying that to me
I felt trapped. I had to get out of the situation I was in and because he was so effective a guilt-tripper, I also felt I had to prove to him that I wasn’t a bigot. I got up from the couch and walked over to the black roommate’s bed and put myself on it and he f—-d me. I went totally out of my body. I floated beside myself on the outside and above the bed looking at this black stranger f— me angrily while I hated myself.
After that I had to go lie down on Bill Ayer’s bed for his brother to screw me. . . .
Tikkun Olam usually translates as “repairing the world,” unless you’re a liberal, in which case it translates as, “Sloppy seconds.”
UPDATE: It appears that Bill Ayers’ vision of social justice continues in the person of Amanda Kijera, an American volunteer in Haiti who is “grateful” for being raped:
Two weeks ago, on a Monday morning, I started to write what I thought was a very clever editorial about violence against women in Haiti. . . . Ever committed to preserving the dignity of Black men in a world which constantly stereotypes them as violent savages, I viewed this writing as yet one more opportunity to fight “the man” on behalf of my brothers. That night, before I could finish the piece, I was held on a rooftop in Haiti and raped repeatedly by one of the very men who I had spent the bulk of my life advocating for. . . .
I pleaded with him to honor my commitment to Haiti, to him as a brother in the mutual struggle for an end to our common oppression, but to no avail. He didn’t care that I was a Malcolm X scholar. He told me to shut up, and then slapped me in the face. . . .
Black men have every right to the anger they feel in response to their position in the global hierarchy, but their anger is misdirected.
Women are not the source of their oppression; oppressive policies and the as-yet unaddressed white patriarchy which still dominates the global stage are. . . .
Not once did I envision myself becoming a receptacle for a Black man’s rage at the white world, but that is what I became. While I take issue with my brother’s behavior, I’m grateful for the experience. . . .
Exactly how the hell is the “white partiarchy” responsible for this crime? Whence her insight that a Haitian rapist is motivated by ”rage at the white world”? Don’t bother asking Kathy Shaidle, who isn’t exactly doing the “sisterhood solidarity” thing with Ms. Kijera.

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