Last week, the Internet went wild about Professor Jessie Daniels, who teaches sociology at the Hunter College campus of the City University of New York (CUNY). What did Professor Daniels say?
Jessie Daniels, a self-described “expert on race,” began her tweetstorm . . . by declaring that “what I’ve learned is that the white-nuclear family is one of the most powerful forces supporting white supremacy.”
“I mean, if you’re a white person who says they’re engaged in dismantling white supremacy but…you’re forming a white family [and] reproducing white children that ‘you want the best for’ – how is that helping [and] not part of the problem?” . . .
Daniels notes that she’s not alone in her hostility towards the family. Other scholars have a “feminist critique of The Family as an inherently conservative force in society,” she says, citing the work of feminist scholars Peggy McIntosh and Michele Barrett, who argue in their book that the nuclear family structure is a “fact to be lamented.”
The sacredness of the family also concerns her, Daniels notes, adding that “there’s a whole ideological apparatus to justify how f-cking sacred the family is,” adding that “nothing’s more important” because “Until white people are ready to confront their own family’s racism [and] participation in systemic white supremacy, it’s not getting dismantled.”
Professor Daniels locked down her Twitter account, rather than to defend her wicked arguments. And she has been preaching this hateful ideology at taxpayer expense since 1993. Because higher education in America is extensively subsidized by federal and state taxpayers, everything taught in our universities is a matter of public interest. Even private colleges and universities received direct and indirect subsidies from taxpayers, especially in the form of Pell Grants and government-guaranteed student loans. Taxpayer funding is the financial source of what Professor Glenn Reynolds has called The Higher Education Bubble. Professor Daniels taught at the University of Cincinnati (1993-1994) and Hofstra University (1995-2000) before being appointed research director at CUNY/Hunter College’s Center on Community and Urban Health in 2002, and from there gained tenure as a full professor at the CUNY School of Public Health. Let the taxpayer ask, “How does the hateful message of Professor Daniels promote ‘public health’?” It is self-evidently absurd that such a hate-filled monster as Professor Daniels should be employed in this position, and who is paying her salary? Every taxpayer in New York City, New York state and the United States of America. Professor Daniels is a government employee, and her employment at public expense is tantamount to a government endorsement of her monstrous beliefs.
Professor Daniels has a verified “blue-check” Twitter account. She is a public figure, and not some obscure private citizen. Criticism of her hateful anti-family tirade is not “abuse” or “harassment.” Her arguments were self-evidently indefensible. Everyone with two eyes and a brain could see that Professor Daniels is a demented hatemonger and, by locking down her account, she tacitly admitted that she cannot defend herself in open debate. She waved the white flag of surrender.
Why does Professor Daniels believe what she believes? Because of her devotion to radical feminism, an ideology that emerged from the New Left in the 1960s. Radical feminism derived its methodology (historical materialism) from Marxism and the feminist belief in women’s collective oppression by patriarchy was cloned, so to speak, from the Marxist claim that the industrial proletariat was oppressed by capitalism.
This concept of oppression involves a zero-sum-game mentality, where individual success is condemned as a product of unjust exploitation of others. Because the capitalist system is inherently wrong, according to Marxists, the most successful people in our society are the worst people, and those who fail are the best people — the sainted “victims” of oppression. By equating success with oppression, and celebrating victimhood, this ideology of “social justice” condemns every honest person who works hard and saves their money to try to make a better life for themselves and their families. In the obverse, “social justice” ideology also incentivizes claims of victimhood, encouraging a form of identity politics based on self-pity and an attitude of resentment toward others. It is often the most privileged people in our society (e.g., students from affluent backgrounds attending elite universities) who embrace this identity politics mentality, claiming to be Victims of Oppression.
Feminism condemns “male privilege” as a way of stigmatizing male success. In most cases, the successful man “stands on the shoulders of giants,” so to speak, having been born into fortunate circumstances, inheriting certain advantages. As Malcolm Gladwell explains in his book Outliers: The Story of Success, it may take generations of hard work (and good luck) to produce the great man. A billionaire like Mark Zuckerberg, for example, is the son of middle-class parents, but he is the great-grandson of impoverished Jewish immigrants. The crucial factors that put Zuckerberg in a position to create Facebook while he was a Harvard student could be traced back to his grandparents’ generation, before anyone dreamed of modern computer technology. Continue reading Feminism Is a Totalitarian Movement to Destroy Civilization as We Know It →
