Monday, January 14, 2008

Duke’s Tyson Is Still Race Hustling

Duke Professor Tim Tyson continues to race hustle.

From today’s Durham Herald Sun:

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. should be remembered as "a black revolutionary" dedicated to a democracy for future generations, not as "a black Santa Claus who wanted to be nice to everybody," an author and historian said at a Sunday service at a historically black Oxford church.

"He gave his life so that the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution would not be just worthless scraps of a paper, which is all they were until the black South redeemed them and allowed them to speak to the nations for all time," Tim Tyson said. (emphasis added)

Tyson teaches at both Duke University and UNC.[…]
The rest of the H-S story is here.

Professor Tyson was among the first of Duke’s faculty to enthusiastically endorse and enable Crystal Mangum’s and Mike Nifong’s lies. Few faculty members were more reckless and wrong in their public statements.

Here, for example, are excerpts from Tyson’s Apr. 2, 2006 Raleigh News & Observer op-ed:
[...]Rape is one of the deepest and most vicious ways that human beings deny their common humanity. Racism is another.

These crimes are intertwined deeply in our history, and that history came off its leash once more on Buchanan Boulevard on March 13, as a few Duke students did great harm to our community. …

Young white men of privilege deployed their unearned affluence to hire black women to provide live pornography. This is only partly a free market, where people choose to buy and sell themselves. It is also a slave market, where an enduring racial caste system placed those women in a vulnerable position. …

The spirit of the lynch mob lived in that house on Buchanan Boulevard, regardless of the truth of the most serious charges. The ghastly spectacle takes its place in a history where African- American men were burned at the stake for "reckless eyeballing" -- that is, looking at a white woman -- and white men kept black concubines and mistresses and raped black women at will.[...]
The spirit of the lynch mob didn’t live in that house on Buchanan Boulevard.

In Spring 2006 the spirit of the lynch mob lived in the minds and words of Professor Tyson and people like him. Unfortunately, we have no reason to doubt it's still with them today.

Tyson’s op-ed appeared in the N&O the same day it published in another part of the paper a photo of the anonymous “Vigilante” poster targeting white member of the Duke lacrosse team.

The N&O published the "Vigilante" poster after Duke had expressed concerns that doing so would add to the physical danger the players were already facing from hate-filled people stirred by the reckless racist agitation of Tyson and others. (The N&O was the only North Carolina daily to publish the photo)

While the N&O should never have published the “Vigilante” poster, as long as it did, the photo belonged side-by-side with Tyson’s op-ed.

Questions:

Why is Tyson so popular with Duke Divinity School administrators, faculty and students? Is his appeal his frequent use of Christian and biblical imagery?

Why do tens of thousands of Duke alums each year send mega-millions to a university which actively recruits race hustlers like Professor Tyson, Professor Karla Holloway and former Professor Houston Baker?

Tyson's op-ed is here.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

John:

"Why do tens of thousands of Duke alums each year send mega-millions to a university which actively recruits race hustlers like Professor Tyson, Professor Karla Holloway and former Professor Houston Baker?"

Good question. Perhaps someone should ask them.

Ken
Dallas

Anonymous said...

To do:

1. Find a current comment by someone who said something objectionable during the lacrosse case.

2. Relate it to said comment made during the lacrosse case.

3. Repeat.

Stop being a moron. I don't know the guy, and I have never heard him speak, but it was clear from your excerpt that he was saying that a constitution that allowed evils like segregation clearly isn't that remarkable a document.

What he said during the lacrosse case was wrong. Many people made similar mistakes. They ought to be held accountable for these mistakes. However, the way to hold these people accountable is not to tear up everything they subsequently say. Tyson provided us with an interesting way of interpreting the history of the civil rights movement. There is absolutely no reason to attack this.

JWM said...

Dear Ken,

In the weeks to come I plan to start asking that question.

To Anon @ 7:50 PM,

I don't doubt that many JinC visitors who read Tyson's comments and your's recalled that in 1957 President Eisenhower ordered the 101 Airborne Division into Little Rock.

His reason?

To enforce a desegregation order based on a Supreme Court decision (Brown v. Topeka Board of Education) that school segregation was unconstitutional.

"Unconstitutional" as in the Constitution of the United States, a document you'll find in most almanacs.

Take a little time and read the Constitution.

If you read carefully you'll learn Eisenhower had the authority to order the 101 into Little Rock based on power the Constitution granted him as President and commander-in-chief.

That was something Dr. King was keenly aware of and often mentioned to his supporters.

There's more I want to say about how wrong Tyson and you are.

View this response as a first installment.

I'll close with a question and an explanation for why I ask it.

Are you by any chance someone with a good deal of formal eduction, including formal education at one of America's high-tuition colleges or universities?

The reason I ask, Anon@ 7:55 PM, is because so many, but certainly not all, people who endorse what Tyson says and call people like me morons are graduates of a high-tuition college or university.

What say you?

In closing, a polite "thank you" goes to Ken in Dallas and a huge "I can't wait 'thank you'" goes to Anon @ 7:50 PM.

John