People of several different races are having a public event. Two people of one specific race show up to cover the event. Someone at the event says, “We don’t want that race here.” The two race-offenders are escorted out of the event, despite the fact that they had personally done nothing wrong. They were journalists, and were kicked out of the event simply because of their skin color.

Now let’s say there was a backlash. The event organizers took some heat for barring one race from the event. You might think the event organizers would apologize, promise sensitivity training, insist the two people were kicked out because of one person’s mistake instead of any discriminatory policy, and claim the entire thing was just a misunderstanding. Or maybe they’d immediately fire/exile/expel/charge whomever kicked people out because of their race. Isn’t that what always happens when an organization does something blatantly racist?

ryersonian.ca

In this case, no. This event was at Canada’s Ryerson University, hosted by the Racialised Students’ Collective (and the mentality displayed by the “Racialised Students” would be at home on any number of American universities). The people kicked out were white journalism students. So no harm, no foul, no widespread outrage.

http://www.ryersonian.ca/white-students-barred-from-funded-rsu-student-group-event/

It gets better than that. Shortly after the somehow-not-racist-event, the Huffington Post published an essay from Ryerson journalism student Aeman Ansari titled “Ethnic Minorities Deserve Safe Spaces Without White People”.

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/aeman-ansari/ethnic-safe-spaces_b_6897176.html

In her essay, she makes a few interesting points:

“These [safe] spaces, which are forums where minority groups are protected from mainstream stereotypes and marginalization, are crucial to resistance of oppression and we, as a school and as a society, need to respect them… Segregation was imposed on people of colour by people of privilege, not the other way around. The very fact that individuals organizing to help each other get through social barriers and injustices are being attacked and questioned for their peaceful assembly is proof that they were right to exclude those [white] students… Racialized people experience systemic discrimination on a daily basis, on many levels, and in ways that white people may never encounter. The whole point of these safe spaces is to remove that power dynamic.”

She also says, “I am a person of colour and a journalist and so there are two conflicting voices inside my head. But in this case one voice, that of a person of colour, is louder and my conscience does not allow me to be impartial. I have to take a side.” This is a sentiment I strongly suspect many journalists with “social justice” indoctrination share. Perhaps that’s why they shy away from any story that might reinforce negative stereotypes about a minority, yet embrace any story that portrays whites as racist. “Hands up don’t shoot”, anyone?

As a minority and supposed “person of color” (if I ever actually use that phrase to describe myself, please punch me), I guess I should be thrilled that my fellow coloreds are now free to put white people in their place. I should cheer the Racialised Students and embrace my dark-skinned sister for being courageous enough to accuse – in the Huffington Post, where blatant racial pandering is never welcome (yuk yuk) – all white people of being oppressors.

Long live the revolution. Kill whitey. Power to the people. Four hundred years of oppression. Whoop.

But I just ain’t feelin’ it. Maybe I wasn’t oppressed enough as a child; I grew up in Texas, “the America of America”, in a mixed white and Hispanic neighborhood. I was around whites all day every day. We played, went to school, and grew into adulthood together. I’m obviously Hispanic, but somehow was never oppressed by whites (or maybe I just didn’t notice). At seventeen I joined the Marines and served with men and women of all colors, but most were white. As a cop I’ve risked my life with and for whites, and whites have risked their lives for me (likewise with blacks, Asians and others). As a soldier in Iraq and Afghanistan I experienced the same thing.

Were some whites I knew racist? Of course. So were some blacks. So were some Hispanics. My parents were discriminated against, as were my grandparents. One family story even had the Texas Rangers murdering my great-great-grandfather and his brothers in retaliation for one of Pancho Villa’s raids. If the story is true, I’m pretty sure the Rangers who committed the murders are dead, as are most of the people who discriminated against my parents and grandparents. The country has changed, for the better.

I embrace that change. I see Americans of all colors treating one another as equals every day. And I heard of this guy once, who said something like, “Don’t be a dumbass and judge someone just because of what color they are.” That actually applies to whites too, not just supposedly oppressed minorities.

And whites shouldn’t be viewed as the world’s only oppressors. Slavery among blacks was so common in Africa it remained legal in Nigeria until 1932, in Ethiopia until 1942, in Niger until 2003 and in Mauritania until 2007; even now a huge portion of Mauritania’s population is still believed to be slaves. Black Africans were heavily involved in capturing and selling slaves, and some historians estimate “… Africans captured and then sold to Europeans around 90% of those who were shipped in the Atlantic slave trade” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_Africa).

Here in America, where our default is “whites were slave owners, blacks were slaves and that’s the end of it”, free blacks owned slaves as far back as 1654. Free black slave owners in Louisiana even requested, and were granted, permission to serve in the Confederate Army (http://www.theroot.com/articles/history/2013/03/black_slave_owners_did_they_exist.html). And Arabs, now automatically considered oppressed, were well-known and enthusiastic slave traders for centuries. Here’s just one example: “Periodic Arab raiding expeditions were sent from Islamic Iberia to ravage the Christian Iberian kingdoms, bringing back booty and slaves. In a raid against Lisbon in 1189, for example, the Almohad caliph, Abu Yusuf Yaqub al-Mansur, took 3,000 female and child captives, while his governor of Córdoba, in a subsequent attack upon Silves in 1191, took 3,000 Christian slaves” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_slave_trade).

Native Americans, our most revered “peaceful” population, weren’t always so peaceful and non-oppressive either. I’m not just referring to Native American attacks on whites: “…among the indigenous peoples of the Americas, only 13% did not engage in wars with their neighbors at least once per year. The natives’ pre-Columbian ancient practice of using human scalps as trophies is well documented. Iroquois routinely slowly tortured to death captured enemy warriors… at Crow Creek in South Dakota, archaeologists found a mass grave containing the remains of more than 500 men, women, and children who had been slaughtered, scalped, and mutilated during an attack on their village a century and a half before Columbus’s arrival (ca. 1325 AD).” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Before_Civilization)

With this historical context, how does anyone arrive at the “white = oppressor, nonwhite = victim” conclusion so beloved by Aeman Ansari and Ryerson’s Racialised Students? Maybe I’m breaking the inviolable Oppressed Minority Code of Silence by saying this, but every race has its share of historical horrors. White people shouldn’t defined by past slave ownership any more than African blacks should be.

I’d also like to point out an inconvenient fact: If all white people are evil because of slavery, then all white Americans are heroes for ending it.

Maybe I’d be the only person on the typical University campus who’d know this, but in America we actually fought a really bad war to end slavery. Over 350,000 white Americans died fighting to end slavery. White Americans burned white American cities to the ground to end slavery. White Americans completely destroyed other white Americans’ ways of life and forced them to abandon slavery. American slaves weren’t powerful enough to rise up and free themselves; white people freed them. Why do whites seem to get all the blame for historical oppression, but none of the credit for fighting it?

Yes, I realize it’s pathetically stupid to credit all whites for the actions of those who fought to end slavery. And it’s just as stupid to condemn all whites for the actions of those long dead. I’m not saying all white people are great; plenty are absolutely scumbag (I’ve arrested a LOT), and many are racist. But those people should be judged on their own merits. Am I wrong to view whites, or anyone else for that matter, as individuals who should be judged as individuals?

When I was in Kosovo I had a conversation with a local about her ethnic enemies. “The adults commit crimes against us. The old ones used to, and the young ones will someday. So they should all be killed, from one until the end.” It was a stupid, destructive mindset that always, always, does horrible damage to those who hold it. In modern America, and Canada, everyone should reject the notion that all people of any race are the same. Or that we need to keep any race out of our “safe spaces”.

Oddly enough, this is one thing I loved about being in combat; under fire, you are who you are. Nobody cares about race. All that matters is whether or not you can do your job and cover your brothers’ and sisters’ backs.

On its website, the Racialised Students’ Collective says it “…opposes all forms of racism.” Then it excludes students for being white. I’m sure the Racialised Students don’t see the irony in that. Aeman Ansari, I’m sure, tirelessly campaigns against racism. Then she supports keeping white students away from minorities, because a white person’s mere presence allegedly makes them unsafe. I’m sure she sees no irony. The Huffington Post published Ansari’s essay praising racism against whites, then added a slideshow to the page showing “9 people who think casual racism is okay.” But they didn’t add Ansari or the Racialised Students to the slideshow.

The Huffington Post probably doesn’t see the irony either.

Chris Hernandez is a 20 year police officer, former Marine and currently serving National Guard soldier with over 25 years of military service. He is a combat veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan and also served 18 months as a United Nations police officer in Kosovo. He writes for BreachBangClear.com and Iron Mike magazine and has published two military fiction novels, Proof of Our Resolve and Line in the Valley, through Tactical16 Publishing. He can be reached at [email protected] or on his Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/ProofofOurResolve).

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