White Ears do Not Hear the Dog Whistles of Racism

So what is it that white ears do not hear? We will look at the key triggers for how we have arrived at this confrontation; we should go to the top food chain, University of Missouri President Tim Wolfe—how did he manage to get under so many people’s black skin?

1. Evidently met complaints about racism by deaf ears.
2. When confronted by black students who wanted to talk, he not only refused to get out of his car, he sat in silence for 11 minutes, but his driver revved up the engine, possibly nudging/pushing a student. He subsequently apologizes.
3. Tim Wolfe appears to be motivated into action by the thought of lost revenues resulting from cancellation of football games.
4. Tim Wolfe then has the following dialogue with a group of Students, who asked him for his definition of oppression:

“I will give you an answer, and I’m sure it will be a wrong answer,” Wolfe said. Then, “Systematic oppression is because you don’t believe that you have the equal opportunity for success.”

So do you hear it? No, not if you have a white ear. I had to think about this for a while. It sounded reasonable to me. But why? Then the penny began to drop. I live in a properly blue state, in a very stable cosmopolitan town, with easy access to New York City, one of the most successfully diverse cities on the planet. Even though I may pick up on hints of racism from many generations, I never pick up on such from the younger generation. With this group, in this area, all is copacetic, we are getting closer to an environment were affirmative action becomes redundant, and some issues of abuse should be open to investigation. Here’s the thing, here is the way you can spot someone with not simply a deaf ear but who also has a racist fabric. Those who go on about reverse racism fail to understand that it is the minority that do not hold the power, and the majority are the powerful and by definition those with the power find it more difficult to exercise their power in a benign way. Take the Israel v Palestine problem—the Palestinians might be the ones breaking the laws, but they are not the ones making the laws. Thus when you get bad powerful leadership, such as under Netanyahu, the situation becomes more explosive. Victims tend to be become better people than their oppressors.

“I am opposed to authority, that egg of misery and oppression; I am opposed to it largely for what it does to those who exercise it.”
― Patrick O’Brian, Post Captain

So back to Tim Wolfe’s definition of systematic oppression. This answer indicates complacency. Did Tim Wolfe  have any right to be complacent? To answer that, we need perspective. here is a map of Missouri with a few additions:

The above montage contains two different lists. Twitter being one source an the other source can be found here.  Minnesota is high lighted in Blue, to indicate that it deemed to be a Blue state – the definition being based on the 2012 Presidential elections.

The State of Missouri has a race problem, likely an echo of its confederate south past. But the capital of Missouri may have become the epicenter of racial issues for the whole country ever since the Ferguson riots of August 2014. The Ferguson riots were all about a very long history of racist oppression, about a hopelessly white and racist police force and the consequent pent up animosity. This we have written about. Yet in spite of this history, in spite of the piss poor behavior of the Ferguson police force, the bigot white ear, hears nothing. This is shown by how many people are either racist or simply choose to be ignorant. A staggeringly low 22% of Stupidparty  disciples believed Ferguson raises important racial questions.

  http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/215413-ferguson-divides-public-along-racial-party-lines

Now although I am not judging the racial attitudes of the whole of this University, you would think that this background would make racial tensions one of the uppermost issues on the mind of the president of the University. Since Ferguson there is clearly going to be increased sensitivities. Being so close to Ferguson, probably getting kids from Ferguson or the the very least from St Louis, must have meant that an educator should have educated himself as to how the oppressed may view apparent complacency. There were incidents of racism, and whether these were isolated or not is irrelevant to the specific environment at the University of Missouri. But now with the benefit of hindsight, do we really believe such incidents were so isolated. If you are a white kid, now is certainly not the time to be whining about black kids getting scholarships, especially not when the college finances seem somewhat dependent on football and basketball, not when the college football coach gets paid almost 1000% more than the college president. If you are a white kid you must stop listening with a white ear, but with your human ear. White college kids must extinguish actual racism before even thinking about addressing so called reverse racism. We know Ferguson, we know St Louis, we know  Missouri, and now we know that the University of Missouri—they all need affirmative action.

So now we have put the issue into perspective let us take off our white ear, put on our human ear and listen again to what Tim Wolfe said, noting his defensive attitude, indicating that he had yet to fully think through the question—and then listen to what his audience heard.

“I will give you an answer, and I’m sure it will be a wrong answer,” Wolfe said. Then, “Systematic oppression is because you don’t believe that you have the equal opportunity for success.”

The students reacted in shock.

“Did you just blame us for systematic oppression, Tim Wolfe?” one shouted. “Did you just blame black students?”

Now that we have trained our white ears to listen with our human ears, maybe we can begin to understand where this student is coming from:

https://youtu.be/IrNqYgpioGE