The Black (Student) Body

The American Mind | Jason D. Hill

Jason D. Hill’s powerful piece warns of institutionalized racial self-segregation at universities, the elevation of the “black body” as possessing unassailable truth and the “terrible disservice” universities are doing to its students (and the country) in promulgating a “new totemic racial religion.”

Is segregation by race legal? No. Practiced? Yes. “Clearly and openly at odds with federal civil rights laws….university extremists make clear that the civil rights regime can happily countenance discrimination as long as it is against whites.”

As for oppression, Hill rejects this notion—in fact, he argues the opposite. “No student at any elite university in this country, be he or she black, queer, or whatever, is marginalized. But for a black student with a degree from an elite university, practically no door is closed…’Inclusion’ means not just segregating black students, but favoring them as a privileged caste.”

Hill then drills down to what is really going on—a desire for power. “Racial activists today are living in a post-oppressive age, one that treats them as full-fledged human beings—and they can’t stand it… And though they are feted and treated like royalty on these elite campuses, what they truly want is a situation in which they can command power and, perversely, institutionalize their own anti-white racism.”

Hill goes on to discuss the concept of the “black body” and its claim to truth and moral superiority, explaining that “students, their administrative appeasers, and their professors have consciously weaponized blackness and white guilt as means of silencing criticism…[yet] Black skin does not convey the validity of an argument or a truth claim… skin color does not represent a moral theme—or any theme, for that matter. Neither does white skin or yellow skin.”

In closing, Hill joins others in blaming universities. “Your body is not special because of its race: it is special because of its conjunction with a mind that can adapt nature to its needs, desires, and rational aspirations, its self-actualization and manifested agency. By failing to teach these students that foundational fact, these universities have done their charges a terrible disservice. The business world may be willing to continue the fantasy out of fear of reprisal from the civil rights regime. But reality does not bend to anyone’s will, and if we persist in our new totemic racial religion, our students—and our country—will be in for a nasty shock.”

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