I Am a Racist Again, Not a Victim Again

Some Tem­ple Uni­ver­sity alumni have called for me to face dis­ci­pli­nary charges because I wrote about a group of black female teenagers on cam­pus who harassed me, threat­ened me, and spat on me.

In a let­ter to the stu­dent news­pa­per, the alumni defended the anti-​Semitic com­ments of Marc Lam­ont Hill, prais­ing his analy­sis while dis­parag­ing mine.

Here is the let­ter: https://​tem​ple​-news​.com/​l​e​t​t​e​r​-​a​l​u​m​n​i​-​l​e​t​t​e​r​-​i​n​-​s​u​p​p​o​r​t​-​o​f​-​m​a​r​c​-​l​a​m​o​n​t​-​hill/

In a col­umn I wrote last year, I described how a group of teenagers had stolen soft drinks from a Chi­nese take­out on Temple’s cam­pus. I grabbed the back­pack of one of the young women and held her until police arrived. But the store didn’t want to press charges, and I let her go. She and her friends blocked my exit from the busi­ness, but I dis­patched them quickly with a mar­tial arts demon­stra­tion. In the col­umn, I lamented the Tem­ple Uni­ver­sity pol­icy that pre­vented any­one from car­ry­ing weapons. I wrote a sec­ond col­umn when a detec­tive informed me I could be fired if I car­ried a weapon on campus.

Here are the columns I wrote:

https://​word​press​.com/​p​o​s​t​/​d​a​t​e​c​h​g​u​y​b​l​o​g​.​c​o​m​/​1​09528
https://​word​press​.com/​p​o​s​t​/​d​a​t​e​c​h​g​u​y​b​l​o​g​.​c​o​m​/​1​10165

Some­how these columns became a cause célèbre for the social jus­tice war­riors who defend Hill. They describe him as hav­ing “con­tin­u­ally proven his com­mit­ment to jus­tice and equal rights for every­one through his schol­ar­ship and activism. For years, Dr. Hill has ded­i­cated his life to jus­tice and free­dom for all oppressed peo­ple and has stood strongly against hatred, vio­lence, and racism. Hill is a Philadel­phia native, who actively seeks to con­nect the Tem­ple com­mu­nity to the every­day peo­ple of the city. But he goes one step fur­ther – he con­nects the cause for racial jus­tice in Amer­ica to the strug­gle of Pales­tini­ans fac­ing the loss of their homes over­seas. It is for this that he is being pun­ished, not for false alle­ga­tions of anti-​Semitism.”

Alter­na­tively, I am “anti-​black” in the eyes of the let­ter writ­ers. “We ques­tion Temple’s com­mit­ment to con­demn ‘racist, or incen­di­ary lan­guage, hate speech, calls to vio­lence, and the dis­par­age­ment of any per­son or per­sons based on reli­gion, nation­al­ity, race, gen­der, sex­ual ori­en­ta­tion, or iden­tity,” the group stated, com­par­ing the inac­tion against me akin to the university’s inac­tion against Bill Cosby.

It amazes me how quickly the left can spew forth hatred and aban­don any sem­blance of crit­i­cal think­ing – some­thing I see the let­ter writ­ers failed to mas­ter dur­ing their time at Temple.

I rec­og­nize only one name on the list of those who signed the letter.

I don’t intend to defend myself against these base­less charges. It is impos­si­ble to untan­gle such twisted logic, par­tic­u­larly when the group failed to do a bit of research. Had they done so, they would have dis­cov­ered that I cre­ated a news web­site for under­served com­mu­ni­ties and received an award for teach­ing diver­sity in the classroom.

At least one response to the let­ter writ­ers got it right: “Tem­ple News has a respon­si­bil­ity to at least acknowl­edge that 3,803 peo­ple includ­ing alumni, donors, and stu­dents have signed an online peti­tion denounc­ing Hill.”