BLACK UNIVERSITY PROTESTERS

Unz Review - Robert Weissberg
UNDERSTANDING STUPID POLITICAL ACTIVISM

Commenter J. Schwartz of New York wrote the following:

First of all, for a lot of people, going to a protest is a Grand Day Out.  It's what they do for fun.  The cause only has to be superficially desirable. 

My response to him is as follows.

Your first point is quite true and get’s all too little attention.

I have always been a conservative and traditionalist. Yet, I attended leftist demonstrations in the 60′s and early 70′s. It’s were the girls were! It was also where the “action” was. It was fun even as I mocked it all under my breath. Dope dealers hung out at the fringes of demonstrations making contacts.

The condition of youth is inherently driven by excitement and curiosity. Just as in the Sixties, youth seeks excitement and style-driven commitment. And just as in the Sixties our national and institutional leadership class lack all style. They are bloodless, unsexy drones. This is the nature of our managerial state. Rhetoric may propel social movements that in turn dominate institutions, but those institutions are managed by drones.

Black college students rebel today because they truly have no business attending these institutions. They can’t admit that they are unfit for this kind of life and the suspicion among them that this is so must be intolerable. I suspect that this is why they have to attack the universities core history and spirit. To them, expecting what they cannot provide is inherent in all White enterprises.

Higher Education administrators brought this on themselves by abandoning the first principle of higher ed. That is, it is indeed HIGHER education. College is not a public utility. It is by nature an elite institution. Anything that waters down the rigor that makes it elite is a betrayal of both the idea and the mission of the institution.

Affirmative action in any form in this context is sabotage.