'We Gotta Take These Motherf*ckers Out': Prof Facing Calls for Dismissal Over Viral Anti-White Rant
13:35 GMT 30.10.2021 (Updated: 15:13 GMT 30.10.2021)
© Flickr / Rutgers Newark
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The professor made the controversial remarks in a discussion on critical race theory (CRT) – a liberal ideology which argues that America was founded on racism and that racism continues to cause cultural, legal, and class disparities. Critics of CRT say it artificially inflames societal tensions by dividing people based solely on their skin colour.
Brittney Cooper, a professor of women’s, gender and Africana studies at New Jersey’s Rutgers University, is facing calls for her dismissal after comments she made at a recent online conference went viral.
Speaking at an event hosted by the Root Institute last month, Cooper accused white people of “being villains,” expressed satisfaction that white Americans’ birth rates were going down, and suggested that sometimes she just thinks whites should just be “taken out."
“I think that white people are committed to being villains in the aggregate,” she said.
Cooper noted that discussions with students in her college course have included a debate between the “liberal view that we can legislate [racism] away and we can march it away,” and the theory that “we think white people gonna just always be like this, and our job is to hold their ability to do the most harm.”
Cooper accused white people as a group of being “so corrupt…so murky and spiritually bankrupt about power that they fear viscerally, existentially letting go of power because they cannot imagine that there is another way to be – it is either that you dominate or you are dominated. And isn’t it sad that that is spiritually who they are, and that they can’t imagine a sort of more expansive notion of the world?”
The professor admitted to the conference’s host that sometimes “the thing I wanna say to you is ‘we gotta take these motherf*ckers out,’” but quickly added “but like, we can’t say that, right? I don’t believe in a project of violence, I truly don’t because I think in the end that our souls suffer from that, and I do think that some of this is spiritual condition.”
GOP Rep to Introduce Bill Making Teaching CRT in Federally Funded Schools a ‘Civil Rights Violation’
29 September 2021, 09:39 GMT
“They Kind of Deserve It”
She stressed that she believes that “white colonialism and imperialism” will inevitably come to an end, several generations from now, thanks to shifting demographics.
“Here’s one of the cruel ironies of whiteness – I think about this a lot...If we think economically and structurally white lives actually are structurally overvalued to the extent that they undervalue other groups of people. And part of what that means economically is that they explode property values so much when they move in that they can’t afford it, which is why they not havin’ no kids. So white people’s birthrates are going down, they’re the only group whose birthrates are going down in the country. Because they literally cannot afford to put their children, newer generations into the middle class, and so they keep on delaying birthrate. And that is a world in which economically, we literally live in a system where even white people cannot sustain the cost of their own lives. It’s super perverse, and also they kind of deserve it. And so they’re losing. That’s why their birthrates are going down, that’s why demographics are shifting,” Cooper said.
Characterising life for African Americans in America today as a hellish “white supremacist vortex,” Cooper suggested that the situation was actually “the death rattle of a dying way of being. Just look at the numbers – white life expectancy has gone down for the first time in the last couple years in a hundred years. How is it that they won the 20th century, they dominate everything, the got more money than God, and yet somehow, they ain’t winning?”
23 September 2021, 13:43 GMT
Calls for Resignation Surge
Cooper’s controversial remarks have gone viral online, leading to a flood of demands for her resignation.
Rutgers professor: "White people are committed to being villains," "We gotta take these MF'ers out."
— MRCTV (@mrctv) October 26, 2021
This professor spewed hatred on a YouTube video with @TheRoot. pic.twitter.com/QrGsv77CCC
“@RutgersU I am DISGUSTED and EMBARRASSED to be a @rutgersalumni if this is the type of person you have as faculty now. You have let all of your Alumni down and degraded our school,” one user tweeted, accompanying the post with the hashtag #firebrittneycooper.
“@RutgersU either you fire Dr. Brittney Cooper immediately, or we shall assume that you share her feelings that ‘white motherf—ers’ including your white students, the white parents who pay tuition, and any white donors and alumni to/of Rutgers, ‘need to be taken out.’” Another user wrote.
“I’d like to know what @RutgersU is going to do about Brittney Cooper. How is this hate speech acceptable?” a third asked.
Another user listed Cooper’s fields of knowledge, including women’s gender and Africana studies. “At least now we know which departments to abolish,” the user quipped.
“I think it’s poetic justice that Brittney Cooper hates white people while having quite possibly THE whitest name possible,” another joker suggested.
Rutgers University has yet to respond to Cooper’s comments or the controversy they have generated.
Cooper, who has tenure, has been known for making controversial remarks in the past. Last year, amid reports that African Americans were dying from Covid at greater numbers than other races, Cooper accused white conservatives of not only “not caring” about Black lives, but of actively “welcoming” the deaths of Black people by reopening from coronavirus lockdowns “in order to slow demographic shifts and shore up political power.” She also blamed Trump supporters for coronavirus deaths of blacks. Cooper later deleted her tweets, claiming she was facing harassment from Trump supporters, but stressed that she stood by her comments. No disciplinary action was taken against her by Rutgers at the time.
27 October 2021, 12:42 GMT
