A Lesson from Cambridge University: 'All White People Are Racist'
A black student at Cambridge University has just said that “all white people are racist”. (This was in response to Saturday's riots in Dalston, east London.) His name is Jason Osamede Okundaye. He's also the President of the Black and Minority Ethnic society at the University.
Okundaye wrote:
The other fantastically ironic thing is that he also claimed that “middle-class white people” have “colonised” Dalston. In full:
Of course, if white people had claimed that Dalston was formerly colonised by black people, they'd have been classed as racist by anti-racists. Though since blacks can't be racist (they don't “have the power”), then this statement can't be racist either. Nothing a black person says or does can be racist. This is according to the standards of the many and various anti-racist theorists and academics who exist today; some of whom will teach at Okundaye's Cambridge University.
Predictably, once the news spread outside of the Students' Union and the University itself, a spokesperson from the University said: “The College is looking into this matter and will respond appropriately.”
However, if blacks can be racist, then what can Cambridge University do about this? Jason Osamede Okundaye has done nothing wrong. That is, according to many theorists and academics at Cambridge University, he's done nothing wrong. He's black and therefore he can't be a racist. He's only a victim. Not a suspect or even a free agent. He's a black man. A man infantilised by anti-racist theory and anti-racist activists.
According to Trinity College [Cambridge] Students' Union website:
“BME, Black and Minority Ethnic, is a term used in the UK to describe people of non-white descent.”
Thus, the Black and Minority Ethnic society seems to think that all people who aren't white have something in common. That's from middle-class African blacks (like Jason Osamede Okundaye?) to deprived Indians who've been given a scholarship. So this institution is racist for the simple reason that it places an absolute emphasis on race and colour. What better definition of racism can there be? After all, racism can be both positive and negative. Presumably, the BME sees itself as practicing and promoting positive racism; though it won't use the word “racism” about itself.
For example, at Cambridge University there are academic courses which teach that “all white people are racist”. They won't, of course, use the same inflammatory “discourse” which Jason Osamede Okundaye uses. Nonetheless, he's the logical/political conclusion of such theoretical and academic anti-white racism.
There have also been a series of seminars on Critical Race Theory in July this year at Cambridge University. The University also featured “research” under the headline: 'Racism in the US runs far deeper than Trump's white supremacist fanbase'. (It was written by Nicholas Guyatt, a Cambridge University lecturer.) More relevantly, the University of Cambridge published a piece which states that it's wrong to single out or “demonize” the “white working class for racism”; when, as a matter of fact, all white people are racist. (This, I presume, is class prejudice.)
So I wonder if Jason Osamede Okundaye will win one of the “award categories” which Cambridge University Students' Union (CUSU) has just announced as part of its “anti-racism campaign.” After all, what better way is there of being anti-racist than being racist against all whites?
Jason Osamede Okundaye is digging his own grave anyway; even if he is a student at Cambridge University. If “all white people are racist”, then that must be some kind of racial fact. A fact about white DNA, perhaps. And if that's the case, there's nothing white people can do about it. Therefore, condemning white racism is pointless. It's racial. It's genetic. It's a given. So why the political and moral outrage? Changing white racism would be like changing the colour of one's skin or how many fingers one has.
It's also ironic that this black racist is a member of a Cambridge University “equality group”. Although only black and brown people can be members, many white middle-class Trotskyists, communists, and progressives will support it to the hilt. And these are the very people aiming Jason Osamede Okundaye is aiming his racist words at.
This is a variation, of course, on the more polite and theoretical anti-white racism of academics and people like Diane Abbott MP (the British Shadow Home Secretary); who, predictably, has stuck her own nose into the Dalston riots. From her previous statements, she believes more or less the same as Jason Osamede Okundaye. For example, in 2012 she wrote:
"White people love playing 'divide and rule' We should not play their game."
In 1988, when, at a black studies conference in Philadelphia, she claimed that "the British invented racism”. She also made a racist comment about white Finnish nurses.
Jason Osamede Okundaye is the logical/political conclusion of academic “anti-racism”. So we'll have to reap the harvest.