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Fredric is a web developer based in Chicago who hopes to one day start a foundation to support young, Black males in programming and computer science.

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World’s Top Black Mind on Racism in America

November 7th, 2007 • Related • Filed Under

I had a virtual conversation via instant messenger with my old professor Dr. Spence the other day about a lot of random topics. We discussed the potential economic factors of black blogging, current technology, and recent professional accomplishments. He made a statement to me, however, about saving the chronicling the comments that had been sent in on the freeshaquandacotton.blogspot.com website I had setup awhile back as a means of preserving black history. It struck awkwardly stuck me that the proof of racism in those responses is a part of black history, but I understood what he meant.

I recently stumbled across the opinion of a professor at Caltech and his opinion of the controversial comments the recent Nobel laureate James Watson had made about Africans being inferior to whites genetically. What makes this opinion so profound, however, is who this man is and what he represents in the perspective of modern humanity.

Dr Jonathan FarleyDr. Jonathan David Farley is a Fulbright scholar. He is professor of mathematics. He is considered one of the 15 people to shape the conversation of science in the world. Even Harvard and MIT decreed that March 19, 2004 was Dr. Johnathan David Farley Day. He is that dude.

And yet, he has had the same experience we have all had, either with the police or with American society.

I was on the underground train at the MIT stop. Outside, on the platform, I could see several policemen looking at me. I sensed what was coming next, so I held up the book I was reading, Enumerative Combinatorics (a book written by MIT professor Richard Stanley; shortly thereafter I would solve a mathematical problem that he had posed in 1981). Soon enough, the doors opened and about six policemen came in, grabbed my arm, and escorted me off the train.

On the platform, I shouted that I was an associate professor of mathematics at MIT, which I kept repeating, so that passengers could hear. I gave the police numbers of MIT personnel whom they could call to confirm that I was a professor, but the police did not release me for about 20 minutes. The reason? The police said I resembled a bank robber.

It’s easy to see why they didn’t believe me (and not just because Enumerative Combinatorics is the Bible for black bank robbers): in my four years as an undergraduate, I never had a black professor.

The police acted as they did, and MIT has few African-American professors, because of the same underlying reason, the same reason why a professor can assert, on the first day of class, that blacks are genetically suited to play baseball, and no one in the packed room (except me) walks out; the same reason that the late Richard Herrnstein, co-author of The Bell Curve - a pseudo-scientific diatribe that, like Watson, asserts the genetic inferiority of blacks to whites - could teach at Harvard.

You can read the rest of his piece here.

He goes on to talk about the DNA of racism in America and how it differs from that in the UK. He also highlights the persecution of crying ‘foul’ in academia with regards to racism, eerily similar to some of the issues Dr. Cornel West has talked about with his dealings at Harvard. While many aspects are debatable, I still find it almost unbearably fascinating that despite a lifetime of accomplishment and accolade, this country has the ability to reduce one of the brightest black minds into anything but a CNN headline.

I wanted to share the story with you to inspire you to keep moving forward and to reiterate our mission here at ybpguide. We have such a long way to go, but with beacons of light through personal example like Dr. Farley and Dr. Spence, we can all hold our heads up high and continue to speak our minds.

(pic via guardian.co.uk)

Viewing 4 Comments

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    Now, in our post-9/11 world, there's a whole new dynamic to racial profiling. Unfortunately, I don't think it will ever go away. It will be used in one way or another -- whether seemingly for or against us.
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    Every time I find the "black" word in front of any item,
    I feel that you people segregate yourselves.
    Black fashion, black music, black comedy, black sports....
    When will you people decide to be just humans?
    I really feel that racism can not be fight with more
    racism.
    Sorry.
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    @Miguel

    interestingly enough, you just provided the reason why pride in one's culture in today's society is necessary. phrases like 'you people' and 'every time i find the black word...' says to me, a black male, that you have a predisposed disposition to black people and black culture.

    taking pride in that culture by labeling things as 'black' is the only way to combat and negate many of those assumptions. 'black' is a lot of things, but the fact remains that the mainstream media hangs on to the more ignorant aspects of black culture.

    this is a stigma this blog, its readers, and its community take direct aim at. it is easy to conclude by this comment that those effects have clearly affected your opinion of 'black' things and 'black' culture.
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    Black pride does not equal racism. And we didn't "decide" that we weren't human (we obviously are), we were told that we weren't human during slavery when our ancestors were treated worse than dogs. One of the reasons we chose to empower ourselves with social and professional networks is to combat the vestiges of slavery and the racism that persists even today. There's no exclusion here. In fact, if you actually read past the word "black," you might have learned a thing or two.
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