Professor Wax’s Racism: The Ideas-Marketplace is the Solution
The Philly Voice tells us “University of Pennsylvania [law] professor Amy Wax is receiving backlash for racist comments she made at a conference about conservatism over the weekend. Wax was speaking on a panel titled “American Greatness and Immigration: The Case for Low and Slow”.
‘In a panel on immigration, University of Pennsylvania law professor Amy Wax claimed that immigrants are too loud and responsible for an increase in ‘litter.’ She explicitly advocated an immigration policy that would favor immigrants from Western countries over non-Western ones; ‘the position,’ as she put it, ‘that our country will be better off with more whites and fewer nonwhites.’ (She claims this is not racist because her problem with nonwhite immigrants is cultural rather than biological.)”
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As a Penn alum and as an American, I am grateful I as yet live with a Constitution that protects even racist academic freedom. The marketplace in ideas is far better at outing bigots than is suppression.
07/19/2019 @ 9:37 am
…it’s also safer than suppression.
07/19/2019 @ 11:24 am
…and needless to say, her having been born a Jew makes me so proud….
07/19/2019 @ 4:42 pm
The distinction between biology and culture may save her from being a racist, but not a bigot. Why does she think that distinction matters?
07/19/2019 @ 4:44 pm
Despite the fact that I’m a Penn alum, the profs, shockingly, aren’t in the practice of sharing theoretical distinctions of this sort w me. 😉
07/19/2019 @ 10:15 pm
Because we make more of an issue of racism. Also because she’s making the case that her bigotry isn’t based on assumptions of inferiority of the other, just different cultural tendencies for which she has a distaste. It’s a different category of rejection. However, It isn’t ultimately less dangerous.
07/20/2019 @ 9:48 am
I think, for so-called educated-racists, the distinction’s rhetorical only.