Media top headlines August 25
In media news today, an NBC report blasts Biden's 'humiliating' Afghanistan withdrawal, Washington Post's Jennifer Rubin gets accused of 'running PR for the Taliban,' and Andrew Cuomo gets stripped of his Emmy amid sexual harassment scandal
A New York Times guest essay published Tuesday took aim at the "performative antiracism" of the Black Student Union at the University of Wisconsin, mocking group members for advocating the removal of a large rock from campus they saw as a symbol of bigotry.
The Chamberlin Rock, which was placed in the campus location in 1925, was removed Aug. 6 after some students insisted it go in the wake of racial protests that began in 2020 following the death of George Floyd.
"The University of Wisconsin has apparently done Black people a favor. It lifted away a rock," wrote Columbia University professor John McWhorter jokingly. "Some Black students thought of it as a symbol of bigotry. Because, you see, 96 years ago, when the rock was placed where it was until just now, someone in a local newspaper called it — brace yourself — a ‘n****rhead.’"
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McWhorter, who is Black, said that although the moniker didn't stick, some students, according to news reports, still saw it as a "racist monument" whose absence would allow students to "begin healing."
"The students are fashioning their take on the rock as a kind of sophistication or higher awareness. But what they are really demanding is that we all dumb ourselves down," he wrote, before using literary and philosophical references to argue that the passage of time should have made a difference in how the students felt about the rock.
"If the presence of that rock actually makes some people desperately uncomfortable, they need counseling," McWhorter wrote. "And as such, we can be quite sure that these students were acting."
He added that there was a "performative aspect" in the claim that college campuses were "seething with bigotry," considering they were some of the most diligently anti-racist places on the planet, and that the episode with the Wisconsin rock was "a textbook demonstration of the difference between sincere activism and playacting."
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"The true fault here lies with the school’s administration, whose deer tails popped up as they bolted into the forest, out of a fear of going against the commandments of what we today call antiracism, which apparently includes treating Black people as simpletons and thinking of it as reckoning," McWhorter wrote.
He argued that true wokeness would also include calling out Black people on nonsense when necessary.
"Yes, even Black people can be wrong … To pretend this is never the case where racism is concerned is not to reckon but to dehumanize," he added.
Juliana Bennett, a senior and a campus representative on the Madison City Council, said removing the rock signaled a small step toward a more inclusive school.
"This moment is about the students, past and present, that relentlessly advocated for the removal of this racist monument," she told the Associated Press. "Now is a moment for all of us BIPOC students to breathe a sigh of relief, to be proud of our endurance, and to begin healing."
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Student groups had also demanded the removal of an Abraham Lincoln statue from campus – but university leaders rejected that request.
Fox News' Michael Ruiz and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
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