by The NY Times has an op ed entitled Can My Children Be Friends with White People?. (Dan here …Link corrected) I think this is the most interesting excerpt: …I will teach my boys to have profound doubts that friendship with white people is possible. When they ask, I will teach my sons that their beautiful hue is a fault line. Spare me the platitudes of how we are all the same on the inside. I first have to keep my boys safe, and so I will teach them before the world shows them this particular brand of rending, violent, often fatal betrayal. The author, Ekow N. Yankah, according to the Times is a professor at Yeshiva University’s Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law. For an expert on criminal law, and one who cares about his sons’ safety, he seems surprisingly
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Mike Kimel considers the following as important: New York Times, Op-ed, race relations, Uncategorized
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The NY Times has an op ed entitled Can My Children Be Friends with White People?. (Dan here …Link corrected) I think this is the most interesting excerpt:
…I will teach my boys to have profound doubts that friendship with white people is possible. When they ask, I will teach my sons that their beautiful hue is a fault line. Spare me the platitudes of how we are all the same on the inside. I first have to keep my boys safe, and so I will teach them before the world shows them this particular brand of rending, violent, often fatal betrayal.
The author, Ekow N. Yankah, according to the Times is a professor at Yeshiva University’s Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law. For an expert on criminal law, and one who cares about his sons’ safety, he seems surprisingly uninformed about what he termed “violent, often fatal betrayal.” I sincerely hope whatever other advice he is giving his sons doesn’t get them hurt. They shouldn’t suffer for his ignorance. And speaking of ignorance, the rest of the op ed is a tour de force for the proposition that if a person cannot or will not understand basic facts about their own field, they aren’t a reliable guide to much else either.
Regardless… this is no different than the views of far right white people who teach their kids they cannot have Black friends. Fortunately, I doubt that the NY Times would publish that sort of garbage unironically. But it isn’t any better that the NY Times published this one.
Note to the NY Times: this is how I believe one should discuss race.