{"id":7698,"date":"2014-09-13T16:35:48","date_gmt":"2014-09-13T16:35:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2014\/09\/13\/attacked-as-racist-by-a-white-defended-as-courageous-by-a-black\/"},"modified":"2014-09-13T16:35:48","modified_gmt":"2014-09-13T16:35:48","slug":"attacked-as-racist-by-a-white-defended-as-courageous-by-a-black","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2014\/09\/13\/attacked-as-racist-by-a-white-defended-as-courageous-by-a-black\/","title":{"rendered":"Attacked as ‘Racist’ By a White, Defended as Courageous by a Black Professor"},"content":{"rendered":"

It is a funny world.  A man who claims to be white called me a racist because of my post, Self-Control and Respect for Authority<\/a>.  I ignored him, my policy being that scurrilous attacks from unknowns are ignored (and they are read only up to the point where the scurrilousness manifests itself).  Scurrilous attacks from known cyberpunks like Brian Leiter<\/a>, the academic gossip-monger, however, cannot go unanswered. <\/span><\/p>\n

\"Laurence<\/a>As I said, it is a funny world.  The day before the attack by the unknown, Professor Laurence Thomas, Professor in the Department of Philosophy and in the Department of Political Science in the Maxwell School, Syracuse University, sent me this:<\/span><\/p>\n

Dear Dr. Vallicella:<\/span><\/p>\n

I write to thank you for having the courage to be ever so forthright.  That is trait that I so very much admire.  I do not claim that I agree with all that  you say.  But I do claim that I have learnt so very much as a result of reflecting upon your ideas.  There is profound agreement between us is with respect to the following remarks by you:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

There is no decency on the Left, no wisdom, and, increasingly, no sanity.  For example, the crazy comparison of Trayvon Martin with Emmett Till.  But perhaps I should put the point disjunctively: you are either crazy if you make that comparison, or moral scum. You are moral scum if you wittingly make a statement that is highly inflammatory and yet absurdly false.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Indeed, the two cases are quite unalike even if one holds that a wrong was done in each instance\u2014a view that I unequivocally do not hold.  Indeed, when I looked up the Emmett Till case, upon hearing that the Martin case was analogous to it, my very first thought was that there is simply no comparison between the two cases.  And that is exactly where I continue to stand.  Holding that the two cases are analogous bespeaks a horrendous level of moral depravity.  There is simply no way in which the killing of Till can be characterized as self-defense by those who killed him; whereas it is manifestly obvious that it was out of self- defense that Zimmerman drew his gun and shot Martin.  And the rush to characterize Zimmerman as a racist was simply stupefying given his very rich history of blacks.  [Prof. Thomas is referring to Zimmerman's black ancestry.  See here<\/a>.]<\/span><\/p>\n

People have noted that Zimmerman\u2019s behavior has been more than a little erratic since the court ruling in his favor.  It is stunning to me that people cannot make sense of why that is so, given the horrendous attitude of so many people who claim to be ever so committed to justice.   A former student of mine recently brought to my attention your essay \u201cSelf-Control and Respect for Authority\u201d<\/a>.  And once again, I wholeheartedly agree with you.  Whenever I approach a police officer while I am walking, I display a simple measure of deference.  That is how I behave regardless of the ethnicity of the officer.  And never in my life has any police officer made the                    <\/span>
presumption that I might have committed a wrongdoing, although given my physical features there can no doubt whatsoever that I am a black person. <\/span><\/p>\n

So I bear witness to the reality that being black is not at all a sufficient condition to raise a policeman\u2019s concern about one\u2019s behavior even if the police officer is white.   Am I servile?  Absolutely not.  But having a deep, deep sense of self-respect is perfectly compatible with showing all sorts of people, including police officers a measure of respect, just as giving one\u2019s seat to a pregnant woman who boards a crowded metro train is perfectly compatible with having a deep sense of self-respect.  There is no incompatibility at all between have full measure of self-respect and yet showing others respect, be they law officers or \u201cordinary\u201d citizens.   I typically refer to myself as a radical conservative.  Quite simply, my radical view is that acting responsibly is a gift that we give to ourselves.  What is more, I hold that we should act responsibly even if we have been the victims of wrongful behavior in the past.  It is utterly horrendous to hold that having been the object of wrongdoing constitutes an excuse to do what undermines one\u2019s own sense of worth.   I have gone on long enough.  I wanted to thank you for your thoughtful remarks over the years.  And while I have not left academia, I can indeed understand why you have done so.   Be well and flourish, sir.     <\/span><\/p>\n

Most Cordially,  <\/span>
Laurence Thomas<\/span><\/p>\n

\nRelated articles<\/legend>\n
\n
\"\"<\/a>Piers Morgan on the Zimmerman Case<\/a><\/div>\n
\"\"<\/a>On the Zimmerman Acquittal<\/a><\/div>\n
\"\"<\/a>Self Control and Respect for Authority<\/a><\/div>\n
\"\"<\/a>How Dangerous Lies Become Accepted Truth: D.C. Theater Embraces The False Emmett Till-Trayvon Martin Comparison<\/a><\/div>\n
\"\"<\/a>Race Hoax: Zimmerman Described as 'White Boy' on MSNBC<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/fieldset>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It is a funny world.  A man who claims to be white called me a racist because of my post, Self-Control and Respect for Authority.  I ignored him, my policy being that scurrilous attacks from unknowns are ignored (and they are read only up to the point where the scurrilousness manifests itself).  Scurrilous attacks from … Continue reading “Attacked as ‘Racist’ By a White, Defended as Courageous by a Black Professor”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[163,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7698","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-leftism-and-political-correctness","category-race"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7698","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7698"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7698\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7698"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7698"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7698"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}