Black conservative professor plays victim

By Staff

NEW YORK - Erec Smith, a Black associate professor at York College of Pennsylvania, says that he has been called racist because he wanted to teach standard English in his classroom but was accused of white supremacy instead.

Smith, who is a longtime member of the right-leaning Cato Institute think tank, says that he can't be racist because he is Black.

"It's a strange feeling to be called a white supremacist by a white person," he told a documentary filmmaker. "I went through what many theorists would call a degradation ceremony. The point is not to listen to people but to ridicule them and show other people: 'This is what happens when you speak up.' I was called a fascist, but who isn't these days?"

Smith, who was "accused of having Stockholm syndrome," is on record as a co-founder of Free Black Thought, a nonprofit that highlights viewpoint diversity within Black communities, according to Cato. The organization maintains a compendium of Black artists, writers, academics, and public intellectuals often overlooked in mainstream media, and it publishes the Journal of Free Black Thought, which features work across genres reflecting varied perspectives within the Black diaspora.

According to Cato: "Smith is the author or [of] Critique of Anti-Racism in Rhetoric and Composition: The Semblance of Empowerment (2020), a book in which he scrutinizes contemporary modes of anti-racism in his field. The book was conceived after Smiths observations of his field led him to conclude that anti-racist initiatives did more to disempower students and faculty than empower them."

The film, which he is in, tries to tout the suffering of the right at the hands of the voices of the left but the fact is that Black people like Smith have been accused of racism before.

Clarence Thomas is criticized for judicial opinions viewed as weakening civil rights protections; Candace Owens for promoting narratives that dismiss systemic racism; Kanye West for comments about slavery and political endorsements; Bill Cosby for respectability politics; Jason Whitlock for minimizing systemic racism in sports; Thomas Sowell for analyses that downplay structural racism; John McWhorter for critiques of contemporary anti‑racism; Barack Obama for centrist positions and comments about personal responsibility; Oprah Winfrey for emphasizing individual uplift over structural critique; and Morgan Freeman for remarks that downplay the role of race in American life.

Further, his words and the documentary come at a time when Black professors are experiencing real transgressions in white environments just for existing.

Henry Louis Gates Jr. faced hostile challenges from white students questioning his authority; Anita Allen dealt with a white student who shouted at her and refused to leave her classroom; Cornel West reported aggressive confrontations, including a white student screaming at him during a lecture; Carol Anderson was targeted by white students who organized a campaign to remove her and sent harassing messages; Saida Grundy endured threats and harassment from white students after public controversy; Ersula Ore encountered white students who used racially charged language to challenge her authority; Shannon Gibney was yelled at by a white student who later filed a complaint accusing her of attacking white people; Dorothy Brown faced a white student who shouted at her over her scholarship on race and stormed out; Lawrence Bobo reported confrontations with white students who used racially charged language and questioned his legitimacy; Ibram X. Kendi dealt with white students who accused him of reverse racism and attempted to disrupt his lectures; Onwubiko Agozino filed a criminal complaint after white teens parked outside his home, threw ice bricks, and called him a "nigger"; and A.D. Carson experienced sustained harassment and threatening messages after being placed on Turning Point USA’s Professor Watch List. These cases collectively illustrate how Black professors are frequently subjected to bullying, harassment, and challenges to their academic authority in ways that reflect broader structural hostility within higher education.

While Smith appears to be correct in his claim of intellectual opposition to his views, it remains rare for criticism of an academic to move in the opposite direction when the issue is racial hostility.