The Daily Signal - VDH: California University’s New President Vows to ‘Eliminate Whiteness’

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Starting point is 00:00:25 We'd love to talk. Business. Sacramento State is one of the many California State universities that offer a four-year program of education. It tends to be a little bit more pragmatic than are the nine UC. And SAC State, as we call it, is near UC Davis. They're kind of twin University of California and State University campus. They have a new president, fairly new. He's been there about a year, Dr. Luke Wood, and he was famous as a black educator

Starting point is 00:00:57 who advocated a particular approach to education, and I guess you would call it a rejection of white standards. Dr. Luke Wood just gave an interview to a conservative black podcaster host in which he said he wanted to eliminate whiteness, whiteness, but he found himself in a dilemma. He couldn't define whiteness when he was pressed. Hello, this is Victor Davis Hansen for the Daily Signal.

Starting point is 00:01:31 Sacramento State is one of the many California State universities that offer a four-year program of education. It tends to be a little bit more pragmatic for teacher education, business, agriculture than are the UC campuses, the nine UC. And SAC State, as we call it, is near UC Davis. They're kind of twin University of California and state university campus. They have a new president. He fairly new.

Starting point is 00:02:01 He has been there about a year. Dr. Luke Wood came from UC San Diego, as I remember. And he was famous in that area as a black educator who advocated a particular approach to the education K-12 in college of black students. And I guess you would call it a rejection of white standards. In other words, he believed that black students. students on test scores or GPA or by traditional criteria were not competitive with other groups because this method of valuation was intrinsically biased or racist or did not take in account historical disparities, Jim Crow, slavery, etc. And so therefore, he called this term, I think,

Starting point is 00:02:52 black lighting, a kind of a play on gaslighting, that the way white people spoke about student achievement was intrinsically insulting to black students or had the effect of discouraging them, and therefore you had to have a different type of vocabulary, a different type of approach for black students in a way you wouldn't for other students. This is not going to work. We have tried that for 50 or 60 years, and we've seen that the great society specialization and fixation on race did not work. It increased separatism, distrust, racial tension. and I think we've seen that in the last four or five years reaches zenith with the diversity, equity, inclusion.

Starting point is 00:03:35 But here's my point. Dr. Luke Wood just gave an interview to a conservative black radio host, podcaster host, in which he said he wanted to eliminate whiteness. He was pressed on that question very effectively. And he said, well, you want to eliminate whiteness, but then that comes from white people. So if you want to eliminate the manifestation of white people, do you want to eliminate white people? He said, no, but he found himself in a dilemma, a rhetorical dilemma, an analytical dilemma.

Starting point is 00:04:10 Because if you apply that logic and you say, I want to eliminate blackness, what does that mean? You don't want to eliminate blacks? If you say, I want to eliminate Jewishness, does that mean you want to eliminate Jews? So what did he mean? He couldn't define whiteness when he was pressed. Apparently what he was trying to refer to, and I don't think he had the knowledge or the historical background or the analytical skills to explain what he meant, but he's talking about the dominant culture in the United States, and he associates that with whiteness because the founders, of course, were 95% white. they came from a British empirical enlightened tradition. But in fact, they were just one offshoot of a larger Western tradition,

Starting point is 00:04:59 a Western tradition that began with olive-colored Greeks and olive-colored Italians in Rome. And it transmogrified into Europe after the end of the Roman Empire. It was enhanced during the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and the British Scottish Enlightenment, the transferance of Western culture to America under the Constitution. What was it? It was an independent judiciary. It was a constitutional government, a tripartite, legislative executive judicial. It was emphasis on individual inquiry, free thought, the separation from religious thought and government, or the tolerance for free speech, the Bill of Rights.

Starting point is 00:05:47 All of the free market system, the ability to make money in a capitalist free enterprise system, the idea that the military is separate from the government. All of these ingredients were created in Rome and Greece, enhanced, modified rejection, reappearing again during these very stages of Western thought, and then they were transferred to the modern world and most prominently with our founders. but it's not connected with whiteness necessarily. It doesn't matter. It transcends its skin.

Starting point is 00:06:21 It's the only culture in the world in which you can be Chinese-American, you can be black-American, you can be Hispanic-American, and you can be as Western as anybody else. It's not predicated on white. So he associates this with whiteness, and he does that because he can't define it.

Starting point is 00:06:39 What would he say the dominant culture of America is if it's not Western? and I don't think he can make that distinction. In fact, African-Americans are as Western as anybody. It's just a matter of choice. Do you want to believe in consensual government or not? Do you believe in free enterprise or not? Do you believe in free speech or not?

Starting point is 00:07:00 Do you believe in the separation of religious authority and secular authority or not? Do you believe in the enlightenment and rationalism, empiricism, disinterested inquiry, or not? what's really dangerous is that you have a president at a major university here in California, Cal State Sacramento, who says he wants to eliminate whiteness. He's trying to inaugurate a black scholars program. This is in the age of post-D-I and a very reactionary retrograde approach that you're going to single out particular groups and you're going to emphasize particular plans of programs based on the color of their skin at a time when we're all trying to transcend it

Starting point is 00:07:47 because when we have done that, it didn't work. It created tensions rather than alleviated them. It created suspicion and distrust rather than ending such things. It's a retrograde tribal thought that goes back to pre-civilizational ideas. whiteness, Dr. Wood, whiteness is Western civilization, blackness is Western civilization, Hispanics are Western civilization. It's a choice of the mind. It's not the color of your skin. We are Western in this country. You call it whiteness because you're angry, because you perceive particular discriminations or unfairness in the system. The system says to you,

Starting point is 00:08:33 everybody is equal under the law only in the United States. They're free to do what they want. If people are systematically racist or prejudicial, it's a self-correcting legal system. But what we do not want to do is emphasize pre-civilizational ideas that the color of our skin matters more than the content of our character and race is absolutely essential to what we are rather than just incidental. Thank you very much. This is Victor Davis Hansen for the Daily Signal. Thank you for tuning in to the Daily Signal. Please like, share, and subscribe to be notified for more content like this. You can also check out my own website at victorhansan.com and subscribe for exclusive features in addition.

The Daily Signal - VDH: California University’s New President Vows to ‘Eliminate Whiteness’

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