Reports on Systemic Racism belong in circular file

Vincent J. Curtis

28 Oct 20

RE: A Culture of Systemic anti-Black Racism.  Hamilton Spectator 28 Oct 20.  A report completed at the invitation of McMaster University by a Wilfred Laurier University poobah concluded that a culture of systemic anti-Black racism exists in the McMaster Athletics Department.

You can smell the B.S. wafting from the page.  McMaster Athletics has “a culture of systemic anti-Black racism.”   You mean there are Jim Crow laws?  Separate but equal?  Are Blacks subject to greater restrictions than non-Blacks?  No, no, and no.  So much for the systemic part.

Ah, but it’s not systemic racism per se, it’s a “culture” of systemic racism.  And so we’re lost in abstractions of abstractions, where anything can be plausibly affirmed.  In the concrete world, there is no systemic anti-Black racism at McMaster Athletics, only a “culture” of one, the product of something that doesn’t exist at Mac.

The evidence of a “culture?”  Comments by coaches and players that were interpreted to be racist; somebody used the N-word (how many times has the F-word been used at Mac?), the athletics department didn’t jump insufficiently high to complaints of racism; Admin officials skipped meetings to “address concerns about racism,” the list gets more and more ridiculous.  The evidence betters supports a culture of complaining than of racism.

The extreme progressivist cancel culture in academe is eating its own in this instance.

I wouldn’t ordinarily care if McMaster gets ripped by Laurier, (it happens all the time in athletics!) but the constant drumbeat of false, Marxist assertions that Canada is racist and therefore evil is dangerous.  You only have to look to the U.S. for the consequences.

The report can’t withstand serious scrutiny, the evidence is laughable, and can in no way support the claim of a culture of systemic racism.  The only proper response is to deposit the report in the circular file.

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