1832 Blog: Wild Charges of Racism

We routinely expect student blogs to be a bit irresponsible. After all, they are student blogs.

But sometimes they go completely bonkers. Such was the case when the 1832 blog published an article titled “Racism Permeating from within [sic] Marquette College Republicans’ Ranks.”

Written by Brent Bray, it attacks student blogger Joseph Kastner for supposed “racism.”

And what is the evidence of Kastner’s “racism?” Two blog entries dealing with Moslems. Here is the first one, and here is the second.

The first one notes the political correctness of Hollywood in making a film in which four Arabs are suspects in a kidnaping aboard an airliner, but then it develops that “the Air Marshall and the flight attendants who were behind it.” Kastner’s point, which is more than amply demonstrated by the movie version of Tom Clancy’s “Sum of All Fears,” is that Hollywood doesn’t want to make Arabs villains.

Of course, not wanting to make Arabs especially villainous is perfectly reasonable. But Arabs are simply more likely to engage in certain kinds of illegal activity, and trying to avoid that is political correctness personified.

Movies set in the South during the heyday of the civil rights struggle have certainly been willing to portray Southern whites in a very negative way.

The second of Kastner’s links deals with a Maryland Muslim elementary school teacher who has been charged with aiding two terrorist groups. Kastner editorializes that:

Makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside knowing we have both the Muslim Student Association and the Arab Student Association on campus, now doesn’t it? I sure no one’s visa is expired.

We think that Kastner was out of bounds with this comment, although we have to note that some of the actions of Arab students on campus have projected an image of irresponsibility. They, for example, attacked Ambassador Dennis Ross, a visiting scholar in the Political Science Department this past spring.

They staged an Arab Heritage Celebration that was chock-full of hatred of Israel, and indeed of the United States as Israel’s ally.

Some Arab activists seem to want to have it both ways. They want to be free to engage in extreme and inflammatory rhetoric, and then become very indignant when people begin to think of them as extreme.

At any rate, what Bray presents Kastner as saying bears no resemblance of what Kastner actually said. Bray accuses Kastner of “seeking to place Arabs as terrorist race inferior to commonalities of justice of a presumable guilt before trial based solely on the color/religion of an individual. . . .”

And again: Bray accuses Kastner of “eagerness to post and endorse racial epitaphs [sic].” Brent, he’s talking about live Arabs, not dead ones.

And even further:

Kastner has again shown his true colors in his blog “PC-America Stikes [sic] Again with ‘Flightplan’” in suggesting first and foremost that “Arabs males are (inherently) sinister” and that their presumption (and in this case actuality) of innocence should automatically be discredited because they happen to be of Arab decent [sic] so they must be a [sic] terrorist.

Here, Bray has put in quotes something that Kastner never said. Kastner describes how the movie audiences are made to believe that “four sinaster [sic] Arabs” are at fault. He’s clearly describing the presentation of these four characters by the makers of the movie.

Bray just can’t restrain his rhetoric:

However, Kastner would have you believe that every Arab person wants to tear down the fiber of America - hmm why would this be? Fear and ignorance often are a dangerous combination. Add to that a web page of a naive person with black and white assumptions of small town Wisconsin, and you have a loaded gun blindly aimed at Arab-Americans.

Bray, who in some contexts bitterly complains about “stereotypes” doesn’t mind stereotyping people who live in small towns.

The introduction to Bray’s post says that he “has an extensive background with Marquette University Student Government and, in particular, diversity and multicultural issues.” Among the “multicultural” and “diversity” crowd, charges of racism are supposed to bring the accused person to his knees, begging and pleading that he’s not in fact a racist and will do anything to prove that.

But the “multicultural” and “diversity” crowd seems to have no idea of how badly this rhetoric plays outside the confines of their own little playground.

The average American, hearing charges of “racism” thinks “oh, my, yet another race hustler playing the race card.”