Black PhD vilified for sensible comments.
An organization that tracks hate-group activity in the U.S. is accusing Vanderbilt University professor Carol Swain, a black scholar known for her conservative stances on race and immigration, of being an apologist for white supremacists.
The incident started last week when the Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center posted a blog item critiquing the documentary A Conversation About Race, mentioning that positive comments by Swain lent the film an air of legitimacy.
Swain fired back, making her case against the advocacy group in a blog submitted to the news site The Huffington Post and in a string of messages she sent to followers on her Twitter account.
“Therearen’t enough new hate groups 2 keep the SPLC busy, so they targetindividuals & conservative organizations 2 raise money,” Swainwrote in a Twitter update Thursday.
Swain, a professor of law and political science, said in an interview with The Tennessean that she feels as if she has “been attacked” by the group.
Mark Potock, director of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s
Intelligence Project, responded, “If that is what she believes, she is suffering from some sort of low-grade megalomania.”
Note: Dr. Swain is no fool. She fully understands how the SPLC operates, possessing and often demonstrating the ability to make life very hard on tenured professors who do not toe the politically correct party line. –Ed.
Potocksaid the goal of the Hatewatch blog posts about the film was to “spare(Swain) the embarrassment of continuing to endorse the work of a manwho has referred to black people — including the president — asmonkeys.”
The film in question, A Conversation About Race, opens with a clip of then-Sen. Barack Obama’s campaign speech on race followed by words from the filmmaker, Craig Bodeker.
“Iagree with Senator Obama. … I can’t think of another issue facing ourcountry that is more timely or more important today than the issue ofracism,” Bodeker says in the film. “I also can’t think of another issuethat is more artificial, manufactured and manipulated. … It’s used toooften as a tool of intimidation like a hammer against Caucasian whites.”