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Princeton Professor Implies Whites Like Dogs Better Than Blacks

Appearing on the Rachel Maddow show recently (no surprise there), Melissa Harris-Perry, an Associate Professor of Politics and African American Studies at Princeton, warned that

We want to be really careful here. There are some complex issues at stake whenever you are talking simultaneously about African Americans and talking about issues of animal rights.

Alas, she didn?t heed her own warning, and proceeded to imply that Michael Vick is a victim of the fact that whites have ?feitshized? animals, noting also that ?one of the ways that black people were enslaved? was that black people were equated to animals ... [and that] dogs were directly used against black people.?

Apparently realizing that her historical analysis left something to be desired (?Got a little lost in the weeds,? is how she put it), Prof. Harris-Perry dug her hole deeper in a subsequent Twitter explanation:

I was trying to offer historical perspective for why black and white Americans often have sharply differing views on animal rights issues.

I gave lecture to Vet school in May on exactly this topic. I had 90 minutes then to make my point.... Remember that black people were called apes, put into human zoos, treated as chattel. Equating black people with animals was part of racism. On one hand this dehumanized blacks but it also justified maltreatment of animals, especially those used in agriculture & for food. So many black people have experienced what seems like callous indifference to black suffering from same people who adore/protect pets. This history means there is a profound racial divide on issues of animals rights.

Glad we got that cleared up, and, believe it or not, there might actually be some useful information here. If there really is ?a profound racial divide on issues of animals rights,? perhaps admissions officers surreptitiously seeking proxies for race to ferret out ?diverse? candidates can require an essay on animal rights as part of the ?holistic? admissions process.

Finally, if Rachel Maddow (and Keith Olbermann, on whose show Prof. Harris-Perry also appears) didn?t exist, Fox News would have to invent them.

Full post as published by Discriminations on December 31, 2010 (boomark / email).