MassNews Interviews Professor Who Wants To 'Abolish The White Race'

By Ed Oliver
January 2003 Print Edition

Harvard Magazine recently published an inflammatory article, "Abolish the White Race," written by a white Harvard-trained historian, Noel Ignatiev, who is a fellow at Harvard's W.E.B. Dubois Institute, a leading black-studies department.

Ignatiev wrote, "The goal of abolishing the white race is on its face so desirable that some may find it hard to believe that it could incur any opposition other than from committed white supremacists."

The understandable reaction from some quarters was that Ignatiev, who publishes an obscure journal called "Race Traitor," is advocating genocide as the final solution to perceived white oppression. Ignatiev is also the author of a book called, How The Irish Became White. To find out in his own words what he is talking about, MassNews interviewed Ignatiev in his office at the Mass. College of Art in Boston, where he teaches history.
		Professor Noel Ignatiev

Professor Ignatiev is not what I expected.

Ignatiev is no smug, smart aleck, Clinton style yuppie who never got his hands dirty. I actually kind of like the guy even though I strongly disagree with the way he frames America's problems in racial terms.

Ignatiev says he isn't a liberal Democrat and he doesn't like Bill Clinton. He said he didn't vote because if voting worked it would be illegal. He says he even agrees with conservatives on some things, like gun rights and taxes. He doesn't like government, but since we're stuck with it, it should be used to correct past injustices. He abhors the shallow pursuit of materialism our society has become and would rather see a hard working but non-competitive close-knit society, something like the Indians had, but with the use of some technology.

Professor Ignatiev lives in a modest house in a predominately black neighborhood in Dorchester. His idea of a good time is fishing out in western Mass. near where I live.

A bearded, straight talking son of Jewish immigrants from Russia, Ignatiev, with his Philadelphia upbringing and blue-collar jobs in Chicago steel mills and factories, comes across as a Saul Alinsky type of old style liberal, who actually went out into the neighborhoods and tried to improve the lot of the poor.

He says he wants to get rid of color designations. No more thinking of ourselves as white. Blacks will do the same if we go first, he said. By thinking of ourselves as white, we white peons joined the "white club," and foolishly think we rub shoulders with the moneyed elite, the ones who buy off the politicians and pull the levers of modern society to our destruction. As "white club" members, we take on some of the privileges of the elites when we have no business doing so and should be standing in solidarity with our brother blacks, who are in the same boat as ourselves as economic slaves to the machine.

This worldview is guaranteed to keep the racial pot boiling. But Professor Ignatiev answers that it is our complacency that is dangerous and we should thank people like himself for keeping it boiling. He admitted that he uses inflammatory language partly to get attention.

Ignatiev is a self-described radical and Marxist, but he says he deplores how Marx was used to create monstrous, socialist and communist bureaucracies that have nothing to do with what Marx espoused. Ignatiev believes that people have to organize themselves outside of politics to press for justice and freedom, and yes, use civil disobedience and ultimately violence, if necessary, to achieve the goal.

What is especially exasperating is how Ignatiev frames America's problems as white against black, but when you question him, he insists he isn't talking about the color of your skin, but about a white fraternity. His rallying cry of "abolish the white race," which he says isn't to be taken literally, is the language of the mob and seems to put the intellectual stamp of approval on a race war.

Ignatiev admits that if he were in any other country, he would frame the battle as the big guys against the little guys, the powerful against the powerless. He insists, however, that the establishment in this country is best identified as white because that is how blacks see it, and with some justification, and you need blacks on your side if you want to see any kind of change for the better.

MassNews: You advocate the goal of "abolishing the white race" in the September-October issue of Harvard Magazine and in your "Race Traitor" publication. Please explain what you mean by "abolishing the white race."

Prof. Ignatiev: Good question. While we speak of abolishing the white race, we are not talking about killing people with fair skin and straight hair and so forth. We are talking about doing away with the social meaning of what is called race. Your color or anything like that turns out to have no more significance for your position in society than the shape of your ears or the size of your feet. That's what we mean by abolishing the white race as a social category.

I'd like to give you two examples. One is royalty. There was a time when people believed that the royal family was really distinctive by blood and owed its position to some special quality that it inherited. Nobody believes that anymore. To abolish royalty does not necessarily mean killing the king or queen. It means doing away with thrones, titles, royal privileges, crowns and all the other trappings of royalty so that Elizabeth Rex becomes plain Lizzie Hanover. That's what it would mean to do away with royalty as a social formation.

Another example: There was a time in Europe when to be a Protestant or Catholic really defined a person's social position. It's still that way in part of Europe, part of Ireland. People fought wars over that and whether you were a Protestant or a Catholic determined what careers were open to you and so forth. Now, that's pretty much all gone today. It's really not very much part of the United States and there's not really very much of that left in Europe.

It doesn't mean that people still don't practice the Protestant religion or the Catholic religion. Nobody's trying to kill off Protestants or Catholics, but both Protestantism and Catholicism have in the main been destroyed as social formations. And that's what we mean.

MassNews: What are the "privileges of the white skin" as you call it in your writings? Many would argue that the white male today is the most victimized of all because he is made to pay the freight for everyone else. We've all heard about the angry white male.

Prof. Ignatiev: What I think it still means is a favored access to careers, to housing, to schools. Not so much because of explicit discrimination today, which is considerably less than it was in the past, but rather because of the effects of advantages that were accumulated in the past where race discrimination was pretty overt and is acknowledged by everyone to have existed. The advantages that were accumulated in the past get transmitted to the next generation through methods that appear to be colorblind but in fact are not.

Basically what I would say is this: That the person whose grandparents had access to a skilled trade or a college education or a good union job or a nice neighborhood has an advantage over the person whose grandparents walked behind a mule or a mop. I don't say being white guarantees a white person a stress-free life. I'm not suggesting that all whites are rich. I understand very well that there are some whites who sink and some blacks who rise. But still, by and large, the weight of the past-the past is still with us, or as Faulker said, the past is not dead, it's not even past. That's what I mean by the advantage.

To me, those few programs of affirmative action or other things like that which have sought to redress the balance really have come nowhere near equalizing the scales. It is still like two drops of blood against a hog's head.

It seems to me the whole country today is a giant engine for guaranteeing affirmative action for whites. But it's done without being explicitly or racially overt simply because of inheritance, so people are blind to it. Whereas, when there is a specific program that demands that a certain number of black people get hired for some job or whatever, from which they have been historically excluded, everybody says that's race prejudice, that's quotas and all the rest of the stuff. When in fact what has been going on is a white quota for years and years.

It still goes on, even though the old-fashioned forms of racial discrimination are no longer practiced as widely as they once were.

MassNews: Aren't you really making the case for segregation? Isn't it human nature for people to favor those within their own group? Isn't it impossible to completely stamp out favoritism without a police state? Don't blacks and others favor their own when they are in power and the majority?

Prof. Ignatiev: It depends what you mean by one's own group. In America, color tends to be a determinant of what your group is and what your group isn't. That hasn't always been the case and there is no reason why it has to be. One could very well argue, for instance, that social class is more important as a determinant of group than color. The United States like any modern country is divided into masters and slaves. The problem is in this country a whole lot of the slaves think they are part of the masters because they enjoy some of the privileges or all of the privileges of the white skin.

So I wouldn't argue that people like to be with their own, I just don't think that white color necessarily has to be the determinant of who is one's own.

As far as racial segregation, America's never been in the deepest sense racially segregated. Black and white have been linked very closely together and borrow very heavily culturally and in religion and a whole variety of other ways. All Americans are culturally at least part African as well as part Yankee and part Indian and part everybody else who has been here. When it comes to erasing the effects of past discrimination, then they don't want to do that, then it becomes a matter of all of a sudden they want to huddle to their own.

MassNews: Do you think it is actually possible to do what you say you want to do?

Prof. Ignatiev: Sure, race is only a few hundred years old as a determinant. Before that - see, people have often divided themselves into a group and another group, and fought wars about it; tribe and language and religion. But color, as a determinant is really only three or four hundred years old. You look back in the ancient world, there were wars between Christians and non-believers or later between Christians and Moslems or whatever. But color didn't play a part in that.

MassNews: Where did that come from?

Prof. Ignatiev: Where did the color come from? It came from, I think, the development of the slave trade, which as it turned out, based itself on African labor for the most part. Once the status of the slave was fixed exclusively on persons of African descent, then the black skin became the badge of slavery and the fair skin became the badge of freedom. But it's not that black people were enslaved because they were black. It's rather they were enslaved because they could be enslaved and then they were defined as black because they were enslaved.

I mean, Europeans have a history of murdering each other and enslaving each other and massacring each other for a long time, long before they ever discovered Africa as a place to do that. There was never a color question. You know the Greeks and the Romans and the Germans and the Romanians and everybody else that were fighting all over Europe in ancient times were not divided by color, you see. It's really very recent, 1600's, 1700's, that's all.

So I'm not arguing that the human race has ever been one big happy family. If it has been it was before recorded history. But to divide people into an "in" group and an "out" group based on color seems to me very superficial, because for one thing nobody had any control over what color he was born. People do have some control over their political views and over their religion. Now that, if you were going to divide things up, you might rather do it over something that made some difference, rather than over something so silly and arbitrary as color.

Moreover, when you think about it, even which race you put a person into is very much historically determined. In America, anybody with any known or visible African descent is called black. A person could be three quarters of European descent and one quarter black, but that person is put down as colored and treated accordingly.

MassNews: Yes, but who is treating people according to color? Isn't it always the government asking you your race on forms and things like that? Who actually looks at things according to color now?

Prof. Ignatiev: Well first of all, of course the obvious things like police profiling, being followed in department stores. They haven't gone away. There's still a lot of that as I'm sure you will admit. Beyond that as I say, it's not so much anymore an explicit discrimination against people of color. I think most whites don't want to be racist, feel that they're not, and I think for the most part are telling the truth insofar as they understand the truth. I credit people with good faith. But what they don't understand is the effects of the past are still with us.

And see, then, they get very defensive about that. White folks like to believe - I suppose this is a human characteristic - we all like to believe that whatever success we have is the result of our hard work and intelligence. Well, some of it may be that, but some of it may be due to the accident of having been born into the social group that carries advantages with it.

Look, if your name were Rockefeller, you would know very well that your chances of success in this world were better than if your name was Smith.

MassNews: It seems like you are talking about money advantage rather than color.

Prof. Ignatiev: I am talking about money advantage, except in America in the past the money advantage was to a considerable degree color-coded. Not universally I understand, but after all, it made a difference when some people were slaves and some people had the right to homestead land and some people had the right to get skilled trades and others didn't. And that would get passed on to their children.

I think it is fundamentally about money, not about color. But in America, money is to a considerable extent color-coded. I'd rather face that truth than try and ignore it.

MassNews: What are your views on reparations and affirmative action? Do these tie in to abolishing the white race?

Prof. Ignatiev: Well, maybe. I have been in favor of affirmative action for victims of past discrimination in order to rectify the effects of that, as I say, my general feeling is not that there has been too much, but that there hasn't been enough. In so far as reparations have been concerned, I think the country owes a debt to those people who did a whole lot of work in building it up. Not the only ones, but a whole lot of work in building it up in the past and by and large did not have access to the fruits of their labor, as many others did not, but them more extremely than others.

Whether reparations are the best form to do that, time will tell. But one thing I don't think we can do is just pretend that the past doesn't exist and just say, 'OK, everybody's fair and square now, so root hog or die, if you don't make it, it's your fault,' because it's just not true.

MassNews: You said in a 1997 New York Times interview that, 'All those who look white, are whatever their complaints or reservations, fundamentally loyal to the race. We want to dissolve that club, to explode it."
Aren't black people also fundamentally loyal to their race and to black culture? Shouldn't that also be destroyed?

Prof. Ignatiev: First of all I'm not talking about culture. Race is not culture. Black people can like Shakespeare and Mozart too; it doesn't make them white. White people can like hip hop.

MassNews: They talk about black culture all the time.

Prof. Ignatiev: Well there may be black culture but there is no white culture. There is English culture and Italian culture and Irish culture and hillbilly culture and American culture. American culture is a mixture of Europe, Africa, Asia, Mexico, and every place else in the world. Beyond that, I didn't say that. The problem with the whites is that they are loyal to their racial values rather than the human race. That is to say, if they weren't so blinded by believing that they belong to the superior race, they could see that the country is going to hell in a barrel, and that their willingness to accept the advantages or the satisfaction and the consolation of being white as a substitute for being free is part of the reason we have such a big problem.

I don't think the white skin brings freedom and dignity, I think it's a substitute for freedom and dignity. But it's enough to fool a whole lot of folks. If you look at the state of American politics today, it does seem to me a whole lot of the reason people in this country blindly follow their leaders, blindly salute the flag, blindly follow their leaders into any darn war that they're going to lead us into, is partly because they say, "This is my country, I'm a white man, I'm free and so on and so forth." That's stupid.

MassNews: But still, aren't black people fundamentally loyal to the black race?

Prof. Ignatiev: Yeah, but you see there is a difference between being loyal to the people who are the victims of oppression and being loyal to the oppressor. They're not the same.

MassNews: But you see everyone that is white as an oppressor.

Prof. Ignatiev: No. I don't see everyone with white skin as an active, deliberate, conscious oppressor. I do believe, however, that all those with white skin in this country are complicit with a system of oppression simply by virtue of going along with it and allowing it to operate in their name.

When I'm using the term oppressor, I'm not using that to mean an evil person standing there with a whip and a gun. By and large in most societies, the agents of oppression are a relatively small minority. But many, many people support them by a variety of means. You see it by being loyal, by paying taxes, by keeping their mouth shut when somebody else protests.

Could what happened to Rodney King, for instance, have happened if the majority of white Americans had been as outraged by it as the black Americans were? I don't think so.

MassNews: By what happened to him-you mean.

Prof. Ignatiev: Yeah fifteen cops beating him while he is on the ground and then acquitting them. That could not have happened and the continual outrages that have happened in the past and continue to against black folk could not continue to take place if the whites were as outraged by them as the blacks are. Most whites are not doing that, I understand that, but most whites are keeping quiet and allowing others to do them.

MassNews: You mention "behavior patterns" of the white race in the Harvard Magazine article. Isn't that racist? If whites dared mention behavior patterns of blacks, they would be denounced as racists.

Prof. Ignatiev: Well, the way I would put it is this way: those people who do not act according to the patterns of whiteness in society are not white, they just look white. Remember, to me, whiteness is not a physical designation. It does not mean people of fair skin. It's not your fair skin that makes you white. It's the fair skin in a certain kind of society in which the fair skin carries certain privileges and obligations with it.

Now to be white in this country is to enjoy the benefits of the white skin and also to take part in the institutions and the patterns of behavior that maintain those institutions in power. It means voting a certain way, it means choosing to live a certain way, it means maintaining certain kinds of job networks, and yes, I think that most people with fair skin operate that way, not all. There are some people who look white in this country who really aren't. But, I'm not talking about a color. I'm talking about a social formation.

I would like to break that social formation up into the people who look white, but don't act white against the others that.

MassNews: But you are fundamentally talking about race. If you say "whites," and that things are fundamentally or historically based on race.

Prof. Ignatiev: No, it wasn't historically based on race; it was based on slavery. People from Africa were not enslaved because they were black. First of all they weren't the only ones enslaved. Some Irish were enslaved, some Turks were enslaved, but after awhile, the brand of permanent lifetime servitude got to be fixed exclusively on people from Africa. Not because whites had anything against black people, but because they were available for enslavement in a way that others were not.

Those Virginia tobacco planters would have enslaved their mothers if they could have gotten away with it. They could get away with it in Africa in a way they couldn't get away with it in England. Okay, so that's why they enslaved people. Then the black skin became the badge of slavery. But it did not start out about color; it started out about labor.

They did not bring people from Africa here in order to discriminate against them. They brought them here to put them to work to grow tobacco, sugar, cotton and rice.

MassNews: You don't think, then, that it is racist to talk about white behavior patterns?

Prof. Ignatiev: No, because whites don't have to follow those behavior patterns.

MassNews: And there are no behavior patterns of blacks?

Prof. Ignatiev: That's not my concern.

MassNews: But if it is someone's concern, is it racist to talk about behavior patterns of blacks?

Prof. Ignatiev: I talk about behavior patterns of blacks. The behavior pattern I observe is they mostly resist white supremacy. That's a behavior pattern I approve of.

MassNews: We read stories occasionally about young blacks who work hard and study to get ahead and are often mocked by their peers and accused of "white behavior." If the Protestant work ethic is "white behavior," don't we need more "white behavior?"

Prof. Ignatiev: Now we get to the heart of it, the difference between the conservative and the radical. Because I want a society in which people won't work harder and harder to get ahead. I want a society in which people work hard in order to contribute something to the human experience and in order to produce things of value. But in fact I don't like to see a society in which people compete to get ahead.

I believe in some kind of a cooperative society. None of the names that has been called, particularly socialism and communism are particularly appealing to me given what they've done. I'm going to acknowledge that. I do not share the conservative ideal of a society in which everybody struggles and works and fights to get ahead.

I think this is a very wealthy country in which there is enough for everybody and everybody could have an abundant, happy life. Instead, things are getting worse, not better. It's not because of too much cooperation or too much socialism; it's because of too much bloodthirsty competition.

You've got a country that reveals their true feelings, their real situation every time they get behind the wheel of a car. They are ready to kill each other. That's what comes from a society where people work hard to get ahead.

Now I'd like to see people work hard to produce things of value, things that they enjoy, things that bring pleasure to humanity. I believe in hard work, but not in order to get ahead.

MassNews: But to get out of lowly circumstances.

Prof. Ignatiev: Why should anyone be in lowly circumstances in this wealthiest country in the history of the human race? Why are we living in certain ways worse than people who lived in the past are? Because we are fighting so hard to get ahead.

I mean, spending three quarters of the budget on the military preparing to make war on the whole rest of the world possibly. This is all part of wanting to get ahead. You swallow a little bite; you swallow the whole thing.

MassNews: But a kid studying to do well and staying out of trouble, that's white behavior?

Prof. Ignatiev: All of us are in trouble whether we break the law or follow the law. Whether we study hard or we don't study hard. We are all in trouble. This country is in a disastrous situation. I had to stand in line today to get into some building downtown and go through security, ride up thirty-five floors on an elevator and all I could see on the elevator was a TV screen giving these stock market quotes. This is not Bin Laden that did that. It's the people here in this country that are doing that. That's not what the new life is about.

While we speak of abolishing the white race, we are not talking about killing people with fair skin and straight hair and so forth. We are talking about doing away with the social meaning of what is called race. -Professor Noel Ignatiev

MassNews: What are the implications of what you are espousing? Who would fill the vacuum? What if Hispanics become the new majority, will they need to be abolished? Do you agree our immigration policy is geared toward abolishing the white majority? Bill Clinton said the goal is to no longer see a white majority in America within 50 years.

Prof. Ignatiev: Again, when you're talking about a white majority what you mean is a majority of people of historically European ancestry. That's not what makes people white. What I want to have in fifty years is that there not be a single white person left in the country. But that doesn't mean I want to get rid of people with fair skin and European background. It means that I want us to become Americans or people of the world.

Look, there was time when the Irish and the Italians and even the Swedes were not quite white yet in this country. They had to be made white by being drawn into the advantages of whiteness in this country.

MassNews: You're talking about thinking in terms of color.

Prof. Ignatiev: Thinking and institutions. That's right. I don't give a damn about the color of anyone's skin and that's not what I - you've got to get that if you want to argue with me or at least understand what I'm saying.

MassNews: But government forms always ask your race.

Prof. Ignatiev: I don't care what the government does, I'm against it.

MassNews: You're against the government asking about race?

Prof. Ignatiev: No, it's not that I'm against them asking. As long as it reflects a reality, then it's probably useful to count it. What I want is for colored to disappear as any kind of a social marker.

Look, why doesn't the government-your religion is a private matter, right? If you have one.

MassNews: Sure.

Prof. Ignatiev: OK. It doesn't really affect anything very much. Sometimes individuals might ask you whether you go to church Friday, Saturday or Sunday, or which church you go to. But by and large, for most people that doesn't have very much to do with their social chances. Therefore, you don't make a big deal if you are a Protestant or a Catholic or a Presbyterian or whatever. It just doesn't come up very much. If you can imagine, I want race to no longer be an important part of anyone's ...

MassNews: But you even said it's not any more, really.

Prof. Ignatiev: Race? But it is because of its past effects. And you will not eliminate those past effects by pretending that the problem has been solved.
The first step is to eliminate all the discrimination. Now, to a considerable degree that has been done. Not entirely, not as much as maybe some people think, but to some degree it has been done.

The second part is to erase all the effects of past discrimination. When those two things are done, then we can forget about race and I don't care what color people are. I won't talk about it anymore I promise you.

MassNews: Are you being purposefully inflammatory to get attention?

Prof. Ignatiev: Yes.

MassNews: You are.

Prof. Ignatiev: Yes I am, but more than that. Partly I am using this language to get attention. However, part of it is this: I want to move the discussion past a discussion of what is in people's minds and whether they're prejudiced. You see when most whites say they're not racist, what they mean is they don't consciously and deliberately set out to discriminate against anybody because of his color. I think most of them mean that and believe that and I'm willing to say that they tried to do that.

But to me that's not the real issue. The real issue is that there exists a tremendous gap, a measurable gap in the living conditions between a white community and a black community. The fact is there still exists such a thing as a white community and a black community, and it has different rates. Did you know there are more black men in prison now than in college, than graduate college and so forth?

I want the discussion to go beyond just the discussion of who's personally prejudiced and to address the question of what are the actual living conditions among different groups of people. And that's why I talk about being against whiteness rather than being against racism because I'm trying to shift the focus of the conversation.

MassNews: Isn't this a dangerous approach to get your point across? It sounds like a call to attack white people. The mob will not read your articles and explanations, but will only remember the 'abolish the white race' rallying cry. Remember truck driver Reginald Denny was almost beaten to death by a black mob because he was white.

Prof. Ignatiev: Very interesting. Reginald Denny is a good example, because he is a person who after that happened, and it was a terrible thing that happened to him, but after it happened, he himself was good enough to say, 'Yes, I understand why this happened. Because I look like the people who were treating this crowd of folks badly.' You see, Reginald Denny had more understanding of that situation than most of the so-called white people rallying around to his defense.

Look, is it dangerous? A whole lot of folks already hate white people, you know, because of what they do, not only in this country but also around the world because of what they represent.

I am saying, standing up as a person who looks white but tries not to be white and saying that I am against whiteness and all it represents-I think that offers a greater possibility of bringing together African American and European American than using a different kind of language, because at least it points out the fact that not all people with white skin in this country think the same and act the same. Unfortunately too many of them still do think the same and act the same.

I'm trying to destroy an oppressive social formation, not kill individuals with fair skin. I don't care about anybody's color. I do care about his participation in a system that reinforces and reproduces race privilege. I'm trying to challenge that and I think the only way to challenge that is to make those people uncomfortable.

That's part of what my language is intended to do.

MassNews: On your 'race traitor' website, the May 2000 'New Abolitionist' newsletter says, 'The abolitionists do not limit themselves to socially acceptable means of protest, but reject in advance no means of attaining their goal.' What does that mean?

Prof. Ignatiev: It means what George Washington and Thomas Jefferson meant. After they had petitioned the king, and it wasn't sufficient, they did what they had to do; what every serious partisan of social change has wanted to do. They fought for what they believed by whatever means are appropriate and required under the circumstances. I'd stand proudly-if those guys had been caught they'd have been hanged, right? They won so.

MassNews: Yes, but who do you go after?

Prof. Ignatiev: I'm after the institutions. I'm after the criminal justice system, I'm after tracking in the schools, I'm after the de facto housing segregation, I'm after redlining in the banks, I'm after the job reference networks, I'm after all the institutions and behavior patterns that continue to make color a relevant social category even though apparently most of the laws against discrimination have been erased.

MassNews: But how do you physically go after them if standing against that doesn't work?

Prof. Ignatiev: How did the struggle against slavery do it?

MassNews: A civil war.

Prof. Ignatiev: Well all right. How did the civil rights movement do it? They had sit-ins, they had courtroom measures, they had blockades, they had direct action, they had legislation. They did a whole variety of means. This is a political battle I'm engaged in like any other political battle-peaceably if we can, forcibly if we must.

MassNews: That's what I mean, the force will be directed against white people.

Prof. Ignatiev: Directed against the institutions that reproduce white.

MassNews: The guys on the street aren't going to see it that way.

Prof. Ignatiev: I see it that way.

MassNews: The ones who attacked Reginald Denny attacked a white guy, not some institution.

Prof. Ignatiev: If you don't want the dark skinned people attacking the fair skinned people indiscriminately, then what has to happen is some more of the fair skinned people have to come out on the side of justice and prove that they mean it. Then the black people will say, 'Wait a minute, all those white people are not the same, therefore we better be a little bit more careful who we attack.'

MassNews: Do you agree that.

Prof. Ignatiev: Did you just hear what I said? Do you have any response to that?

MassNews: Repeat it.

Prof. Ignatiev: If you don't want black people looking at white people and hating them for the color of their skin, then what has to happen is some people who look white have to prove that they are on the side of the black folk. They have to demonstrate that. Not just to say personally 'I'm not prejudiced and therefore I'm not responsible.' But do something to change the actual conditions.

MassNews: What I was going to ask you is related to that but you might not see it that way. Don't you think that gun control is racist?

Prof. Ignatiev: I'm against gun control.

MassNews: You are?

Prof. Ignatiev: Yeah.

MassNews: Weren't the first gun control laws passed in the south to keep guns out of the hands of blacks?

Prof. Ignatiev: I'm against gun control. It's one of the reasons America started as a country. I'm against gun control.

MassNews: OK. So somebody who is fighting to get rid of gun control is helping blacks, is helping everybody.

Prof. Ignatiev: I'm in favor-I'm against gun control.

MassNews: OK, so that would be one way whites can do something.

Prof. Ignatiev: That would be one way, yep. I'm against gun control. I mean it. I believe a universally armed populace is the best defense of freedom. But, ah- I'm against gun control. See? Don't put me in a liberal bag. I'm not a liberal. I'm a radical. I'm not a liberal.

So I'm trying to destroy the system, the general system under which we live which is what you call the system of competing to get ahead. I'm against that. I really want to break it apart.

I'm against race, whiteness in particular because I think it's a main pillar of a system based on injustice and exploitation. I'm not against race because I happen to love dark skinned people or have anything against fair skinned people. I'm against whiteness because I think it poisons people's minds. It prevents them from understanding their true situation as slaves.

MassNews: I think white people don't think of themselves as white. I think it is black people who look at other people as white.

Prof. Ignatiev: I think the white people have gotten so accustomed for so long at looking at themselves as white and thinking of white as the norm that they don't even have to say it anymore. It is so much a part of how they look at the world it is like a fish that doesn't even know it is surrounded by water. White people are so white in this country, they don't even think about it; it's so normal and natural.

So that for instance, when the cops go beat up Rodney King, either they say it's good that it happened to him, or they say it's too bad it happened to him. What they don't say is, 'My God, that happened to me, too, because he is me and we are all human beings.

And that shouldn't have happened to anybody. And that they don't say.

If they said that, if they could see themselves in a dark skin, and could object as strongly when something bad happens to a black person as they would if it happened to their own sister, then this would be a very different country, and that is what I'm trying to achieve.

MassNews: I thought there was an outcry when people saw that on TV.

Prof. Ignatiev: Yes, there was, there was an outcry, a little bit. But they went back to sleep afterwards as soon as it was over. That Rodney King beating was so outrageous, but after the jury came back and let those cops go with a slap on the wrist and Mark Fuhrman becomes a national hero, and so forth and so on, I didn't hear any outrage or protest from the whites.
There was a moment when whites were not happy with that video, that's true. But it only lasted a minute and it was not enough. I want to see more. We need some white people in this country, people who look white but don't act white. I call them M&M's. No matter what color they are on the outside, they are black on the inside.

MassNews: The Washington Times wrote that you were a 'one time steel worker and Marxist activist' and that you 'set up Marxist discussion groups' in the early 1980's. They say you helped organize strikes and protests by the predominately black work force and were arrested for throwing a paint bomb at a strike breaker's car. Is that all true?

Prof. Ignatiev: Yeah.

MassNews: So you're a Marxist?

Prof. Ignatiev: That's not against the law, is it?

MassNews: What drove you to these extreme leftist views?

Prof. Ignatiev: Just looking at the world around and living in America, that's all.

MassNews: The Washington Times also wrote that you were accepted into Harvard's Graduate School of Education without an undergraduate degree. After earning your Masters, you joined the Harvard faculty as a lecturer and worked toward a doctorate in U.S. history.
How did you get into Harvard?

Prof. Ignatiev: By sending in my fifty dollars and applying and going through the.

MassNews: Was it your views that they liked?

Prof. Ignatiev: You have to ask Harvard, I didn't make their decisions. I applied like anybody else.

MassNews: Were you funded by anybody?

Prof. Ignatiev: Funded? What do you mean, I paid tuition like everybody else.

MassNews: Did anybody fund you or encourage you to promote the message of abolishing the white race?

Prof. Ignatiev: We are funded by our readers and subscribers. We receive no other kind of funding.

MassNews: Did anybody fund your Marxist activities years ago?

Prof. Ignatiev: I worked like everybody else. Earned a wage, paid my rent, paid the utilities, and paid the taxes to the government.

MassNews: There wasn't some Rockefeller fund or foundation money.

Prof. Ignatiev: No, no, none of that. I'm just an ordinary person. I used to earn my living as a steelworker, now I earn my living as a schoolteacher. I earn my living.

MassNews: These are views you just thought up.

Prof. Ignatiev: I didn't think them up. Many, many people before me and alongside me had similar views.

MassNews: Now Harvard.

Prof. Ignatiev: All kinds of people go to Harvard. Some very conservative. I applied to a master's degree in education at Harvard. I got admitted to the program, did my studies, got a masters degree, applied to a doctoral program there, got admitted, did my studies and eventually wound up with my paperhanger and decorator degree.

MassNews: You went a long way for a blue-collar kid. They must have really loved your views.

Prof. Ignatiev: I don't know about my views, they have to deal with all different kinds of views there. I don't know if they loved my views. I was a good student. I worked hard, so they let me through.

MassNews: You can't do that, you can't work hard to get ahead, right?

Prof. Ignatiev: Harvard has many crimes in its history, but it does not bear responsibility for me. They didn't fund me, they didn't do anything. All they did was let me go through there and take classes, write a degree and give me a certificate at the end of that time.

Also during that time, they allowed me to teach as a way of supporting myself as they do many other people who are going to school there.

I'm trying to destroy an oppressive social formation, not kill individuals with fair skin. I don't care about anybody's color. I care about his participation in a system that reinforces and reproduces race privilege. -Professor Noel Ignatiev

MassNews: A blue-collar guy can't go to Harvard like that.

Prof. Ignatiev: Well, I used to sometimes laugh and say I hope the rest of the fellows back in Gary, Indiana, don't find out how good I've got it here or else they'll all leave and there will be nobody left to make iron.

When I worked in the mills, I read, I studied, I paid attention to things and so when I applied to go to Harvard in the School of Education I wrote them a letter and said I want to study, I want to get a masters degree in education and I had a couple years of college. I sent them my transcripts and sent them a letter. So they let me in.

MassNews: Now those things you did - go to school, try to get ahead, are the same things a black kid does that you said are not good behavior, competing to get ahead.

Prof. Ignatiev: I didn't do this to compete and get ahead and I didn't say a black kid shouldn't - there were other black people in my school there and they worked hard and got degrees too. I'm not against people working hard and learning things. I just don't believe in society founded on competition.

MassNews: That's called white behavior in the black community and looked down upon when kids try to do what you did.

Prof. Ignatiev: Go talk to some black folk about that, I'm just not going to comment on that. It's not my business. I have plenty to criticize among the white folks for how they behave. I think they have set up a society that is walled around with exclusivity based on selfishness and hostility. The family, the kids, the wives hate the husbands, the husbands hate the wives. They can't talk to their own children. They are locked behind their $4000 video home entertainment units instead of getting out there and meeting the rest of the folks in the country and all that. That is not a good way to live. That's what I call white behavior and I can criticize it plenty.

MassNews: What do you think of the political situation in Massachusetts? What would you like to see changed? Who did you vote for, for governor, if you want to say?

Prof. Ignatiev: I didn't vote for any of them.

MassNews: Not even Jill Stein?

Prof. Ignatiev: No. I might have voted for her if I thought it would make a difference.

If I would have had my arm twisted, I would have voted for her. But, I don't think voting is going to change anything. If it did it wouldn't be legal. I certainly didn't like the one that got elected, but I didn't like the Democrat that ran against him. So far as I can see, there wasn't a dime's worth of difference between them. Not enough to get me excited.

I thought a little bit about voting for Jill Stein, but I think mostly what we need is a movement outside of the electoral system. A movement of people in the streets, a movement of people in their jobs, organizing themselves, asserting their power to direct action.

Editor's Comment on Prof. Ignatiev:

When Ed Oliver presented a 7700-word story on Prof. Ignatiev, I was flabbergasted that we would waste so much space on an obvious charlatan. But then I realized this story would show parents what their children face in college today.

As you see this Communist (who still advocates the use of violence to change our society) weave and duck in absurd postures, think what you would do if such a person were in a position of great power and were grading you. How could you possibly respond?

Ignatiev was finally cornered by Oliver, who noted that the professor's own behavior of attending college and trying to get ahead was exactly what he condemned in white people.
Oliver asked, "That's called white behavior in the black community [trying to get ahead by hard work] and looked down upon when kids try to do what you did."

But Prof. Ignatiev did not respond to this question directed to his own behavior but replied instead, "Go talk to some black folk about that, I'm just not going to comment on that. It's not my business. I have plenty to criticize among the white folks for how they behave."

Oliver had him cornered and the professor knew it. He had no credible response about his crude attempts to blame all the ills of the world on white folk. So he immediately went back on the attack.

But more important, he represents the two "whitest" groups in the country, according to his definition. It is an indisputable fact that the white people in America are about evenly split between the two political parties. The two groups that are almost totally "white" (in that they think as a group and along racial lines) are Jews and blacks. Both of those groups are about 90% Democrats and are intractable in their racial solidarity. The professor is a member of one group and is fomenting the other.

I was raised in the excellent suburb of South Orange, New Jersey, where the rich homes on Orange Mountain were predominately Jewish, probably German Jews, although I never thought about that until I started writing this. All of my children had a maternal Jewish grandfather whose ancestors came from Russia (like the professor's). He was a wonderful man who regularly went to Synagogue until his death.

Two of my granddaughters would be considered "black" by the Professor and the liberal establishment because their wonderful father, a Yale graduate, has black (not tan or light) skin. What right will anyone, particularly the government, have to treat those two differently than my other grandchildren?

We cannot complete a discussion on this subject in an Editor's Response, but one must wonder why these two races of Prof. Ignatiev are the "whitest" ones of all.

Some other points about Prof. Ignatiev for your consideration:

He obviously has no knowledge of his heritage as a Jew. He believes that white people invented slavery of another race. But the Jews were held in bondage in Egypt until rescued by Moses. Their Bible, the Pentateuch, known to Christians as part of the Old Testament, dictates how they were to treat the slaves that they owned.

He says, "Europeans have a long history of murdering each other and enslaving each other and massacring each other for a long time." But that is the history of a fallen world, not just Europeans. When people have formed into groups, it has always been based upon whether you look like the other people. Slavery is pandemic across the world in 2002.

When asked whether black people are "fundamentally loyal to the black race," he answered, "Yeah, but you see there is a difference between being loyal to the people who are the victims of oppression and being loyal to the oppressor. They're not the same." What an absurd response. How would he answer when informed that before the Civil War, there were thousands of blacks who owned slaves in the U.S.? It's common knowledge that slavery has existed in Africa for thousands of years and still exists there today. The reason the slaves were available to whites was because the Africans sold their own people to anyone.

The professor keeps talking about a man who had more than thirty police cars chasing him for miles. This was a huge man on drugs who lunged at police officers and would not stop his attacks, even after being hit with nightsticks and mace. While this was happening, a passenger in the car peacefully surrendered to police. This was the story of Rodney King.

Ours is a "very wealthy country" only because many people act "white" and work very hard to keep it that way. There is nothing special about the land.

He agrees he uses his words effectively to "get attention."

He is "trying to destroy the system" and will use violence to do so.

This is the man to whom Harvard University has given special treatment, and who is now using his position as a Marxist advocate for violent change of our country.

Anyone who wants to read a true account of the Jewish experience in America should read the books by Rabbi Arthur Hertzberg, who was Chaplain at Dartmouth College and rabbi of Temple Emanu-El, Englewood, New Jersey.

Although the Jews were saved from the Holocaust by American teenagers, somehow that truth has gotten lost and we hear rumblings that America and Christianity were responsible for it. Nothing could be further from the truth and never acknowledging the sacrifices of Americans to accomplish that is not fair.

The Jews in Massachusetts are split into two camps, those who are basically secularists and those who still believe in God. The overwhelming numbers of the Reform and Conservative temples are secularists, while the believers are mainly in Orthodox temples. Many of the Orthodox say they feel a deeper kinship with Christians than they do with their secuar neighbors.___________________________