Brittney Cooper: Rutgers prof says Whites need to be 'taken out', Internet brutally responds
Rutgers University Associate Professor Brittney Cooper
A Rutgers University professor has created a massive storm of controversy after her comments on Critical Race Theory (CRT) on September 21. Professor Brittney Cooper is currently being slammed on social media after she called White people "villains" in a racist speech as part of an event with author Michael Harriott. Many angry users have taken to Twitter to vent their frustrations at Cooper, with CRT already putting many on edge.
The theory has become the subject of a lot of controversy in 2021, as schools and colleges fight over whether to adopt it or not. In June, General Mark Milley was slammed by Republicans for adopting CRT education for the military. Several GOP-controlled states like Idaho, Iowa, Tennessee, and Oklahoma have banned the teaching of CRT altogether, but in other states, the battle continues.
Numerous professors and teachers have been caught up in the debates, with many even losing their jobs for supporting or opposing CRT. That doesn't appear to be the case with Cooper, whose profile is still up on the university's website. Here's everything we know about her, and the controversial comments she made.
Who is Brittney Cooper?
Not much is known about Cooper, who has since removed her website and limited her Twitter account's reach. The Rutgers website says she has a B.A. in English and Political Science from Howard University and a Ph.D. in American Studies from Emory University. She specializes in the areas of Black Feminist Thought, Hip Hop Studies, Race and Gender Representation in Popular Culture, and Digital Feminisms.
Cooper has also published numerous books and research papers in those areas, as well as co-founded the activist group- Crunk Feminist Collective. An Associate Professor at Rutgers, she also offers courses at the University of Alabama, Spelman College, and her alma mater of Emory University. Not much is known about her personal life, apart from the fact she is a native of Ruston, Louisiana.
On September 21, Cooper was speaking at an event titled 'Unpacking The Attacks On Critical Race Theory'. There, she made controversial statements such as "Critical Race Theory is just the proper teaching of American history", "I wouldn't be mad at the black people who want to get them back", and "white people are committed to being villains in the aggregate." Cooper also said, "The thing I want to say to you is, 'We got to take these motherfuckers out' but like we can't say that."
'How is this hate speech acceptable'
Those statements eventually found their way to the public and led to massive condemnation. One person tweeted, "Brittney Cooper can fuck all the way off with her racist ass!" Another ironically said, "Well Dr. Brittney Cooper congrats on the racism." Another person commented, "I don't know much, but I know Professor Brittney Cooper of the public university Rutgers is one nasty racist motherfucker. We pay that evil bitch to fucking hate us and our country. What the hell happened to our country?"
"I think it’s poetic Justice that Brittney Cooper hates white people while having quite possibly THE whitest name possible," one user commented. Another said, "'Brittney Cooper, a professor of women’s and gender studies and Africana studies' At least now we know which departments to abolish." One person tweeted, "I'd like to know what @RutgersU is going to do about Brittney Cooper. How is this hate speech acceptable?"
Many have also called for Rutgers to comment on Cooper's story, but so far the University had decided to maintain silence. It hasn't acknowledged her comments or opened an investigation into her. That said, her comments weren't made at a university event. The event was organized by The Root, a digital magazine that "provides thought-provoking commentary and news from a variety of black perspectives." A video of the event is still up on YouTube and hasn't been taken down despite clearly bordering on YouTube's hate speech policy.
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Brittney Cooper: Calls grow for Rutgers prof to be fired following SHOCKING anti-White tirade
A Rutgers University professor is facing calls to be fired after she said, "we got to take these motherfuckers out," when discussing White people in September.
As MEAWW previously reported, Brittney Cooper, an associate professor in the Rutgers University Department of Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies, went on an anti-White tirade during an event titled, 'Unpacking the Attacks on Critical Race Theory', hosted by The Root on September 21. The subject has sparked major controversy this year as schools and colleges debate the theory's repercussions on the education system. In June, General Mark Milley was blasted by Republicans for adopting CRT education for the military. Several red states including Idaho, Iowa, Tennessee, and Oklahoma have banned the teaching of CRT altogether, but a number of blue and purple states are still mulling over it.
Walmart slammed after its CRT training 'accuses' White staff of 'supremacy thinking'
"Like, the thing I want to say to you is we got to take these motherfuckers out. But, like, we can't say that, right? We can't say, like, I don't believe in a project of violence. I truly don't," Cooper is heard saying in a clip. She was responding to a question by The Root's Michael Harriot, who asked what Black Americans could expect from their White counterparts.
Cooper also said she believed that "White folks" are not "eternal". She continued, "But I do fundamentally believe that things that have a beginning have an ending. All things that begin end. White folks are not infinite and eternal, right? They ain't going to go on for infinity and infinity. And that's super important to remember that white colonialism and imperialism has a beginning. And in my way of thinking about the world, that means it has an end."
"Whiteness is going to have an end date, because despite what White people think of themselves, they do not defy the laws of eternity," she added, "but Whiteness is largely an, you know, an inconvenient interruption," Cooper offered.
The clip went viral on social media, with many calling on Rutgers to relieve Cooper of her duties. "@RutgersU either you fire Dr. Brittney Cooper immediately, or we shall assume that you share her feelings that "white motherf--ers" including your white students, the white parents who pay tuition, and any white donors and alumni to/of Rutgers, 'need to be taken out,'" a comment read.
"@RutgersU you are spending donations and tuition to employ #BrittneyCooper who says that white people are “villains” and “we got to take white people out.” If you don’t fire her, you are part of the problem," a user wrote, alongside the hashtags #CRT, #FireBrittneyCooper, #racism, and #rutgers.
"@RutgersU FIRE RACIST BRITTNEY COOPER. She has openly threatened all Non-Black students, therefore, can’t effectively perform her duties," another declared.
Speaking to Fox News, Rutgers University student Stephen Wallace said he viewed Cooper's comments as an incitement of violence against a group of people. "The people that want to teach kids about America and how racist and oppressed everyone is are the real racists and oppressors," Wallace said of Cooper, who is reportedly on a "sabbatical leave" for 2021-2022.
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Brittney Cooper: Prof blamed Trump supporters for Covid, bragged Rutgers cannot fire her
Brittney Cooper, the Rutgers University professor whose anti-White tirade has sparked an uproar on social media, previously made headlines after blaming former President Donald Trump for the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Cooper, 40, claimed it was Trump and his supporters who were responsible for African-Americans dying at a disproportionate rate from the novel coronavirus. MEAWW previously reported how the professor faced calls to be fired from Rutgers after she said White people needed to be "taken out" during a discussion on critical race theory.
Taking to Twitter in April last year, Cooper, an associate professor in the Department of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Rutgers University, made several comments directed at Trump supporters that were laced with profanity. “Fuck each and every Trump supporter. You absolutely did this. You are to blame," she wrote, blaming them for the outbreak. "I said what I meant. And I curse cuz I'm grown," she wrote in part in a string of controversial tweets, adding, "I have tenure. Rutgers won't be firing me for tweets."
Cooper wrote in another post that she and other African-Americans suspect that the Trump administration's efforts to reopen the country were premature and “all about a gross necropolitical calculation that it is Black people who are dying disproportionately from COVID.” She continued, “Not only do white conservatives not care about Black life, but my most cynical negative read of the white supremacists among them is that they welcome this mass winnowing of Black folks in order to slow demographic shifts and shore up political power.”
Cooper's comments came just days after Dr Anthony Fauci said that high COVID death rates among African-Americans were largely attributable to pre-existing health conditions common in the Black community, including hypertension, obesity, diabetes, and asthma. "It’s really terrible, because it’s just one of the failings of our society, that African-Americans have a disproportionate prevalence in incidents of the very comorbid conditions that put you at a high risk,” Fauci said at the time.
Cooper, however, claimed in another post that Trump supporters' loyalty to the former President had impaired their judgment about the pandemic. “They are literally willing to die from this clusterf---ed COVID response rather than admit absolutely anybody other than him [Trump] would have been a better president,” she wrote. “And when whiteness has a death wish, we are all in for a serious problem.”
Five days earlier, the educator wrote about “the depths of white depravity,” claiming Whites refused “to be swayed by facts, reason or the value of life itself, especially when those lives are Black.” She added, “It staggers me." Cooper's tweets have since been made private.
Having said that, Cooper has been a vocal critic of the Trump administration. In October 2019, she asserted that the former president's policies were partly to blame for weight problems among African-American women. A couple of months before that, she claimed Trump was willing to “get us into war” with China in a bid to keep the economy strong and improve his chances of re-election in 2020.
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What is Crunk Feminist Collection? Blog founder Brittney Cooper's racist rant goes viral
Brittney Cooper, the Rutgers University professor whose anti-White tirade has made waves on the internet, runs a feminist blog online tackling subjects such as intersectionality, African-American culture, patriarchy, misogyny, anti-Blackness and hip hop feminism.
MEAWW previously reported how the professor faced calls to be fired from Rutgers after she said White people needed to be "taken out" during a discussion on critical race theory. We also reported how Cooper, 40, grabbed headlines last year after claiming Trump supporters were responsible for African-Americans dying at a disproportionate rate from Covid.
What is the Crunk Feminist Collection?
The Crunk Feminist Collection blog was founded in 2010 by activists Cooper, Susana M Morris, and Robin M Boylorn. They posted a series of essays about hip-hop culture, patriarchy, political theory and personal experiences that were later compiled into a book titled the 'Crunk Feminist Collection' published in 2017 by Feminist Press. The collection features introductions written by the editors to frame some of the themes addressed and also includes popular essays written by members Sheri Davis-Faulkner, Aisha Durham, Eesha Pandit, Rachel Raimist and Chanel Craft Tanner.
The website is said to attract more than a million readers for its opinion pieces that include 'Ben Carson’s Shame', 'Misogyny and Infamy: The Erasure of Dark Skinned Black Women as Love Interests in Straight Outta Compton' and 'Fish Dreams'. The founders of CFC claim to widen the conversation of gender and race beyond the White-dominated mainstream by presenting academic feminism through an African-American lens. In its mission statement, CFC aspires to hold space for the experience of “hip hop generation feminists of color, queer and straight, in the academy" by omitting traditional theory to address the history and genealogy of Black feminism, specifically.
“Some people ask ‘Why can’t we all just be feminists? Why do we have to categorize?’ But we can’t erase our differences,” Dr Boylorn, an associate professor of Interpersonal and Intercultural Communication at the University of Alabama, told Connect Savannah in 2017. “I think it goes back to identity politics — the primary issues of White women have never been the issues of women of color. In the second-wave feminism of the '60s, you have women fighting to work, but Black women were already working, often for those White women! That has to be acknowledged.”
Boylorn told the outlet at the time that feminists who are not women of color are also welcome to join, but they wouldn't get to "design the context." “We see our primary audience as women of color, but that does not exclude White women who want to be better allies. People who engage our work understand that we appreciate the necessity of White allies in this movement, but the way allyship works, it’s not about you,” she added. “Crunk Feminist Collection is about black feminists, and many of the White women who engage us want to learn what they can do better.”
Kirkus Reviews called the 'Crunk Feminist Collection' a "valuable record of a growing cultural awareness of feminist issues and criticism, particularly for women of color," but said the contributors appeared to "favor anecdotal evidence rather than a more substantive argument."
1 comment:
It's all about race and gender. We need Don Rickles to straighten this mess out. Oh that's right, it's about political correctness too. I miss Don. Nobody was safe and everyone laughed at ourselves.
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