Wrong and Racist at Duke

Sociologist James W. Loewen is the author of "Lies My Teacher Told Me."

 Jerry Hough, Professor of Political Science at Duke, got into trouble by making "noxious, offensive" comments about a New York Times editorial, "How Racism Doomed Baltimore." A Duke vice president used those adjectives, and Duke has placed him on leave. (Hough is 80 and planned to retire after next year anyway.)

           I would suggest that he should leave Duke, on grounds of incompetence. He knows nothing about the history of race relations, yet opines on it anyway. He claims, "No one has said I was wrong, just racist." Well, I do say he was wrong — as well as racist.

           Chronologically, Hough's first error is his astounding statement, "In 1965 the Asians were discriminated against as least as badly as blacks." In 1967, I wrote my doctoral dissertation, The Mississippi Chinese: Between Black and White, on exactly this point. I compared the Chinese American population in the Mississippi Delta — the largest in the South — with the majority population there, African Americans. I found exactly what Prof. Hough complains about: Chinese Americans had achieved social mobility while African Americans had not.

           

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