Furor Over Philosopher's Comments on Violence Against White People
Texas A&M president calls remarks “disturbing.”
By
Colleen Flaherty
May 11, 2017
42 Comments
Tommy Curry
Tommy Curry, an associate professor of philosophy at Texas A&M University, has a long history of public statements about U.S. race relations. But he became the target of controversy, online threats and race-based harassment this week after The American Conservative ran a piece about him that drew heavily on a 2012 podcast interview about violence against whites in the Quentin Tarantino film Django Unchained.
The article, called “When Is It OK to Kill Whites?” quotes Curry as saying in the podcast, “In order to be equal, in order to be liberated, some white people might have to die.”
Curry isn’t exactly misquoted, but his statement was part of a larger point about how, in his view, questions about violence against whites need to be addressed through a historical lens and how blacks need to reclaim conversations about the Second Amendment to highlight their own concerns about protection from race-based violence.
Within hours of The American Conservative’s post, YouTube's comments section and Twitter lit up with demands for Curry’s termination and racial slurs against him. Curry, who is black, said via email Wednesday that he’d received death threats and pictures of “apes, monkeys, etc.” As an example, he shared one tweet directed at him, showing someone putting a gun in a monkey’s mouth.
Michael K. Young, Texas A&M president, in a statement Wednesday night called Curry’s four-year-old comments “disturbing” and standing “in stark contrast to Aggie core values -- most notably those of respect, excellence, leadership and integrity -- values that we hold true toward all of humanity.”
The First Amendment “protects the rights of others to offer their personal views, no matter how reprehensible those views may be,” though, he said.
“It also protects our right to freedom of speech, which I am exercising now. We stand for equality. We stand against the advocacy of violence, hate and killing. We firmly commit to the success, not the destruction, of each other. We wish no violence or harm even to those who espouse hateful views under the First Amendment, a sentiment that by its very nature is one that they would deny others. … Our core values are very much intact.”