Yale Teaches “In Defense Of Looting” Class

From the McKeeson class at Yale, required reading:

In fact, anti-black racism remains the foundational organizing principle of this country. That is because this country is built on the right to property, and there is no property, no wealth in the USA without the exploitation, appropriation, murder, and enslavement of black people[…]

When rioters take territory and loot, they are revealing precisely how, in a space without cops, property relations can be destroyed and things can be had for free[…]

But why is it bad to grab an opportunity to improve well-being, to make life better, easier, or more comfortable? Or, as Hannah Black put it on Twitter: “Cops exist so people can’t loot ie have nice things for free so idk why it’s so confusing that people loot when they protest against cops” [sic]. Only if you believe that having nice things for free is amoral, if you believe, in short, that the current (white-supremacist, settler-colonialist) regime of property is just, can you believe that looting is amoral in itself.

White people deploy the idea of looting in a way that implies people of color are greedy and lazy, but it is just the opposite: looting is a hard-won and dangerous act with potentially terrible consequences, and looters are only stealing from the rich owners’ profit margins.

Maybe McKeeson needs a class on the history of looting, and riots in the last 50 years of America.  In short, the LA riots of the 1960’s and in 1992 were all done in neighborhoods which are black.  The Watt’s riots and the Rodeney King riots happened in primarily the same places.  These are the very neighborhoods were black people live and shop.  The looters burned and looted all the businesses in these areas.  Just like in Ferguson, the businesses that were affected were minority black owned.

This has nothing to do with white supremacy, or any political activity, DeRay McKeeson.  The aftermath leaves the law abiding black citizens in those areas of anywhere to obtain food, leaves the black citizens possibly with a burned down business in which all their income and wealth is tied up.  Makes older black citizens have to drive 30 minutes or longer to buy food.  Leaves those who are dependent on others for help for their daily activities in very bad situations.

You are burning down and looting your own people, DeRay McKeeson.  And those thugs that loot care nothing about your trumped up philosophy, burning and looting is not only wrong, in a moral individual it “feels wrong”.  Your philosophy needs to explain its “amoral”-lest those who still have a soul question it when they partake in your “political activist-ism”.  Those, who in Germany turned to Nazism, your plan acts the same way.  In Germany, there were those with no conscience or morals.  There were those who questioned it, and with threats they consented.  There were those who read its propaganda, like your “class” and dismissed their morals and quivers inside of wrong doing, guided only by the pack of wolves you must surround yourself with, those too dimmed by any reason and common sense inside of them.  That’s how moral people end up following your amoral program.

You are a Nazi, McKeeson.  You are exactly like those you call racists.  You are the racist.  Worse still, you are an opportunist, spewing your propaganda, infecting minds, and spreading hate and destruction wherever you go.  Like those who came before you-your ideas are not new- hate, racism, supremacy, division, destruction and death.  Nothing is new under the sun.  Those who live by the sword, will die by the sword.  What you preach will be your end, just a fleeting footnote crumpled up on a piece of scrap paper, destined for the proverbial waste bin of history. No one will remember your name.  You and your ilk are just criminals, masking yourselves as revolutionaries, your cause is death and destruction. It’s been done.  You lose.

Source: Weasel Zippers