Having been on the left and still having friends and associates on the left gives insights into a way of thinking that is not just foreign to most people on either side of the political divide but is literally incomprehensible. The following was picked up via Glenn Reynolds who, not surprisingly, thinks of it as a parody. But if it is, it is not an exaggeration. It is an exact copy of what people really do believe. And in this case there is every reason to think that this man, a professor at Harvard it seems, thinks exactly what he is says he thinks. You may also conclude when you read this that it’s a parody, but I have heard people say just these kinds of things in conversation. From a website called Diversity Chronicle:

‘If you are a white male, you don’t deserve to live. You are a cancer, you’re a disease, white males have never contributed anything positive to the world! They only murder, exploit and oppress non-whites! At least a white woman can have sex with a black man and make a brown baby but what can a white male do? He’s good for nothing. Slavery, genocides against aboriginal peoples and massive land confiscation, the inquisition, the holocaust, white males are all to blame! You maintain your white male privilege only by oppressing, discriminating against and enslaving others!’ Professor Noel Ignatiev, a tenured professor at Massachusetts College loudly proclaimed to his class last Monday, his final teaching day before retirement.

The good Professor’s sound and reasonable words resonate with every enlightened and progressive mind. They are indisputable and no one can debate them. They should not be controversial in the slightest, yet remarkably a few far-right extremists object to the Prof. Ignatiev’s advice. The Professor however, reported receiving ‘a standing ovation’ from his ‘largely white and middle class students.’

And this is an earlier story from The Washington Times about the same chap in an article titled, Harvard professor argues for ‘abolishing’ white race:

Mr. Ignatiev pledges in the essay that his journal, Race Traitor, intends to ‘keep bashing the dead white males, and the live ones, and the females, too, until the social construct known as “the white race” is destroyed not “deconstructed” but destroyed.

And as noted at the link, “as we all know”, he writes, “this type of thinking is rampant in liberal academia.” Even this is not altogether an exaggeration. While it is not a majority view it is common enough to be influential. If you really want to understand Obama, these are the ideas you need to understand first. It helps to make coherent a series of policies that are otherwise incomprehensible.

[All this from Weasel Zippers.]