“Black students at the University of Oxford who feel traumatised by the killing of George Floyd will be able to apply for a reduction in workload and special consideration in their exams.” That line came from a a report in the “iPaper” from June 15th 2020, six years ago today. The report continued:
The extra support was outlined in an open letter sent to students by the university on Monday.
Signed by the vice chancellor Louise Richardson and the heads of Oxford’s colleges, it was apparently sent in response to concerns raised about the welfare of black students, following the police killing of Mr Floyd in the US last month.
Click on the link to read the “Open letter to Oxford students from the Vice-Chancellor and Heads of House”. Besides devaluing the degrees of all black Oxford students who took their finals in 2020 whether the students wanted “special consideration” or not, the letter said much else of interest. For instance:
“While much is being done by many committed people, we acknowledge that we are rightly reproached for our collective failure to address the issue of systemic racism properly, and that we have work to do.”
At any one time there are several hundred Americans studying at Oxford. The terrorist attacks on the United States of September 11th 2001 killed 2,977 people. Oxford University did not offer its American students special consideration in their exams for the trauma of seeing their nation attacked and thousands of their compatriots murdered. Oxford did not declare itself “rightly reproached” for its collective failure to address the issue of anti-Americanism properly, though a much clearer line could be drawn from the output of certain Oxford academics to the 9/11 attacks than could be drawn from Oxford to George Floyd’s death at the hands of the Minneapolis Police Department.
In the quarter century since then, scores of other countries have had their citizens murdered en masse by Islamist terrorists. I would hope and assume that students whose family members were murdered in the name of Islam were offered special consideration in their exams, but if the leadership of the university publicly offered it to all students from Indonesia, Spain, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, India, Pakistan, France, Russia, Kenya, Nigeria, Iraq, Canada, Australia, Yemen, Syria, Denmark, Tunisia, Libya, Afghanistan, Somalia, Turkey, Cameroon, Bangladesh, Somalia, Niger, Lebanon, the Philippines, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Mali, Chad, Burkina Faso, Uruguay, Ivory Coast, Belgium, Germany, Sweden, Iran, Finland, the Netherlands, Morocco, Sri Lanka, Mozambique, New Zealand, Norway, Oman, Austria, and, above all, Israel when their respective countries were attacked, I never heard about it.
I listed many nations above, but when the University said “We’re determined to support our Black students in every way we can” after some of them said they had been traumatised by George Floyd’s death, the support was offered to those students on grounds of race, not nation. Did it offer white students, or brown students – or black students, come to that – support when people of the same race as them were murdered in large numbers by Islamists that was similar to the support it offered black students when one man was killed by the American police? Did the leadership of the university issue a public invitation to Jewish students of all nationalities to claim extra time in their exams for the trauma of having to read about, hear about, or see on video the copious and horrible evidence of the thousand-plus murders of Jews on October 7th 2023? When Henry Nowak died just as George Floyd had, pleading “I can’t breathe” to the police officers restraining him, did Oxford “reach out” to its white students to “stand with them during these difficult moments”?
Many dismiss the type of arguments I have made above as “Whataboutery” or “whataboutism”. “Whataboutery” is the older term, having originated in Northern Ireland during the Troubles. The idea behind it was that when every attempt to get people to agree that some particular terrorist act was wrong was immediately countered by the cry of “What about [insert similar atrocity by the other side here]?”, it became impossible to de-escalate the conflict. Perhaps it did make sense to disparage the practice of endlessly citing old injustices in the Northern Irish context, but I think that to cite a current or historical parallel and ask “Why are these two similar situations not treated the same way?” is more often right than wrong. People of all races should be treated equally. That is the only form of “racial justice” that is actually just. Individual justice is also the only form of racial justice that is stable. Every deviation from the simple yet profound principle of equal treatment, however well-intentioned, is like stretching an elastic band. Eventually, either the elastic snaps back, which might cause injuries from the speed of the contraction but at least restores balance, or the elastic breaks – in which case society goes to the other stable pattern, that of considering those outside the tribe to have no rights at all.
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Related post: The main reason so many people fear Islam
Remember that photo of Sir Keir Starmer and Angela Rayner taking the knee in support of the Black Lives Matter movement? Leaving aside the question of whether George Floyd’s death was murder – the late Niall Kilmartin thought it was not – it was inevitable that people would eventually ask why, if the then Leader of the Opposition and now Prime Minister of the United Kingdom was obliged to get down on his knees and beg forgiveness because the police in a foreign country had killed one man, should not Muslim leaders and opinion-formers make some similar acknowledgement that all these thousands upon thousands of murders preceded by a shout of “Allahu Akbar!” had something to do with Islam? Why can’t there be – why is there not – a “Kafir Lives Matter” movement?
“The police” did NOT “kill” Mr Floyd – Mr Floyd died of drugs he willingly consumed.
Nor was their any “racism” involved – as the officer who supposedly “killed” Mr Floyd (he did NOT kill Mr Floyd) was not a racist – indeed he was married to an Asian woman and had (by coincidence) worked with Mr Floyd in a security job – before Mr Floyd was made redundant (due to the Covid lockdown in Minnesota) and returned to drugs – the drugs which killed him.
The “trial” was a vicious farce and innocent police officers were sent to prison – the one who supposedly “killed” Mr Floyd (again he did not kill Mr Floyd) being stabbed and abused in prison – to the joy of the establishment left.
Again Oxford university is LYING – Mr Floyd was not “killed” and there is no “systemic” racism either in Minneapolis (a leftist city) or in Oxford.
Unless they mean “systemic racism” against white people.
Paul Marks, I agree wholeheartedly with you and the policeman, Derek Chauvin is being severely punished for a crime he did not commit.
In addition, I have read that President Trump has considered pardoning him so can be released from federal prison but is reluctant to do so because the state judiciary will rearrest him and sentence him to a prison sentence so long he would probably die in prison.
This case epitomises all that the commies are; viscerally vindictive and are willing to let innocent people spend their entire life in prison.
Paul Marks writes, “Again Oxford university is LYING – Mr Floyd was not “killed” and there is no “systemic” racism either in Minneapolis (a leftist city) or in Oxford.”
I doubt that Oxford University was lying. They sincerely believed in 2020 that Mr Floyd was murdered by police, and that he was but one of many. Oxford academics take their beliefs about America from American “liberals”, and American liberals dramatically overestimate the numbers of unarmed black men killed by the US police.
There is a study conducted regularly (I think every two years) in the U.S. called the “Political Accuracy and Divisions Study”. The 2020 and 2022 responses demonstrated just how drastically misinformed American liberals are. According to the Washington Post’s “Police Shooting Database”, the actual number of unarmed black men fatally shot by the police in 2019 was 12. But, to quote the study,
The report understated things. As well as the over 30% of “very liberal” participants who believed the number of unarmed black men killed in 2019 by the police was “about 1,000”, 14% of them believed it was “about 10,000” and just over 8% of them believed it was “over 10,000”. I repeat, the actual number was 12.
Of course George Floyd was not shot by police; he died while being held down by police. Personally, I found the arguments put forward in the post by Niall Kilmartin to which I linked above (i.e. that Derek Chauvin had no intent to harm Floyd, who was dying anyway from an overdose of fentanyl) to be very convincing. But I don’t think all these Oxford academics were lying. It is one of those issues where the most educated are the most deluded. And my main point was that EVEN IF George Floyd was killed, even deliberately murdered, by the American police, why did British politicians and British universities feel they had to make public acts of repentance for this killing in a foreign country, when the much larger numbers of murders by Muslim fanatics elicited no such response from Muslims.