Agree with me quickly while I am in the bar with you, telling you that white racism controls everything—or I’ll punch out your lights

(Drafted November 13. Also, we have a follow-up discussion on this story here. There’s a question whether Professor McIntyre has a Phd.)

As I have written previously, the Obama presidency has simultaneously empowered blacks and made them angrier than ever before. How can that be? It’s because, with their increased sense of power and entitlement, any check to their self-esteem, and to the victimology that feeds their self-esteem, becomes all the more unbearable to them. The latest piece of evidence for my thesis is a minor but nevertheless extraordinary incident a week ago in New York City, in which a black Columbia University professor punched a white female university employee in the face in a bar located near the university after a discussion in which the professor was insisting on the reality of “white privilege.”

Lionel McIntyre is a man and an associate professor in the school of architecture. Camille Davis is a woman, and a production manager in theater department of the school of the arts. Between the two, who has more privilege? Who has more status? Who has more power? Who has a higher income? Who is taller? Who has more upper body strength? Yet McIntyre, apparently enraged that Davis did not agree with him on the ubiquity of white privilege, hauled off and punched her hard in the face, creating a sound

“so loud, the kitchen workers in the back heard it over all the noise,” bar back Richie Velez, 28, told The Post. “I was on my way over when he punched Camille and she fell on top of me.”

A man, a tenured college professor, punching a woman in the face? Over a political discussion? I can’t remember hearing of such a thing before. Over and over we see how blacks inhabit their own behavioral bell curve, beyond that of other races.

The more blacks have, the angrier they get.
Where does it end?

What does the behavior suggest? A disorder in the psyche, typical of so many blacks. Think about the uber privileged Henry Louis Gates, erupting in insanely hateful, threatening speech at a police officer who was simply checking his house for a burglar after a reported break-in. Think of the evil rants of the privileged Jeremiah Wright, living in his gated white community, against whites. And what is it that feeds the steady flame of hatred in Wright? What is it? Slavery hundreds of years ago. From which he continually stokes poisonously negative emotions. One hundred forty-four years after the end of slavery, he’s living off slavery-fed rage the way an addict lives off his drug.

Here is the New York Post article, followed by some surprising and funny comments at Huffington Post:

Prof busted in Columbia gal ‘punch’

By PERRY CHIARAMONTE, BETH STEBNER and JEREMY OLSHAN

Last Updated: 4:03 PM, November 12, 2009

Posted: 2:57 AM, November 10, 2009

A prominent Columbia architecture professor punched a female university employee in the face at a Harlem bar during a heated argument about race relations, cops said yesterday.

Police busted Lionel McIntyre, 59, for assault yesterday after his bruised victim, Camille Davis, filed charges.

McIntyre and Davis, who works as a production manager in the school’s theater department, are both regulars at Toast, a popular university bar on Broadway and 125th Street, sources said.

The professor, who is black, had been engaged in a fiery discussion about “white privilege” with Davis, who is white, and another male regular, who is also white, Friday night at 10:30 when fists started flying, patrons said.

McIntyre, who is known as “Mac” at the bar, shoved Davis, and when the other patron and a bar employee tried to break it up, the prof slugged Davis in the face, witnesses said.

“The punch was so loud, the kitchen workers in the back heard it over all the noise,” bar back Richie Velez, 28, told The Post. “I was on my way over when he punched Camille and she fell on top of me.”

The other patron involved in the dispute said McIntyre then took a swing at him after he yelled, “You don’t hit a woman!”

“He knocked the glasses right off my face,” said the man, who would only give his first name as “Shannon.” “The punch came out of nowhere. Mac was talking to us about white privilege and what I was doing about it—apparently I wasn’t doing enough.”

McIntyre had squabbled with Davis several weeks earlier over issues involving race, witnesses said. As soon as the professor threw the punch Friday, server Rob Dalton and another employee tossed him out.

“It was a real sucker punch,” Dalton said. “Camille’s a great lady, always nice to everybody, and doesn’t deserve anything like this.”

Davis was spotted wearing sunglasses yesterday to conceal the black eye. Reached at her Columbia office, she declined to comment on the alleged attack.

McIntyre was released without bail at his arraignment last night.

“It was a very unfortunate event,” he said afterwards. “I didn’t mean for it to explode the way it did.”

Additional reporting by Sarah Makuta

[end of article]

Here are some comments at the ultra liberal Huntington Post which, assuming that the commenters are not conservatives, would seem to represent some kind of shift in white liberal thinking about blacks. (I suppose we could search for the names of these commenters at Huffington Post and elsewhere and see what their general political slant is.)

selma I’m a Fan of selma

People..lets not jump to conclusions..this will create a backlash against all black professors … the bigger tragedy here is the setback to the cause of diversity in academia and we cannot have that. Everyone knows that working continuously for 9 months out of 12 can lead to tremendous stress, delusion and irrational behavior: all signs of PTSD. He is as much a victim as the lady.

rezapoortigris I’m a Fan of rezapoortigris

These attacks on a great university, as is Columbia, speaks of how small are the minds of reactionaries. Professor McIntyre is a victim of this unfortunate event as much as is Ms. Davis. The real question is who was plying them both, for profit, with a variety of liquors, to ensare them in such an obvious setup? Columbia is a progressive seat of hope, of change, and all this smacks as another example of Rovian trickery.

Gabblog I’m a Fan of Gabblog

A black man punching a white women in a public bar??? Is it a hate crime? of women? of whites? of achievement?

Will BO come to his side and weigh in and say , number one, any of us would be pretty angry; number two, that the NYPD, uh, acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own local bar drinking; and number three, what I think we know separate and apart from this incident is that, uh, there is a long history in this country of African Americans and Latinos, uh, being arrested by law enforcement disproportionately. That—that’s just a fact.

While he is at the mic, BO can give a shout out to some of his buds there at Columbia …

Ablation

It’s clear that the white woman acted stupidly. Also, it seems that the professor is suffering from a distinct combination of post traumatic stress from the loss of architecturally significant physical structures in Afghanistan and Iraq and non-architectural structural racism embedded within the morningside heights cultural milieu. In other words, the Bush/Cheney war machine was destroying the wrong structures, and is directly responsible for, what the professor so eloquently described as, an unfortunate event.

On a more serious note, a weblog called blackpolitical thought takes a hard line on McIntyre.

McIntyre was released without bail at his arraignment last night. “It was a very unfortunate event,” he said afterwards. “I didn’t mean for it to explode the way it did.” Isn’t that the position the aggressor always takes, “I didn’t mean for it to happen?” If he had any respect for this woman, he would not have struck her. It’s amazing that this has flown under the mainstream media radar in New York City. This is certainly not the negative PR that Columbia University needs at this time.

According to Columbia University World Leaders Forum, McIntyre is currently the Nancy and George Rupp Associate Professor in the Practice of Community Development and the director of the Urban Technical Assistance Project at Columbia University. He received his BA from Dillard University in 1987 and his MS in urban planning from Columbia in 1988. He was an honorary fellow at the Municipal Arts Society from 1989 to 1990. He also held the position of director of the Graduate Program in Urban Planning at Columbia University from 1993 to 1999.

What I find appalling is that this man knows the struggles that blacks went through in this country, but yet, he got so angry that he hit a woman. According to the World Leaders Forum, he worked in civil rights and labor organization in the deep South from the mid-1960s to mid-1970s. He served as the director of planning for the Harlem Urban Development Corporation from 1989 to 1994 and served as advisor to the president of Columbia University on community development and the Empowerment Zone. I have yet to see a statement issued by the university and I am wondering why he hasn’t been placed on administrative leave pending the outcome of this case in a court of law.

UPDATE#1: I sent an email to Robert Hornsby, Director of Media Relations at Columbia University, for a statement on the allegations against Mr. McIntyre and what I received was a response from him stating, “we have no comment on this matter.” Though I am not surprised by his response, this amounts to nothing more than a double standard on the part of the school.

Here are comments at the New York Times:

Obviously two drunken bar flies with academic degrees of little consequence. They deserve each other, Do we deserve the story?

—Sue, CT

There’s relativism for you! A man punches a woman in the face, and therefore she’s his moral equivalent. She “deserves” him.

And here’s another one:

Two Ivy League academics with nothing better to do than drink and get into a fistfight. I wonder what the university pays these people?

—Paul

If this had been reversed we would have black leaders marching and calling for his resignation. Where is the outrage or is it only blacks who can punch other races? The white professor was probably afraid to go to the police because she would be targeted as racist. As a black woman, I am appalled at McIntyre’s behavior. Columbia should fire him immediately. Apparently in the bar the two were discussing ‘white privilege’ but from my experience there is no group so prejudice and dare I say it racist, as the educated black elites.

—J. Marshall

Another angry young man. Beloved, wise Professor McIntyre, full of ideas about how bad things are and how they ought to be, how everything else and everyone else is wrong, unjust, racist, and how perfect I am.

Why is he not being charged with a hate crime. If I were to punch an non-white during an discussion such as described, that would be my fate.

—hankvreeland

Posted by Lawrence Auster at November 17, 2009 07:13 PM | Send