Subject: Oxford
OXFORD – THE FIGHTBACK HAS BEGUN
This letter is a response from Oxford to Black Students attending as Rhodes
Scholars to remove the statue of Oxford Benefactor, Cecil Rhodes.
Interestingly, Chris Patten (Lord Patten of Barnes), The Chancellor of
Oxford University, was on the Today Programme on BBC Radio 4 on precisely
the same topic. The Daily Telegraph headline was “Oxford will not rewrite
history”. Patten commented “Education is not indoctrination. Our history is
not a blank page on which we can write our own version of what it should
have been according to our contemporary views and prejudice” Rhodes must
fall ????
“Dear Scrotty Students, Cecil Rhodes’s generous bequest has
contributed greatly to the comfort and wellbeing of many generations of
Oxford students – a good many of them, dare we say it, better, brighter and
more deserving than you.
This does not necessarily mean we approve of everything Rhodes
did in his lifetime – but then we don’t have to. Cecil Rhodes died over a
century ago. Autres temps, autres moeurs. If you don’t understand what this
means – and it would not remotely surprise us if that were the case – then
we really think you should ask yourself the question: “Why am I at Oxford?”
Oxford, let us remind you, is the world’s second oldest existant
university. Scholars have been studying here since at least the 11th
century. We’ve played a major part in the invention of Western civilization,
from the 12th century intellectual renaissance through the Enlightenment and
beyond. Our alumni include William of Ockham, Roger Bacon, William Tyndale,
John Donne, Sir Walter Raleigh, Erasmus, Sir Christopher Wren, William Penn,
Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA), Samuel Johnson, Robert Hooke, William Morris, Oscar
Wilde, Emily Davison, Cardinal Newman, Julie Cocks.
We’re a big deal. And most of the people privileged to come and study here
are conscious of what a big deal we are.
Oxford is their alma mater – their dear mother – and they respect and revere
her accordingly.
And what were your ancestors doing in that period? Living in mud
huts, mainly. Sure we’ll concede you the short lived Southern African
civilization of Great Zimbabwe. But let’s be brutally honest here. The
contribution of the Bantu tribes to modern civilization has been as near as
damn it to zilch.
You’ll probably say that’s “racist”. But it’s what we here at Oxford
prefer to call “true.” Perhaps the rules are different at other
universities. In fact, we know things are different at other universities.
We’ve watched with horror at what has been happening across the pond from
the University of Missouri to the University of Virginia and even to revered
institutions like Harvard and Yale: the “safe spaces”; the?
#?blacklivesmatter; the creeping cultural relativism; the stifling political
correctness; what Allan Bloom rightly called “the closing of the American
mind”. At Oxford however, we will always prefer facts and free, open debate
to petty grievance-mongering, identity politics and empty sloganeering. The
day we cease to do so is the day we lose the right to call ourselves the
world’s greatest university.
Of course, you are perfectly within your rights to squander your time
at Oxford on silly, vexatious, single-issue political campaigns. (Though it
does make us wonder how stringent the vetting procedure is these days for
Rhodes scholarships and even more so, for Mandela Rhodes scholarships) We
are well used to seeing undergraduates – or, in your case – postgraduates,
making idiots of themselves. Just don’t expect us to indulge your idiocy,
let alone genuflect before it. You may be black – “BME” as the grisly modern
terminology has it – but we are colour blind. We have been educating gifted
undergraduates from our former colonies, our Empire, our Commonwealth and
beyond for many generations.
We do not discriminate over sex, race, colour or creed. We do,
however, discriminate according to intellect only.
That means, inter alia, that when our undergrads or postgrads come
up with fatuous ideas, we don’t pat them on the back, give them a red
rosette and say: “Ooh, you’re black and you come from South Africa. What a
clever chap you are!” No We prefer to see the quality of those ideas tested
in the crucible of public debate. That’s another key part of the Oxford
intellectual tradition you see: you can argue any damn thing you like but
you need to be able to justify it with facts and logic – otherwise your idea
is worthless.
This ludicrous notion you have that a bronze statue of Cecil Rhodes
should be removed from Oriel College, because it’s symbolic of
“institutional racism” and “white slavery”. Well even if it is – which we
dispute – so bloody what? Any undergraduate so feeble-minded that they can’t
pass a bronze statue without having their “safe space” violated really does
not deserve to be here. And besides, if we were to remove Rhodes’s statue on
the premise that his life wasn’t blemish-free, where would we stop ? As one
of our alumni Dan Hannan has pointed out, Oriel’s other benefactors include
two kings so awful – Edward II and Charles I – that their subjects had them
killed. The college opposite – Christ Church – was built by a murderous,
thieving bully who bumped off two of his wives.
Thomas Jefferson kept slaves: does that invalidate the US
Constitution?
Winston Churchill had unenlightened views about Muslims and India: was
he then the wrong man to lead Britain in the war?”
Actually, we’ll go further than that. Your Rhodes Must Fall campaign
is not merely fatuous but ugly, vandalistic and dangerous.
We agree with Oxford historian RW Johnson that what you are trying to
do here is no different from what ISIS and the Al-Qaeda have been doing to
artefacts in places like Mali and Syria. You are murdering history
And who are you, anyway, to be lecturing Oxford University on how it
should order its affairs? Your ?#?rhodesmustfall campaign, we understand,
originates in South Africa and was initiated by a black activist who told
one of his lecturers “whites have to be ki
One of you – Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh – is the privileged son of a rich politician
and a member of a party whose slogan is “Kill the Boer; Kill the Farmer”;
– another of you, Ntokozo Qwabe, who is only in Oxford as a beneficiary
of a Rhodes scholarship, has boasted about the need for “socially conscious
black students” to “dominate white universities, and do so ruthlessly and
decisively!
Great. That’s just what Oxford University needs. Some cultural enrichment
from the land of Winnie Mandela, burning tyre necklaces, an AIDS epidemic
almost entirely the result of government indifference and ignorance, one of
the world’s highest per capita murder rates, institutionalised corruption,
tribal politics, anti-white racism and a collapsing economy.
Please name which of the above items you think will enhance the lives of the
22,000 students studying here at Oxford.
And then please explain what it is that makes your attention-grabbing
campaign to remove a listed statue from an Oxford college more urgent, more
deserving than the desire of probably at least 20,000 of those 22,000
students to enjoy their time here unencumbered by the irritation of spoilt,
ungrateful little tossers on scholarships they clearly don’t merit using
racial politics and cheap guilt-tripping to ruin the life and fabric of our
beloved university.
Understand us and understand this clearly: you have everything to
learn from us; we have nothing to learn from you.
Yours, Oriel College, Oxford
WOW ! now that’s what I call TRUTH !
By: Sharon Oliveria on July 10, 2020
at 6:27 PM