Prof Sparks Liberal Outrage by Suggesting Her Career Would Have Been Easier if She Was Black and a Lesbian
“According to conference guests, Banner’s antics came just moments after a black professor had spoken on racism and exclusion in the academic space.”
A University of Southern California professor of history named Lois Banner recently set off a firestorm of liberal outrage by suggesting that her career would have been easier if she was black and a lesbian.
Banner made the comments at a conference of women historians, sending some attendees to the fainting couch. She has also refused to apologize, further angering her critics.
The Daily Mail reports:
White USC professor, 83, refuses to apologize after saying her career would have been better if she was black and lesbian – prompting attendees at female historians conference to walk out
A white USC professor is under fire after she said during a recent conference that her career and life would be easier if she were black and a lesbian.
Lois Banner, a professor emerita of women’s history at the University of Southern California, spoke during the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians on Friday.
Banner, 83, reportedly said she wished she were a lesbian because they had great communities and that her career would have been better if she were black.
‘You won’t change my mind, I’m 84 years old,’ Banner allegedly said, refusing to apologize. Her words were shared by Stephanie Narrow, a student in attendance.
According to conference guests, Banner’s antics came just moments after a black professor had spoken on racism and exclusion in the academic space.
Is she wrong, or did she just say one of those uncomfortable truths that people aren’t supposed to say out loud?
The left is very angry about this. From The Root:
The speaker who followed Banner was a Black woman, Deirdre Cooper Owens, who denounced what Banner said in person as well as on social media. “The Berks Conference was a beautiful one until it was soiled by Lois Banner’s hatefully racist comments. Yes, I did speak out forcefully against her vitriol because she needed to keep Black women’s name out of her mouth.”
This is from Newsone:
What do you call an octogenarian white woman and professor of history who believes her decades-long career would have been easier if she were born a Black woman? Do you call her delusional? Racist? A delusional racist? Is she a Bizarro World critical race theorist? Is that why she’s an apparent historian of the imaginary Reverse Jim Crow era?
Anyway, meet Lois Banner.
There was even an ’emergency listening session’ over this.
Emergency listening session in the wake of Lois Banner’s racist remarks last night. Packed house. #Berks2023 pic.twitter.com/VAkFpo9rlr
— Paul Renfro (@pmrenfro) July 1, 2023
The conference organizers have been falling all over themselves to respond.
Inside Higher Ed reports:
The Berkshire Conference of Women Historians is an acclaimed meeting for female historians. It was founded in 1973, and its meetings attract a who’s who of women in the field of history.
This year, a racially inflammatory comment by a senior faculty member in women’s history during an opening plenary session on Friday inflamed the meeting. The faculty member in question was Lois Banner, professor emerita of history at the University of Southern California.
The conference posted three tweets in response.
The first, on Friday night, was “The Berks officers do not condone or support the inappropriate remarks made by one of the speakers tonight. A formal statement from the presidents will be made after the break.”
The second, on Saturday: “Please join the officers & trustees of the Berks to discuss the 50th anniversary plenary & your thoughts of how the organization can move forward to create an inclusive space for diverse histories and historians of diverse backgrounds.”
The third, on Saturday: “Thank you for those who gave their time, thoughts and input at the meeting today. The board and trustees listened, took careful notes, and are planning action. The conversation is not over and the board will have a statement and a concrete action plan soon.”
The far left rules higher education, then turns around and acts like they’re all oppressed victims. Is there any wonder why Elizabeth Warren pretended to be a minority in order to advance her academic career?
Isn’t Elizabeth Warren proof that Banner is right?
Featured image via YouTube.
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Awww… the truth triggered them. Bless their hearts.
Q. “What do you call an octogenarian white woman and professor of history who believes her decades-long career would have been easier if she were born a Black woman?”
A. Truthful.
The oft-cited quote – “To anger a conservative, lie to them; to anger a liberal, tell them the truth” – has just played out.
Why did you write this– “white woman” “Black woman”?
You’re not quoting anyone.
Neither of those should be capitalized.. But you wrote it that way. Why?
Here is a truth— it is by such small things as this that worlds are changed. That capital ‘b’, is a gobbet of red meat to the beast.
The truth is offensive.
More whites need to be like this woman.
It doesn’t take much to spark outrage among libtards, just the truth.
Ranp truth up to the point they start blowing gaskets and dropping dead.
Not so much the “truth”, but to mess with their infantile denial.
Perhaps the lefty academic outrage mob would be willing to evaluate whether the statement has any truth if they were encouraged to look at the stats from a lefty perspective by deploying the lefty theory of ‘disparate impact’. That would tell us whether either Lesbians, ‘Blacks’, women or a combination are over represented in academia v the demographics of the adult US population who hold at least an MA/MS.
I’m gonna predict that no such effort to evaluate the statement will be made b/c they already know the answer and wish to continue to behave as if the statement was false. Folks who attain special privileges seldom surrender them voluntarily and the lefties in academia are no different in this regard.
Another very thoughtful comment by CommoChief. Thank you.
Her career would’ve been easier if she had been black AND a lesbian?
No need to be both. Either one would’ve worked.
If the Big Guy was your dad you could get ahead faster than either of those.
Yeah, but that’s a “two-fer.” Definitely worth bonus “diversity points.”
Well, she has high cheek bones, she could’ve checked that box. According to Elizabeth Warren. you get “diversity points” for that.
Agreed. Funny how the leftists never want to verify the racial/sexual/economic etc. status of people claiming to be one thing or another.
And all the frauds seem to be Democrats. How odd.
But if she had been both she could have been this administration’s spokesperson and, unlike the current occupant of the job, be smart too.
“The second, on Saturday: “Please join the officers & trustees of the Berks to discuss the 50th anniversary plenary & your thoughts of how the organization can move forward to create an inclusive space for diverse histories and historians of diverse backgrounds.”
Seriously?
The professor is entitled to her opinion, She is being excluded for her diversity of thought.
Hypocrites.
There is no shortage of such spaces nowadays in academia.
Why are liberals always outraged by the obvious?
Because the obvious and common sense are diametrically opposed to what they want to impose on people.
Yes, but unfortunately common sense is not common.
It died alongside critical thinking…
Typo Alert: I believe you meant to type that the professor made these comments at a conference of women hysterians.
Seems that would be the logical statement considering what losers like Joyless Reid have said about their qualifications.
It’s not easier, unless you mean easier to reach a rank.
The suggested way to defeat the Peter Principle is constantly screw up in little ways that will prevent promotion so that you stay with the job that you enjoy instead of being promoted to one you can’t handle.
That’s pretty much open to whites only these days.
Ideally a close encounter with the Peter Principal, which is overcome and leads to better skills. That is only the case when someone is smart enough to solve the problem.
Lois Banner was born the year a woman sang at the Lincoln Memorial at the invitation of Eleanor Roosevelt.
Lois Banner was born just two years before this young man.
Lois Banner was 16 when a woman took a seat in a bus.
Lois Banner was 24 when these four little girls attended the 16th Street Baptist Church.
Lois Banner was 29 when these people joined a strike by sanitation workers in Memphis.
Oh, look who’s back.
.
Yes. Like skin cancer.
So? What does any of those have to do with Lois Banner?
chrisboltssr: What does any of those have to do with Lois Banner?
Compare the career difficulty of Lois Banner with, say, the young man mentioned above, Emmett Till, who is of the same generation as Banner.
Till was neither a history professor nor a lesbian. Try to keep up, Ming.
he might as well have posted that Banner was born the same year people first thought penguins were cute.
henrybowman: Till was neither a history professor nor a lesbian.
Banner said she her career would have been better if she were Black. Till was Black. No, he never had the opportunity to graduate high school, much less go to college or become a professor. Was race a factor in the disparity?
diver64: he might as well have posted that Banner was born the same year people first thought penguins were cute.
We compared the career trajectories of two people born about the same time. What caused the disparity? Was race a factor?
Only to Democrats…
And Banner didn’t even “have a career” until two decades after TIll — two decades in which America changed drastically.
Stop trying to awe us with anachronistic tales of racism, Emperor. We’re over you and all the other hustlers who try to argue that modern America is no different now from America at its racially worst.
Likewise, Banner is speaking of a span of years in which lesbians have been practically idolized, not an entirely different span when they were burned as witches. Again, try to keep up. You seem unduly mired in the past. And get a haircut.
henrybowman: Stop trying to awe us with anachronistic tales of racism
Till is not anachronistic in the context of Banner’s life. They are coincident. You didn’t answer the question. Was race a factor in the disparity between Banner’s career (which she claimed would have been better if she were Black) and Till’s career? Would she have been better off trading places with Till?
What about Jesse Jackson, also of the same era. Why was he so successful, while Till was not? How can so many black people from that era have been so successful in various careers (from politics, to music, to education), but Till was not. Why are some black people successful, famous, and wealthy from that era (those still alive, anyway), and some not? Heck, why aren’t over tens of millions of white people from that era wildly famous and wealthy while some white people are. It’s a mystery.
Fuzzy Slippers: How can so many black people from that era have been so successful in various careers (from politics, to music, to education), but Till was not.
Because Till was murdered as a child by racists who were never punished.
Right. Did you not start this by suggesting that Banner had it easy because she was white? Not even factoring in her gender as a barrier, as it undoubtedly was at the time she was applying to and later graduating from college. And the only thing you claim that matters is that they were born at the roughly the same time. Ludicrous.
There are plenty of black people from that generation who were (and still are, if they’re still alive) fabulously successful (I provided a handful of examples, but there are many many more). And there are plenty of white people from that era who were also murdered as children, but for some reason, you only care about Till being murdered as a child. Aren’t all child murders equally bad? Or is it worse to be murdered if you are black than by some pervert pedophile, alcoholic parent, or random criminal? Would you be happier if Till had been murdered by a black serial killer or black gang-banger (the latter the cause of the majority of black children being killed today, excluding abortion)?
Regardless, though, comparing Till and Banner is facile and intellectually-dishonest. If your premise were correct, no black person in American from that generation could possibly have succeeded in any field (nor, presumably, managed to survive to their 15th birthday without being murdered by racists). Stupid.
Fuzzy Slippers: Did you not start this by suggesting that Banner had it easy because she was white?
No. Only that Blacks had it worse, contrary to her claim. Several examples were provided. But are you seriously arguing that there was no barriers to Blacks during the period that Banner became established?
Jesse Jackson is also of the same generation, ditto a zillion other black politicians, musicians, sports figures, actors/actresses, educators, and etc. All of whom were successful in their own right. Heck, one of my favorite musicians, Aaron Neville, was born in 1941, as was the amazing Richie Havens. Just stop this nonsense, it’s not flying here.
Ok. Please list out the academic qualifications of Emmett Till. Did he attain a PhD? No he didn’t he was murdered. Plenty of people are still murdered today. In fact the the sad reality is a young black man or a black teen male are more likely to murdered by another black person than a white person.
In 2016, pre Trump era mind you, here are the FBI stats:
17,250 total murders and 7,881 of the victims were black. The # cases where the demographic data for the offender was known in 6,676. Of this subset of data there were 2,570 cases where the offender and the victim were both black.
That works out to 39% of black victims killed by a black assailant. Keep in mind that this is from the universe of the 6,676 where the ‘race’ of the assailant is known. The remainder, 1,205, the race of the offender is unknown.
We may be able to infer though not definitively from the available data on crime among races. Of the known offender/victim demo data there were 776 cases of inter racial homicide between black and white. Blacks committed 533 against white victims while whites committed 243 of these against a black victim thus blacks commit 69% of interracial murder within this subset.
The remainder of murders 10,574 are excluded b/c the race of the offender is unknown OR very importantly witness listed multiple attackers but LEO couldn’t determine the race of ALL the attackers. None of the victims were black. Don’t forget there are Hispanic, Asian native American assailants and victims in these numbers not just white assailants.
In sum murder seems to be an equal impediment to educational and professional attainment. In fact the data suggest that as a % and certainly on absolute # that more white victims are killed by black assailants.
If you want to ignore the progress made since the era that d/prog were imposing Jim Crow that’s up to you. Likewise if wish to ignore the very real and far reaching affirmative action programs put into place to benefit blacks for many decades, until SCOTUS put the kibosh on them and the lefties lost their minds, go ahead.
Lois Banner speaks truth, we are all becoming increasing fed up with entitled black morons, explain why white morons have to live with what nature dealt them, while black morons get to act up. This crap has been pushed to hard, and now there will be hell to pay.
The master of the non-sequitur.
Sorry, no diversity of opinion shall be allowed in academia. There are only two rules:
1. Whenever questioned, the woke catechism MUST be recited, and
2. If in doubt, see Rule #1.
Shouldn’t they be celebrating that their adjustment bureau work worked so well?
an inclusive space for diverse histories and historians of diverse backgrounds.
They seem to really love that word “diverse”. I wonder why they abuse it so badly. Maybe this ties in with the left’s obsession with sado-masochism … Or maybe they just don’t know what it really means but love the sound of it.
Of course, this is from “The Berkshire Conference of Women Historians” and I would lay money that they couldn’t define what “women” means, either.
I love it. Professor Banner spoke the plain truth about the reality of the vile Dumb-o-crats’ identity/tribalism-based spoils system, and, naturally, the Dumbs can’t countenance being confronted with the truth.
“Isn’t Elizabeth Warren proof that Banner is right?”
————
Among myriad other examples in academia. Take Cornell West, for example. If memory serves, this dope threw a conniption fit a few years ago when Harvard’s then-president suggested that he tone down his self-aggrandizing publicity antics, end his extended hiatus from teaching and actually teach a class or two. You know — actually do some honest work to earn his paycheck.
The brazen audacity of this demand caused the entitled West to leave Harvard in a huff for Princeton, where narcissistic, self-enriching and race-hustling academics are apparently treated with greater respect and deference.
The story is worse than that. West had originally been at Princeton. Hah-vahd and Princeton went to war with each other to get this academic joke. They fought over him more than they ever paid attention to any Fields medalist (and paid him much more, I believe). His academic output was a joke, to put it charitably. I was forced to read some of his drivel in a religion course I took back in the 90s. This guy wasn’t even qualified to teach junior high school, but the Ivies were fighting like crazy to get him on their faculty. Crazy.
Interesting background; thanks.
As a UC Professor, she should have known she wasn’t allowed to tell the truth about some things.
Maybe, but she has an innate right to speak truth.
I was a senior applications developer in IT, and an on again, off again (mostly on) project leader over the years. I 100% guarantee that I would have been promoted more and paid more had I been black. The trouble is, the Peter Principle would have kicked in and I would have been promoted to a level I wasn’t very good at. So I am content (and retired). But remember that when you see incompetent minorities in jobs, many are just victims of the Peter Principle. The problem is that many don’t realize it and their superiors won’t admit it or do anything about it.
Ha ha ha! 84-year-old broad doesn’t give a 🫢 what her self-appointed cancellators think. Good for her!
Please notice that the only people that can speak the truth are towards the end of their career. She is a professor Emeritus, which means she is basically in retirement. See also Heather Mac Donald.
Tucker Carlson is an exception.
Erronius
Not only would her life been easier, she also would likely have had a reserved parking spot!
“The Berks Conference was a beautiful one until it was soiled by Lois Banner’s hatefully racist comments. Yes, I did speak out forcefully against her vitriol because she needed to keep Black women’s name out of her mouth.”
Black women’s name is not a name at all. It’s a group and she actually didn’t say a name or name the group if you check the transcript. This is a textbook example of what speaking out of a temper tantrum mindset looks like for a pseudointellectual grievance grifter.
Of course if you’re straight and white, its one strike and you’re out.