WATCH: Princeton prof tells students America is a ‘settler colonizing nation founded on genocide’
A Princeton professor argued that White Americans view racism as a “feature, not a bug.”
The professor stated that Republicans use racism as a means of gaining votes.
Princeton Professor Ali Valenzuela proclaimed that America was “founded on genocide and racism.” In a post-election day discussion titled “The Day After: Key Election Questions and Where We Are Now,” Valenzuela spoke of America’s perceived dangers, specifically answering the question of what’s next.
The event was live-streamed on Princeton University’s official YouTube chan
Valenzuela warned that there would be no “wholesale repudiation of Donald Trump.” This, he argued, is primarily because of America’s founding as a “settler colonizing nation, that was founded on genocide and slavery.”
This, he argues, plays into the rhetoric of President Trump, who is “only the latest Republican leader to embrace this racism, and to gain supporters using these kinds of racist appeals and racist messages.
He warns us that for “millions of White Americans, this is a feature, and not a bug.”
He then goes on to say that Trump has done some good by “making it really really clear to to millions and millions of Americans that racism is alive in this country.”
[RELATED: Yale prof claims American democracy was founded on racism]
While many had hoped that racism was on the decline in America, Valenzuela argues that Trump has “made it very clear that that’s no longer the case” and that it remains a “scourge that needs to be addressed.”
National Association of Scholars President Peter Wood argued against Valenzuela’s assessment of America. He told Campus Reform that applying the term “settler colonialism” to America would be “profoundly inappropriate.”
Wood also argued that “our nation was not founded on genocide or slavery.“
While Wood acknowledges that many Native Americans died as result of the actions of Europeans, genocide is the wrong term: “The epidemics that ensued were a terrible tragedy, but ‘genocide’ implies that one side deliberately murdered the other, and that is simply false.”
While some individuals may have had that goal, “it was never the goal of the Western settlers as a whole, and never official policy,” Wood stated.
Valenzuela did not provide further comment to Campus Reform.
