Wilson and Rhodes

They were indeed racists, both of them.

Wilson segregated DC and Rhodes brushed aside savages and other locals in support of both colonialism and imperialism in Africa.

Of the two, Wilson, whose politics were even more deplorable on other grounds - think of The Great War and its aftermath - , was probably the "visceral" racist.

Rhodes was just a civilian conquistador, playing his part in the ebb and flow of history driven by power and money, the rise and fall of the wheel of fortune.

And he was a marvelous builder of works of civilization; think of the Cape to Cairo railway.

Far more horrific than either in his treatment of black Africans was King Leopold of Belgium.

I have no idea whether or how far racism had anything to do with his psychopathic dealings with black Africans.

But I don't think he had anything to do with any American universities, anyway.

Of course, whining about any of this at this late date is driven by nothing but hatred of certain features of Western Civilization that are key aspects of it to this day such as capitalism and, oh yeah, being mostly an affair of white people - male white people.

You know, "Hey, hey, ho, ho. Western Civ has got to go!"

And the college administrations, well knowing they would receive no support from elites were they to do anything else, surrender everything like the empty suits they are, like liberal punching bags in the pages of Dostoevsky.

Neither Wilson nor Rhodes - nor indeed Leopold, I suppose - is celebrated today for racism or for racist acts or policies.

But never mind.

They and pretty much all the major figures of Western Civilization for the last two or three centuries were racists of one stripe or another, or in one degree or another, and so every one of them, nearly the entire panoply of political and cultural leadership of the Occident, offers an easy target for anti-racist outrage and victim rhetoric.

Nearly all of them (some women excepted) were sexists, too, with similar caveats.

If no racist (or sexist) can be honored or celebrated pretty much nobody of importance to the Occident over the last few centuries can be honored or celebrated.

Yep.

Now you're catching on.

They will be pushed aside to make way for the culturally marginal women, mulattoes, Asians, Indians, and LGBT sexual outlaws the cultural revolutionaries have already spent decades grooming to replace them as the new heroes of the new, post-white, post-male, post-Christian Occident.

Anyway, that's what they are trying to do.