Posted on May 13, 2015

Black Professor Regrets Comments Critical of White Students

Philip Marcelo, MSN, May 12, 2015

An incoming Boston University professor who called “white college males” a “problem population” and was publicly criticized by the university’s president said on Tuesday she regrets making the remarks.

Black sociology professor Saida Grundy, who completed her doctorate at the University of Michigan last year, had declared on her now-private Twitter account that “white masculinity is THE problem for America’s colleges.”

In other recent tweets, she said, “Deal with your white (expletive), white people. slavery is a *YALL* thing,” and “Every MLK week I commit myself to not spending a dime in white-owned businesses. And every year I find it nearly impossible.”

Grundy on Tuesday said events in the United States over the past year have made “the inconvenient matter of race” an unavoidable topic, but she expressed remorse over what she had said.

“I regret that my personal passion about issues surrounding these events led me to speak about them indelicately,” she said in a statement. “I deprived them of the nuance and complexity that such subjects always deserve.”

Boston University continued to distance itself from Grundy’s racially charged tweets on Tuesday as its president penned an open letter to the campus, saying the comments were “hurtful.”

President Robert Brown acknowledged Grundy’s right to hold and express her opinions but said her remarks unfairly “typecast” certain groups of people. He stopped short, though, of acknowledging the comments were directed almost exclusively at whites.

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Brown, the university president, said Grundy will report for work on July 1.