'Whiteness is going to have an end date' says Rutgers professor of gender and Africana studies

A 2021 video of a critical race theory scholar claiming that "white people are committed to being villains" and warning that "whiteness is going to have an end date" has recently resurfaced on social media sparking renewed outrage.

Brittney Cooper, who is Associate Professor of Women's and Gender Studies and Africana Studies at Rutgers University, made the comments during a podcast interview with The Root, during which she also said "We gotta take these muthaf*kers out."

Cooper further portrayed the world before colonialism as a utopia of peace and tranquility, with black and brown people traveling the seas and oceans spreading friendship and prosperity.

"White human beings thought there’s a world here and we own it," said the professor of gender studies. "Prior to them, black and brown people have been sailing across oceans, interacting with each other for centirues without total subjugation, domination, and colonialism."

"My hope is that we would do it differently in the moments that we have some power," she continued. "We will not do it perfectly, but I do think that all of us can sort of agree that a politics that says there are superior and inferior human beings just isn’t a way to go. And that’s the thing that white people don’t trust us to do because they’re so corrupt and their thinking is so morally and spiritually bankrupt about power that they fear, viscerally, existentially, letting go of power."

"The thing I want to say to you is that we gotta take these muthaf*ckers out, but we can’t say that," Cooper said before stressing that she doesn’t believe in a project of violence. 

Cooper went on to explain that "whiteness totally skews our view of things." She elaborated by saying that world history didn’t begin with white people arriving in America, and then makes the curious claim that there were Africans in the Americas "being brilliant" with "libraries and inventions" and "vibrant notions of humanity and cross-cultural exchanges long before white people showed up being violent and terrible and trying to take everything from everybody."

Christopher Rufo pointed out how uninformed many of the professor’s beliefs were, as well as how critical race theory seeks to stereotype, scapegoat, and dehumanize white people. 

"The problem with critical race theory isn't only that it seeks to stereotype, scapegoat, and dehumanize. It's also that many of the discipline's practitioners, such as 'Professor Crunk,' are monumentally ignorant. Their identity is treated as a substitute for scholarship," Rufo tweeted.

Others said in the replies how critical race theory appears to be undoing all the progress made during the civil rights movement, purposely reviving and reinstating racial division in the supposed quest for equality.

Yet others pointed out that Cooper’s view of pre-colonial history isn’t quite accurate.