‘White Guilt’ Professor Adam Kotsko Clarifies Comments That All White People Should Commit Mass Suicide

Adam Kotsko, whom right-wing politicos are dubbing the “white guilt” college professor, has taken to his personal blog to clarify remarks that he says have been misrepresented online.

If you go to Kotsko’s Twitter feed — where the controversy I’m about to talk about began — you’ll see that Kotsko has a message up stating “Views expressed do not reflect those of my employer.”

There is also a link to his blog.

When I received word of comments reported by right-leaning website YoungConservatives, I knew not to blindly take them at face value.

How could anyone honestly believe what Adam Kotsko tweeted? To answer that, let’s first start with what was said. Kotsko’s tweets are protected, but YoungConservatives managed to grab screen caps.

You can view them at the link above, or you can just keep reading.

Kotsko made the statement that whether white people’s ancestors owned slaves or not, they benefitted from it and were, thusly, complicit in it.

When a follower asked, “What follows from this?,” Kotsko said, “We should all commit mass suicide.”

YoungCons and some other conservative blogs took that and ran with it, but a longer blog post from Adam Kotsko revealed that he was basically trolling them.

Here’s the pertinent part of his blog post entitled, “Should white Americans commit mass suicide? If not, why not?”

“This time, the crack investigative reporters of the right have uncovered an even more damning quote from me, calling for all whites to commit mass suicide out of guilt for slavery! Can you believe anyone would hold such a view?!”

“If you’re a reasonable person, the answer is no. In reality, I do not hold that view, nor does anyone else in the entire damn world. Why did I say it, then? I was in dialogue with an obviously bad-faith interlocutor on the subject of race, who clearly wanted to bait me into saying something “offensive,” and out of frustration, I decided I’d give them something to cry about and say something really “offensive” — scare quotes intended. My assumption was that the claim was so obviously hyperbolic that the sarcasm would be immediately evident.”

“Apparently not, though. Apparently there is a critical mass of delusional and paranoid people on the internet who are willing and eager to (a) believe the absolute worst of a total stranger, (b) track that person down, and (c) direct insulting messages toward them.”

Do you think the comments of Adam Kotsko were taken out of context on purpose or out of ignorance? Sound off in the comments section!

[Image via Adam Kotsko Twitter]