Armenian Academics For Black Lives Matter
Three Armenian doctoral students from UCLA—Natalie Kamajian, Armen Adamian and Lilit Ghazaryan—penned the following statement to express solidarity for the Black Lives Matter movement. This initiative is intended to unite Armenian academics globally across various disciplines in their commitment to advancing anti-racist methodologies, perspectives and practices.
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We, a group of Armenian academics, want to collectively express our support for the Black Lives Matter movement. As educators and knowledge producers, we cannot be neutral in the face of systemic oppression fueled by anti-Black racism in the United States and around the world. This is a call to all Armenian academics to actively dismantle white supremacist logics in both our personal and professional lives.
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A timely and eloquent statement. Indeed, the Armenian past—rife with state-sanctioned oppression, genocide, dispossession, and exile–calls out
for such clarity.
Does this include an approval of the the violence, burning, looting, bringing down Lincoln’s statues, etc,?
poor misguided souls. Think about this. lack LIves Matter. It was the Blacks of Africa, that invaded other tribes and took them as slave and/or sold them to slave traders. We went to war to end slavery. We lost more American lives in that war than any other. We have brought in affirmative action in jobs, schools etc,etc. But we are NOT responsible for Black on Black Crime. Yet all of you hypocrites are out saying Black Lives Matter, but apparently not in Chicago, where how many children have been killed just in the past two weeks. THAT is where your efforts should be. NOt with these “feel good” print outs. All this is patronizing pandering which is insulting.
Though the statement was well-written considering it was several hundred words of pseudo academic babble, it is a useless declaration by a useless group of people. Academics, especially liberal arts academics, are among American society’s most irrelevant. Largely overpaid and contribute nothing to the real world. Sick of the pandering we do to people who don’t support us in return.
What a bunch of academic double-speak…Armenians bending over backwards in a shaneful attempt to prove their “non-white” street creds…It’s laughable.
Everyone knows academics use impenetrable jargon to dress scanty ideas up to look bigger and grander than they are. See e.g. the famous hoax: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/new-sokal-hoax/572212/
This petition is even worse than that. There isn’t even a scanty idea.
Without regard to whether a very diffuse group of people and ideas sheltering under the “BLM” roof deserve praise, or support, the petitioners here say their truth but say it so opaquely that a reasonably well-informed and sympathetic person has no idea what on earth the petition means. What actions will you signers take? Who are the radical African-American writers you support? Just how exactly do Armenians wrongly support or identify with “whiteness?” For that matter, how is “whiteness” different from the dominant forms of political, popular, economic and mass media cultures?
The worst thing about your petition is that you are taking a civic oath to be biased. That which you identify as part of “whiteness” is bad, that which attacks it is good. Your minds are closed. God Help any student of yours who differs. You’ll flunk her. What will you do to the first conservative or BLM-skeptic who crosses your path in class?
Are ancient Christian and European methods of inquiry, science and argument “white”? Was Aristotle or Augustine (a Berber) white? Is the Armenian Apostolic Church “white?” Is white a racial category, or is it what people called “the Establishment” in the 1960’S?
If I were teaching a writing course and a student turned in your petition for my comments, I would say it could only appeal to a humanities grad student looking to climb the greasy careerist pole. It is full of euphemism and circuitry, and means whatever you want it to mean, apart from the stunning affirmation of bias.
Think for yourselves. And you might even get an engineer to sign on.
Excuse me, but in my opinion most of this is just “pc” virtue-signaling with no positive effect whatsoever, even if well-intentioned.
Most Black Americans do very well – increasingly so.
However, there still remain the problems of Black on Black crime. If “black lives matter” so much, then why so much of that kind of crime?
Are we to believe that when a Black policeman arrests a Black person, this is racism? Police are increasingly people of color.
Blacks have a deprived historical background, slavery and discrimination. That is true.
But we cannot ignore:
Desegregation of schools
Civil rights laws
Voting rights laws
Affirmative action (and, yes, quotas)
Welfare programs of various kinds (for Whites, too, yes, but they are particularly aimed at Blacks)
Scholarship programs for inner city youth
Local and state programs aimed at Blacks
The above academic statement does not represent the viewpoint of many of us Armenians.
As for the statement, “We, the undersigned, profess a vested interest in disentangling Armenianness from the mythology of whiteness,” I doubt anyone could explain exactly what that means.
If Whiteness is a mythology, isn’t Blackness?
There is not a single unambiguous reference to the Armenian Genocide in this text. Why?
“The Armenian past” implies the Genocide is over and Turkey has paid. Simply not true.
AW and the signers of the Petition have been hoodwinked.
Two of the petition-drafters, Mr. Adamian and Ms. Kamajian were involved in an infamous 2018 incident at UCLA in which they disrupted a panel discussion and harassed an Armenian speaker. The video is here:https://canarymission.org/individual/Armen_Adamian
I do not quarrel here with their antipathy for Israel. I completely disagree with their concerted assault on freedom of assembly and speech, NOT TO MENTION DISRESPECT FOR THE Armenian FLAG .
Unable to get much traction against Israel at UCLA, these cowards have shown by their actions on video how they plan to treat any people who disagree with them – even Armenians. If you read the article to which I have linked, you will see that Adamian tore the Armenian flag off the wall and grabbed the notes from an Armenian speaker, who understandably complained of intimidation.
Disagree with Adamian and Kamajoian about their views? You can expect the same treatment.
Must agree with the posters here. A great disappointment.
I support the struggle against racism and all forms of discrimination.
This is a responsibility of all human beings. The term “BLM Movement”
is a particular group that uses or advocates methods that are not in the interests of America. The broad stroke anti -police messages and “revolutionary” statement are inappropriate. Support the ideal …. be care how you apply it.
Thank you to those who initiated this statement. I’m sorry that many in our community lack the empathy to see our common suffering and humanity. I wrote a short essay on this that some might find helpful. https://richmond.com/opinion/columnists/jennifer-k-berenson-column-learning-from-our-ancestors/article_dbefa82a-77da-51e1-b72f-5a32f9f73067.html
We empathize, Jennifer. What we do not accept is the bandwagon jumping to virtue signal. I hope this explanation is helpful.