Vanderbilt University professor Carol Swain offered a blistering rebuke of the Black Lives Matter movement this weekend, calling it a “very destructive force” in America that “needs to go.”
CNN anchor Michael Smerconish asked, “Is this the end of the Black Lives Matter movement?” “I certainly hope so,” Carol Swain, who is black, responded.
“Because I believe that it’s been a very destructive force in America, and I urge all of your viewers to go to that website and look at what they’re really about,” the law professor said.
“It’s a Marxist organization all about black liberation. It’s not really addressing the real problems affecting African-Americans and so it’s problematic, it’s misleading black people, it needs to go.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycJkypgZu1Q
Swain’s comments came just days after Houston New Black Panther Party member Micah X. Johnson ambushed and opened fire on Texas law enforcement officers, murdering five and wounding seven others at a Black Lives Matter protest, which was in response to recent police-involved deaths of black men.
Responding to Swain’s searing criticism of Black Lives Matter, Vanderbilt Provost Susan Wente said Swain’s comments “in no way represent those of the university.”
“Vanderbilt University is committed to diversity, inclusion and freedom from discrimination,” Wente wrote in a statement posted online late Sunday. “Ensuring that our campus is a safe, welcoming and supportive environment for every member of the Vanderbilt community has been, and will always be, our top priority. Vanderbilt joins the nation in mourning Alton Sterling, Philando Castile and the five officers killed in Dallas Thursday.”
Swain’s comments on CNN sparked outraged.
Sherrilyn Ifill, president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, accused the professor of “justifying” the killing of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, the two men killed in separate police-involved shootings last week.
“I cannot (can) believe that Prof Carol Swain is on @CNN justifying the killing of both Sterling & Castile & for an “end” to BlackLivesMatter,” Ifill wrote on Twitter.
I cannot (can) believe that Prof Carol Swain is on @CNN justifying the killing of both Sterling & Castile & for an "end" to BlackLivesMatter
— Sherrilyn Ifill (@Sifill_LDF) July 9, 2016
Swain, who’s taught at Vanderbilt since 1999, took to Facebook and defended her statements.
“I spent a lot of time praying for wisdom and discernment before today’s @CNN interview. I understand the Black community is in a grave situation and they are being exploited and manipulated by the liberal left. Truth and a return to God will help liberate blacks,” she wrote.
“Right now too many people are putting their trust in government rather than the life giving Word of God.”
Follow Jerome Hudson on Twitter @jeromeehudson.
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