New Jersey professor stands her ground, says she has tenure after backlash for ‘F**k Trump supporters’ tweet
A professor at a university in New Jersey, on Thursday, April 30, responded to the backlash she received after blaming President Donald Trump and his supporters for the impact of the coronavirus outbreak on African Americans in the country. Brittney Cooper, an associate professor in the Department of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Rutgers University, pointed out that she is tenured when some people on social media criticized her statement.
Cooper, earlier this week, had tweeted: "I feel like most Black people are clear that this utterly absurd to push to re-open the country is all about a gross necropolitical calculation that it is Black people who are dying disproportionately from COVID. Not only do white conservatives not care about Black life, but my most cynical negative read of the white supremacists among them is that they welcome this massive winnowing of Black folks in order to slow demographic shifts and shore up political power."
She later tweeted, writing: "F**k each and every Trump supporter. You absolutely did this. You are to blame."
Although Cooper deleted her profanity-laced tweet, she continued to remain firm on her stance on Thursday, stating that she was a grown-up and her university will not fire her for her tweets.
"I said what I meant. And I curse cuz I'm grown," she wrote in a series of tweets, adding, " I disdain every person who thought and thinks he’s a good leader, because that thinking has had material consequences for far too many of us."
"Just know a couple of things: 1.) I report threats to law enforcement and have had committed law enforcement support for many years now. 2.) I have tenure. Rutgers won’t be firing me for tweets. That is all," she added.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, last week, had talked about the death rates of African-Americans in the country related to the deadly coronavirus in a recent interview with actor Will Smith. The expert had said that the high rate of death among the community could be linked to pre-existing health conditions.
"It’s really terrible, because it’s just one of the failings of our society, that African-Americans have a disproportionate prevalence in incidents of the very comorbid conditions that put you at a high risk," Dr. Fauci told Smith.
The Rutgers professor, in another tweet, also claimed that the loyalty of the Trump supporters to the president had impaired their judgment about the coronavirus outbreak in the country.
"They are literally willing to die from this clusterf***ed COVID response rather than admit absolutely anybody other than him [Trump] would have been a better president,” she wrote. “And when whiteness has a death wish, we are all in for a serious problem."
Cooper, on April 23, also wrote about "the depths of white depravity," stating that it "staggard" her how white people refused "to be swayed by facts, reason or the value of life itself, especially when those lives are Black."
According to Amazon, the Gender and Sexuality Studies professor is the author of 'Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower,' which is ranked among The Guardian's 'Top 10 Books About Angry Women.'