Mr.Ferdinand

I'm impressed, that is exactly who it is. I didn't want to mention his name, but I'm glad you did

I guess that I should have stated that the essay assignment called for us to evaluate how the cultural differences between Native Americans and Europeans settlers created conflict between them. With this as a prompt, I used the required texts to craft an argument that Native Americans were conquered because they relied heavily on mysticism and primitive technologies in their struggle with the European settlers. I think the professor wanted me to come to the conclusion that the European settlers were hell-bent on genocide and their evil "capitalist mindset" is what pushed them into the New World.

Greetings to all! I have been a member of this forum for a few months and until today; I deliberately did not participate in the discussions because I didn’t feel like I knew very much about objectivism. The primary reason that I joined this forum is so that I could learn more about the philosophy from those that understand it much better than I. I am happy to say that I have not been disappointed! After reading AS, The Return of the Primitive, and many of the posts on this website, I now realize that I am an objectivist. In fact, I have been one all along but I didn’t have the ability to put my seemingly unrelated thoughts and opinions into one coherent philosophy. This has been a particularly long journey for me because I am a 26 year-old African-American that was raised in a household that was both collectivist and horribly anti-American. I was raised to look to the government to solve my problems and I was told that the poor “deserved” government assistance because they had been “dealt an unfair hand” in life. Yet, as I looked at the community around me, I noticed that the people who received government handouts rarely were able to better their circumstances in life. I was young, but even then I realized what a gigantic waste of money our welfare system had become. This was the initial thought that caused me to explore human nature further. It has put me on a journey through many philosophies about human nature and objectivism is the only one that has accurately described the world as it actually is. This is where I am today. Now, I would like to discuss with you the current problem that I am facing. I am a college student in California’s CSU system and I am only two quarters away from graduation. One of the requirements for graduation is that students take a course in American History and Institutions. Since I also work and attend Arabic classes on the weekend, I don’t have much wiggle room in my schedule. I decided to take an online course offered by the university entitled: Ethnicity in American History. Although I am always wary of ethnic studies courses, this one met the requirement and it worked with my schedule so I decided to take it. From the lectures I knew that the professor was not only a Marxist, but he was also blatantly racist towards whites. His lectures are filled with anti-capitalist rants and he seemingly blames Caucasians for all of the world’s ills. In our first assignment, I decided to write an essay that challenged the leftist dogma that primitive equals good and advanced equals bad. This seems self-evident, but unfortunately it is not to some. I made sure that the essay was perfectly formatted and met all of the posted requirements so that I couldn’t be given a low grade out of spite. Yet that is exactly what happened. I received an “F” on the essay and I am now in danger of failing the class and ruining my 3.9 GPA. It is too late to drop the course and withdrawing requires me to meet with the Chair of the Ethnic Studies department. Although I am prepared to do that, I am curious to know what your opinions are of what I should do? If I remain in the class, I run the risk of getting an undeserved F. If I play along and write the kind of things that he is expecting me to write, I could pass the course but then I would be attaching my name to ideas that I find abhorrent. I have already emailed the Chair and I am awaiting a response, but I don’t think that the Chair of an Ethnic Studies program would be very sympathetic to my problem. I am prepared to take this as far as it needs to go but I would prefer to avoid a long fight because I have 7 other classes that all need my attention. What do you guys think? P.S: Just for kicks, here are a few direct quotes from his lectures posted online. "The United States is an oppressor nation, a characteristic that it shares with other imperialist powers." "Yet history reveals that the white masses, making up the majority of an oppressor society, have throughout their entire history attempted to advance themselves primarily by further oppressing peoples of color - not by any class struggle." "Yet in the age of capitalism, the US economy could not do without the labor of such a class, so the US imported a proletariat from Africa." "Euro-American settlers have always made light of their invasion and occupation, even though this conquered territory is the precondition of our entire society." M. Ferdinand माक्र्स फ़र्दिनान्द ماركوس فرديناند מרקוס פרדיננד