An Ivy League professor created no shortage of outrage on social media after making a preposterous claim about the lack of timely response by Ulvade police in regards to last week’s horrific mass murder of 19 children and two adults by an 18-year-old gunman.
University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) professor and MSNBC contributor Anthea Butler suggested that police didn’t respond more quickly to the shooting at Robb Elementary School because they “didn’t give a damn” about a school filled with mostly “brown kids.”
“So since no one else will ask, I will. Did those children die because most of them were Mexican American and the police didn’t give a damn about a school w predominately brown kids? I mean, because it’s Texas.. and if you think everyone who isn’t white is illegal,” Butler tweeted on Friday.
The tweet was deleted, but not before it was screengrabbed by several including Georgetown University law school professor Jonathan Turley.
“University of Pennsylvania professor Anthea Butler is at the center of another controversy after suggesting that the Uvalde police ‘didn’t give a damn’ about the children because they were ‘predominantly brown kids,’” he tweeted.
University of Pennsylvania professor Anthea Butler is at the center of another controversy after suggesting that the Uvalde police “didn’t give a damn” about the children because they were “predominantly brown kids.”https://t.co/vOzTUXYReK
— Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) May 29, 2022
“Critics have pointed out that Uvalde Police Chief Daniel Rodríguez is Latino as is Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District Police Chief Pedro Arredondo. Many of the officers at the scene were Latino and there were officers with children at the school and among the dead,” he noted in another tweet.
“Professor Butler knows that she can write and advocate without fear of university actions to remove her. That is precisely what all faculty should enjoy as a matter of academic freedom and free speech. However, it is a privilege often exercised selectively today,” he added.
…Professor Butler knows that she can write and advocate without fear of university actions to remove her. That is precisely what all faculty should enjoy as a matter of academic freedom and free speech. However, it is a privilege often exercised selectively today.
— Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) May 29, 2022
Fox Metro News noted further:
Butler’s comments arrived amid reports that police had waited nearly an hour to storm a classroom in the elementary school where the shooter was slaughtering children — a move that Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steven McCraw later said was “the wrong decision.”
The professor’s critics have pointed out that Uvalde Police Chief Daniel Rodríguez, Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District Police Chief Pedro Arredondo, and many of the officers on the scene were Latino.
“The only acceptable answer for many today is race. That is all they see. Around every corner. The specifics of the situation do not matter. This is a clear example — and from a highly educated educator,” one Twitter user commented.
“Anthea Butler is the new kind of College intellectual racist, dumb and absolutely wrong,” another tweeted.
“That is crazy. There were white kids who died too. This has nothing to do with it,” a third wrote.
“Hard to imagine that there is a scholar somewhere in the large country with this outrageous take,” another responded. “Start up the outrage machine. I’m starting to think this must be how they all think.”
