As he read the oh-so-appropriately titled “White Paper” that the European/American Issues Forum sent to the University of Colorado, Brad Jones knew he had made a mistake.
Jones, a one-time chairman of the CU-Boulder College Republicans, allowed the EAIF to nominate him to the commission that will examine racial diversity in the University of Colorado system.
Jones has impeccable conservative credentials. He worked to expose liberal bias among professors and to establish a legal “Academic Bill of Rights.” Jones also has criticized affirmative action and what he considers political correctness in the funding of student organizations.
But even Jones drew the line at the manifesto European/American Issues Forum president Louis Calabro presented to CU president Hank Brown.
Among other things, Jones knew EAIF’s claim that nationally, blacks commit more hate crimes against whites “than vice versa” didn’t play at CU. No one has alleged that black-on-white hate crimes or any other kinds of black-on-white crimes are epidemic.
Jones also wasn’t keen on EAIF’s demand for a “Nonwhite Privilege Symposium” in 2006 to offset the “White Privilege Symposium” held in December.
“I don’t believe in white privileges or nonwhite privileges,” Jones said. “I’m not focused on hyphenated Americans.”
Jones said the bias he saw at CU was mostly ideological – because he was conservative, not white.
“I guess I should have vetted the organization better,” he said of the EAIF.
Jones, a 2004 CU grad, was not invited to join the 45-person diversity commission. Had he been, chances were very slim that he would have pushed state universities to produce an EAIF-recommended syllabus called “Sensitivity Toward European Americans … as a vital instrument in recognizing the reality of discrimination against and defamation of European American whites on the CU campus. …” Nor would he have been emphasizing, as EAIF wanted, “the enormous disparity of interracial felony crimes committed against European American whites in all of America.”
Jones thought the commission needed more conservative voices, not a race war.
“To put words in my mouth, after 15 minutes of conversation, is dishonest,” Jones said of the EAIF.
Calabro, a 73-year-old retired policeman, begged to differ.
“Brad Jones is a young man who wants to be in politics,” Calabro said from the EAIF’s headquarters in San Bruno, Calif. “He was afraid to get involved with any group with the gumption to stand up for European-American civil rights.”
Jones, Calabro continued, “doesn’t want to get his (butt) kicked because he lives in a society where anyone advocating for European-American rights is labeled racist.”
Actually, Jones didn’t care to align himself with a group whose leader told me “African-Americans don’t preach in their homes that it is wrong to attack whites.”
Jones also was not on board with Calabro’s contention to me that Mexico has loaded this country with illegal immigrants in hopes of annexing Western and Southwestern states. This is not mainstream, even among conservatives who don’t believe in guest-worker programs.
So last week, Jones found himself trying to escape the extreme positions of the European/American Issues Forum.
“I never promised to (Calabro) or anyone else that I would espouse any specific points of view of ‘solutions’ to any problems at CU,” Jones said in an e-mail distributed Jan. 17. “However, Mr. Calabro has taken the liberty of working up this White Paper on his own, which I have not endorsed. … I do not support many of his recommendations and object to my name being put forward as a possible member of any commission that would insinuate that I would support all of his positions.”
That doesn’t make Brad Jones a coward. It doesn’t make him liberal. It makes him a guy who inadvertently hooked up with one of the few groups that makes Ward Churchill look moderate.
You can’t cut those ties fast enough.
Jim Spencer’s column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. He can be reached at 303-820-1771 or jspencer@denverpost.com.
