Rutgers Professor Brittney Cooper branded white people as "villains," cheered lower birth rates among whites and predicted their time was coming to an end.

Cooper is a professor of African and women's and gender studies. She was appearing on an online conference titled "Unpacking The Attacks On Critical Race Theory" hosted by The Root Institute's Michael Harriot.

She argued “white people are committed to being villains in the aggregate," fear losing power and will fight to keep it. The professor termed whiteness an "inconvenient interruption" in history.

"All things that begin in white folks are not infinite and eternal," Cooper said, "They ain’t gonna go on for infinity and infinity. And that's super important to remember."

Screenshot/The Root Institute
Screenshot/The Root Institute
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As Cooper and Harriot were discussing white people and white supremacists, Cooper blurted out, "The thing I want to say to you is we got to take these mother******* out."

She then quickly backtracked, and added she does not believe in "a project of violence."

After Cooper's comments were picked up by some media outlets, she didn't take any of it back — and pointed out that she's received racist threats of violence in response.

According to their website, The Root Institute is a consortium of "the Black community's brightest minds to help set the agenda for Black America's future." In promoting the online conference, they called it "a healthy dose of reality." Video of the conference can be seen here. 

Critical race theory originates in legal scholarship as a way of looking at the law and its historical context. It is taught and debated on college campuses. It has also become a catch-all phrase galvanizing pushback against a range of race-related topics some prefer to bar from schools.

Gov. Phil Murphy signed a law incorporating instruction on diversity and inclusion into the K-12 curriculum. It does not require the teaching of critical race theory, but does stress critical thinking about race.

Rutgers.edu
Rutgers.edu
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The issue of what kids are taught about race in K-12 schools has been a hot-button issue in the race for governor. During the first gubernatorial debate, Republican candidate Jack Ciattarelli said schools should teach students the golden rule, doing to others what you'd want done to you, not suggest white people are oppressing minorities.

“There is systemic racism, but I don't think we should be teaching our children that white people perpetuate systemic racism,” Ciattarelli said.

Murphy countered, “You have to teach the whole truth and nothing but the truth, including about slavery, oppression, racism in our country's history."

During The Root Institute's online conference, Cooper stressed she believed critical race theory should be taught in all schools, arguing kids can grasp its concepts and it is "just the proper teaching of American history.”

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