An adjunct professor from the University of Delaware has stirred-up some controversy with a recent comment about Otto Warmbier. Anthropology professor Kathy Dettwyler said on her personal Facebook page that Warmbier is “typical of a mindset of a lot of the young, white, rich, clueless males” she teaches.
Kathy even went as far as to liken the deceased Otto Warmbier to a rapist. “These are the same kids who cry about their grades because they didn’t think they’d really have to read and study the material to get a good grade,” Dettwyler wrote. “His parents ultimately are to blame for his growing up thinking he could get away with whatever he wanted. Maybe in the US, where young, white, rich, clueless white males routinely get away with raping women. Not so much in North Korea. And of course, it’s Ottos’ parents who will pay the price for the rest of their lives.”
Of course, she can stare right into the heart of the privileged, rich white bro and see the sticky icky of his very soul.
The University of Delaware has condemned this teacher’s remarks, insisting that her comments do not represent the school’s values or principles. The university has issued a statement labeling her comments as “particularly distressing.”
Dettwyler has not yet responded. The professor under the spotlight remains silent.
Otto Warmbier’s unconscious body was released from North Korea earlier this month. He was imprisoned in the totalitarian nation for 17 months because he allegedly decided to remove a propaganda portrait from the hotel wall to take home as a memento. He fell into a coma while in captivity and died this past Monday.
I don’t think Otto deserved a death sentence for removing an exalted framed photograph from the wall. The social dogma I follow isn’t brutal and authoritarian, and I’m sure most people agree that this crime sounds ridiculous. But the guy was in North Korea, one of the most oppressive dictatorships on this blue and green globe. He couldn’t be that clueless, could he?
But if he is that clueless, Kathy Dettwyler would argue that the mindset of those who look like Otto are likely to carry the “clueless trait” and are mostly homogeneous mentally as much as they are with their skin color, genitalia, age level, and economic standing. Because why? Her mindset suggests that those who look more like you probably act/think more like you. Thanks for perpetuating racial, class, age and gender generalizations, professor!
That’s like a generalization slam dunk!
