Cornell University professor Russell Rickford spoke about racism at a Black Lives Matter protest, in which he said, "There will always be a segment of white America that is overtly, irredeemably racist."
"Forget about them. They're not worth your time," Rickford said in a video posted on YouTube.
The Cornell professor said he believed that another segment of white Americans consider themselves enlightened.
"Yet they aggressively protect their white privilege," Rickford said. "Forget about those folks, too."
The professor said, however, there is one portion of white Americans who are working to help.
"There's a sliver, a sliver of white America that hates white supremacy and hates capitalism. Even if they don't have the vocabulary to call it white supremacy or to call it capitalism, they hate it with all their hearts. These are the folks you need to organize with."
In the video, Rickford explained why he believes white people support Donald Trump for president.
"A large segment of white folks here in the U.S. have chosen to express their economic and social anxiety by supporting Trump, the neo-fascist."
The professor said that both Republicans and Democrats deserve rebuke. He called Hillary Clinton "a war-mongering imperialist and a lapdog of the corporate elite."
He said a woman president is not needed, because he believes a black president was unsuccessful, too.
"You don't need a woman CEO of capitalism. You had a black CEO of capitalism, and what did that get you?"
Rickford called for hitting the "restart button" on society, to refocus on its citizens.
"What we need is the audacity to envision a society that is organized around human need."
Rickford has expressed controversial comments before. In 2014, the
Daily Caller reported while he was a professor at Dartmouth, he said that Martin Luther King Jr. Day should be a day of protest, but it is "a tool of the far-right imperialists to appease people."
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