Going through some old files I found this bit of brain-dead fluff originally published as part of a hit piece on Ayn Rand in the Red Star-Pravda (Minneapolis Star Tribune) on March 7, 1998:
Said Mahmoud El-Kati, who teaches African-American Studies at Macalester College: "People are not entities. We are social animals. There would be no Ayn Rand if there were no people.”
"What's always surprised me about objectivism is that they aren't very objective. They don't deal with the essence of who people are. I am something else than skin color. But at the same time, I am objectively the product of some experience.
"I am talking about the experience, the environment, the geography you inherit. I am a black American. But that [color] is not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the experience."
In a private letter to another Objectivist I responded to this denial of reality:
"I am an living ping-pong ball that bounces off whatever wall I am thrown against." ME-K appears to be an environmental determinist.
In adopting the posture of determinism ME-K also denies responsibility for his own thoughts and of his own actions. For him environmental determinism is an excuse for actions that would properly bring about an adverse rational response. But in the real world the maximum effective range of an excuse is zero.
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