Preston Damsky, ‘Viewpoint Neutrality,’ And White Supremacy [Op-Ed]

When I was a kid, my Black elders told me, “You have to be twice as good as the white man if you want to be successful.” They didn’t tell me the other side of it, though: that white men didn’t even have to be half as good as everyone else, and they’d still get rewarded. I didn’t fully understand that lesson until I started teaching college history. Because I’ve had white boys like Preston Damsky in my classroom: the ones who think that slapping footnotes on racist rants turns them into scholarship. The ones who mistake confidence for competence. The ones who believe their “viewpoint” deserves equal respect, even when that viewpoint is just recycled white supremacy with MLA formatting.

Preston Damsky is a University of Florida law student who wrote a paper arguing that the U.S. Constitution was meant only for white people. And not in some abstract way. He argued that “We the People” in the preamble should be read to mean exclusively whites. That nonwhite immigration is an “invasion” that justifies shoot-to-kill orders at the border. That immigration policy should return to pre-1870 standards, meaning whites only. He even suggested using AI to decide who is “white enough” to immigrate here. He called for abolishing birthright citizenship for nonwhite people and questioned whether the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments—the ones that gave Black people citizenship and voting rights—might be unconstitutional. And he wrapped it all up with the cherry on top: warning that if the government didn’t enforce white rule, white people have the “revolutionary right” to overthrow it.

That’s not a legal argument. That’s a manual for apartheid. And let’s be clear: it wasn’t even a good manual. It was sloppy. He ignored the actual debates that produced the Constitution. He left out the fact that the framers deliberately wrote the text to allow amendment and evolution. He pretended the Reconstruction Amendments don’t exist, or that they’re somehow “illegitimate” because they forced the country to recognize Black people as citizens. He cherry-picked quotes from the Founders about “common ancestry” while ignoring the contradictions, the conflicts, the deliberate creation of a union that could expand rights.

He called nonwhite immigration an “invasion,” using the same old white supremacist language that’s fueled violence for generations, but dressed it up in “national constitutionalism” to make it sound respectable. He proposed state-sanctioned murder at the border and pretended it was law. He called for rolling back over a century of immigration reform that deliberately dismantled racist quotas. He even wanted to use AI to run racial purity tests. Tell me that’s not phrenology with a login screen.

He argued that Plyler v. Doe should be overturned so undocumented kids could be denied an education. Because nothing says “patriot” like punishing children. He said birthright citizenship for the children of immigrants should be revoked, erasing the very guarantee of the Fourteenth Amendment that was designed to end slavery’s legacy of statelessness. And he didn’t just want to narrow those amendments—he questioned whether they’re constitutional at all. Imagine that: arguing the constitutional amendments that grant Black citizenship and voting rights are themselves unconstitutional. That’s the Dred Scott decision with better typesetting.

And for this? He got an award. Best paper in the class. A prize.

That says everything you need to know about the professor who graded it. A federal judge who read that mess and decided it was the strongest work the class produced. No comments about its historical ignorance. No critique of its moral vacancy. No challenge to its legal incoherence. Just a pat on the back for a well-executed white nationalist blueprint.

And the dean? When students protested, she fell back on “viewpoint neutrality.” As if “Black people are citizens” and “Black people should lose citizenship” are equally valid perspectives. As if “don’t kill migrants” and “shoot them on sight” are just two sides of a fair debate. This is what happens when universities worship neutrality without integrity: they pretend there’s no difference between critique and hate speech, between scholarship and calls for racial violence.

Because let’s be real. If a Black student turned in even half this garbage in reverse—arguing that whiteness itself was the problem, that the Constitution was built to secure white dominance and must be overthrown—they wouldn’t just fail. They’d be labeled dangerous. Security would be called. Disciplinary hearings would be held. They’d be told they don’t belong in that classroom, let alone deserve a prize.

But a white man can argue that America is for whites only. That immigrants should be shot. That Black people should lose their constitutional rights. That the government should enforce racial purity. And the institution not only accepts it—it celebrates it.

This isn’t just about one student. He’s not even that original. It’s about the professor who read hate speech dressed up as theory and said excellent work. It’s about a dean who hid behind “neutrality” instead of having the guts to say this is wrong. It’s about a law school that put its name on rewarding a plan for modern apartheid.

But here’s what really says it all: this same student was eventually suspended, not for arguing Black people should lose citizenship or that immigrants should be shot at the border, but for making anti-Semitic remarks. That was the line. 

The institution was perfectly willing to tolerate and reward bigotry when it targeted Black people and Brown immigrants, but when he turned that hate on Jewish people, then it was suddenly disqualifying. It shows exactly whose humanity these so-called “neutral” institutions actually defend, and whose they treat as disposable.

They told us growing up we had to be twice as good. Because they knew white men could be half as good—and still get all the rewards, so long as they defended the system. Preston Damsky’s paper wasn’t exceptional. It was expected. And that’s the real scandal here.

Dr. Stacey Patton is an award-winning journalist and author of “Spare The Kids: Why Whupping Children Won’t Save Black America” and the forthcoming “Strung Up: The Lynching of Black Children In Jim Crow America.” Read her Substack here.

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