Hate, a year later
Michael Jones ’11 awoke to a rude surprise about a year ago. The words “nigger school” had been spray-painted on the walls of Pierson College.
“As a freshman, I was just surprised,” said Jones. “I’m from North Carolina, and I’ve seen things there that I expected to stay in the South and I didn’t expect at Yale.”
Davenport dining hall workers found the words early on the morning of Nov. 6, 2007, long after the vandals had left. Police never found the perpetrators, and never determined whether they were Yale students. October saw outrage over the use of blackface in Halloween...
Racism is alive and well on our campus my friends. It has simply learned a bit better to go underground.
A couple of things to address:
A world without racism is not a finite goal. Since we are all of different races, naturally this will play some role in our interactions. Racism as a system of legally and socially disadvantaging all members of a race, however, has pretty much been eliminated not only on this campus, but also in our society as a whole. Yes, there are isolated incidents every once in a while, but for the most part, minorities enjoy the same (if not more because of affirmative action policies) benefits as everyone else. Because some drunken idiot writes "nigger school" on a building or draws swastikas on trees doesn't mean our campus is being undermined by racism or race hatred.
Another question to consider: are we as a society a little too eager to find and "punish" incidents of racism? Let us consider the 'blackface' incident. As I understand it, a student decided to dress up as the iPod shadow and so he wore black and painted his face black and pinned a bright pink ipod to himself. Somehow this was blown up into a huge affair, and now we have a student council that hopes to temper halloween costumes.
By discussing racial equality so much, we are taking something that is slowly and progressively being solved and keep thrusting it back into the open, creating problems where there really are none.
To H
You must not go to Yale or your network is tiny. The incident of blackface occurred more than once last year and not one of the costumes seen was of anyone in an "ipod" outfit.
You're either getting that from someone without researching the facts or you simply made that up. Just like you're making up that the goal of a council or any group that seeks to foster increased dialogue is actually attempting to end all racism. That would be rather stupid and no one thinks this is the purpose of activities and events that seek to foster growth, respect and awareness.
"Let us consider the 'blackface' incident. As I understand it, a student decided to dress up as the iPod shadow and so he wore black and painted his face black and pinned a bright pink ipod to himself."
That's not the case being referred to. Go through the YDN archives for an op-ed by one of the people who dressed in blackface.
"Racism as a system of legally and socially disadvantaging all members of a race, however, has pretty much been eliminated not only on this campus, but also in our society as a whole."
Recent studies in Atlanta, a mecca for upper middle class African-Americans, have shown that even at the same level of income Black applicants for mortgages and loans were being given higher interest rates than Whites or being bumped into predatory subprime schemes. John Edwards actually brought this up during the Democratic primary debates. His position as a White Man allowed him to speak a truth Obama could never say in a public form (psst, this is also racism).
Not to mention disparity in the legal system. Black defendants are given longer prisons sentences than White defendants for the same crimes. Blacks are more likely than Whites to end up on death row for homicides. Latinos also fall somewhere along this spectrum, though the race and class of a Latino makes that data more complex in studies.
In short, it's not just isolated incidents once in a while. Racism still has real effects in our society. Yalies aren't getting that end of it, but it's continued existence is dangerous.
Finally, yes, humans have always formed antagonistic divisions, but check your history. It hasn't always been determined by this pseudo-scientific category known as race. That's a development of recent history, the last half a millennium or so. It too will pass. Who knows what'll take its place.
You, like many others, are deeply misinformed: Affirmative Action has been greatly rolled back since the late 90s, and it continues to be rolled back in congress as states have increasingly passed legislation to eliminate it. Universities are now focusing on creating a socioeconomically diverse campus by trying to recruit and accept more students from lower income brackets regardless of race. They just don't call it "Affirmative Action" because of the stigma attached to the name thanks to ignorant people like you.
Hate crimes will inevitably increase as affirmative action and mass immigration increase.