Remember that one time when racism went away and we were all happy?
Well, people at Texas A&M University seem to have forgotten our post-racial era in a big way. After an on-campus visit Tuesday, several high school students report that people draped in Confederate flags harassed them and used racial epithets during their visit. The Texas Tribune reports:
About 60 juniors from Uplift Hampton Preparatory were touring the campus, according to state Sen. Royce West, D-Dallas, when two black students were approached by a white woman wearing Confederate flag earrings. West said the white woman showed the students her earrings and asked them what they thought about them. Then a group of "white male and female students" began taunting the students "using the most well-known racial slur that's directed toward African Americans," said West,whose district includes the Uplift Hampton Preparatory campus.
West wasn't there when the incident occurred, but he said he was briefed on it later by A&M System Chancellor John Sharp. A spokeswoman for Uplift Education, which operates the charter school, said West's description was accurate.
A&M staffers who were accompanying the students on the tour called campus police. No one was charged; the responding officer told people at the scene that the harassers were expressing their First Amendment rights, according to West. University officials are now reviewing the incident, West said.
Good old First Amendment rights! God save our lifelong, unalienable and universal right to be assholes to and emotionally abuse children!
What kind of dog and pony show of a country and a higher education system are we running if this is something that can happen to high school visitors of a campus without any sort of repercussions? We often wonder why black and minority students are often maladjusted in college and don’t do as well as white counterparts. Oftentimes, virulent racism such as this incident plays a part in belongingness and security. More often, more insidious and subtle forms of marginalization push students out. But if campuses can’t get a handle on the Elmer Fudd retro-bigot style racism, how can they hope to tease out the finer points of diversity and inclusion?