Over at Colorlines there is an excellent article that documents the tendency of some white students to subvert racial politics into a racist parody. The authors note that there has been an increase in the number of parties and incidents that mock others.
Tim Wise, who has written extensively on the topic of racism comments that there have been known incidents on college campuses in the last year of parties and events in which white students appropriate hateful stereotypes. Wise believes there are two plausible explanations for this: that it is deliberate and willful or indicative of ahistorical ignorance about the meaning of adopting black face. The problem with accepting the historical/ignorance meme is that it provides a ready excuse and guarantees such acts will continue. Students may be subject to educational or "diversity" approaches as a result and while those tactics are useful, they do not truly force accountability. My own experience with workplace diversity classes has been less than provocative. We were told that the purpose of the day was not to "assign blame" or "attack others" but to gain understanding of perspectives. When I pointed out that approached avoided historical/structural weight to racism and essentially saw discrimination and racism as a "perspective" rather a problem I was met with an exasperated sigh and told the purpose was to show us how to "get along" at work.
C.Richard King and David J. Leonard see the rise of "ghetto fabulous parties" in which students do things likewear grills, flash gang signs, put on black face, drank 40s or had "Latin" parties in which young women pretended to be pregnant as being purposefully reactionary. Note all of the students engaging in these charming activities were white. While the authors focus on the roots of the reactionary tendencies it also may reflect the segregation of cultures in the United States excluding a few metropolitan areas. Many Americans still grow up surrounded by their own and their own sense of superiority becomes reinforced by a lack of interaction with others. Ultimately they become in the least fundamentally uninterested in the day to day life of the others and at worst overtly hostile.
The authors argue that these racist acts are directly related to the rise of conservative politics on university campuses across the United States. In essence, there are coalitions of white Americas who have re frame discussions about diversity and multiculturalism in terms of white victim hood. I would agree that part of the "immigration panic" meme is also rooted in this and has cache because jobs have been lost and rather than focus on the way that Machiavellian corporate decision making has systematically robbed the working class of decent paying jobs it is easier and more expedient to accuse the brown hordes of lawlessness and opportunism than to organize and unionize.
Universities themselves have long been the target of right derision.Public figures like David Horowitz and Dinesh D'Souza have successfully linked universities with a "liberalism gone wild" theme that equates liberalism with an anti-white bias, fervent anti-patriotism and paints ideas like diversity and multiculturalism as destructive and invasive. Universities for the right have become part of the problem.
There has also been an intense rise in the organization of conservativeactivities and organizations on college campuses pouring more than 35 millions dollars into organizing and supporting various causes. In many instances when the issues of students doing black face come up they can often count on support from conservative newspapers on campus. Inevitably, editorials will chide for bad taste but attack any suggestion that acts were racist with a dismissive tone about encroaching political correctness. When there was a party advertised at Johns Hopkins for Halloween in Hood, an editorial appear at another university ( Tufts) arguing that the party invitation that included several offensive references was not indicative of institutional racism but merely an example of disagreement between member of a society about what constitute funny versus disrespectful.
At the University of Michigan Young Americans for Freedom sponsored a catch an illegal immigrant game. Students dressed up as illegals and were "tracked" by another group of students pretending to be Minutemen.
According to the Prejudice Institute approximately 25 percent of students of color experience some kind of verbal aggression directly related to their color or ethnicity. It should be no surprise given that the right has positioned itself as being victims while being a dominant force that ideas like diversity are considered "quaint", "politically correct" and by inference somehow anti-American.
I often see low level hostility living in the south from whites who like to reject legitimate discussions about racism by whining that they make everything about race. It cuts off dialog and reinforces white victim hood. It is that victim hood and hostility that makes some students free to "express" themselves by holding parties in black face while feigning surprise when other protest because they did not "mean anything by it." Indeed, when student newspapers protest the protest that accompanies these campus incidents they are simultaneously using free speech as an instrument to suggest that the opposition to them is somehow frivolous. In short, dissent from the right is free speech while dissent from the left is merely politically correct propaganda. Thus, when students of color and ethnically diverse backgrounds try to assert their right to be free from routine racism, they are suddenly troublemakers rather than legitimately acting out their free speech. It is an insidious logic that allows right wing spokespersons to claim to "speak for" mainstream positions when they have been the ones who shifted it. When we are reduced to dismissing campus incidents of organized racism under the guise of social events as merely pranks, ignorance we marginalize the
very existence of those who are different from us.
You can read the article at Colorlines here.