He could have just called the class by another name: “American History” would have probably slid right under the radar. Maybe then there wouldn’t have been such a fuss. Maybe there wouldn’t have had to be a police presence outside a lecture hall at a small state university to ensure student and faculty safety. We’ll never know.
When Dr. Ted Thornhill, a sociology professor at Florida Gulf Coast University, first announced his Special Topics course, entitled “White Racism,” thousands of raging white racists made national headlines with their violent reactions.
The responses Thornhill received were so numerous and disturbing, he had to involve the police.
Some of the emails and calls Thornhill received were from people who simply expressed disappointment about FGCU offering the class and challenged the course's validity. Others expressed their views with foul language, called Thornhill a racist and referred to him using the n-word.
"The number of emails I got pales in comparison to the thousands and thousands of comments and post on all manner of social media and traditional media outlet websites that said things that were unspeakable," he said.
Thornhill sent FGCU police 46 pages of emails and some voicemails that were left for him regarding the course. Thornhill said he sent the emails and voice messages to police out of an abundance of caution.
That outrage seems a bit excessive for a class with a cap of 50 students at a school with less than 15,000 students, most of whom are white. And as the school’s course directory describes it, the class seems pretty well-grounded in reality.
In this course, we will interrogate the concept of race; examine the racist ideologies, laws, policies, and practices that have operated for hundreds of years to maintain white racial domination over those racialized as non-white; and discuss ways to challenge white racism and white supremacy toward promoting an anti-racist society where whiteness is not tied to greater life chances.
This isn’t FGCU’s first brush with racial tension on its campus, of course. In October 2016, students protested the university’s response to racist graffiti found on campus. A month later, white supremacist fliers were found on campus. Just last November, “It’s Okay To Be White” signs popped up overnight.
While the the professor insists the course wasn’t created in response to those events, the University president says otherwise. No matter what the impetus, Thornhill insists it’s needed.
"The course needs to be taught, and so, that's what's going to happen."
Fortunately, the racists stayed home from school today, and all ends well.
The worst thing those fifty students in Dr. Thornhill’s class had to deal with was a media presence. And so far, the early reviews on the course are smashing.
Reporters and cameramen camped out on the first floor of Reed Hall, waiting for the class to end and to talk with Thornhill and his students. No protestors showed up outside Reed Hall.
In Thornhill's class, things went smoothly.
"Everyone was pretty pleasant," FGCU senior Natoya Lambert said. "There was no real tension. He was really funny. Everyone was laughing. It was a good first day.”
Fun fact: FGCU isn’t the first to have a sociology class on white racism, or to inspire such Completely Not Racist responses. The University of Connecticut offered a course with the same name in 1996, one year before FGCU even opened its doors.
Sociology professor Noël Cazenave teaches the class at UConn. He said when he started teaching the course, it caused a lot of controversy at the university, too.
"The attacks on me were very, very vicious and very, very personal," he said. "I was called, 'the white racism professor,' and what have you. And so there was really no sophisticated arguments as to why the course shouldn't be taught."
Over two decades later, so little has changed.