Tag Archives: Mark Anthony Neal

#Madonna: The Legibility of Racial Slurs – Urban Cusp

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#Madonna: The Legibility of Racial Slurs

By David Leonard on January 21, 2014

Usually a trendsetter, Madonna follows the actions of Paula Dean, Michael Richards, Riley Cooper, Richie Incognito, countless co-workers, neighbors, and college students to use the “n-word.” With her Instagram photo, she has become yet another white person who either doesn’t understand the meaning and history, or simply doesn’t comprehend or care about the harm, pain, and violence that comes every time a white person utters the word.

Either way, her use of the word provides a window into what Leslie Picca, a professor at University of Toledo, and Joe Feagin, a professor at Texas A & M, describes as “backstage racism” – the utterances, slurs, racial jokes, and other dehumanizing language that is rarely seen or heard, yet has consequences.

A picture is worth a thousand words, especially with a racist hashtag.

Used to caption a picture of her son boxing, she noted, “No one messes with Dirty Soap! Mama said knock you out!” she wrote in the Instagram posting, to which she added the hashtag “#disni–a.”

The combination of her son boxing and the use of this word reflects the entrenched nature of racial stereotypes. I cannot help but wonder if her seeing blackness in relationship to boxing, violence, and physicality prompts her use the “n-word” here. Did the associations of blackness to hip-hop (“Mama Said Knock you Out”) and boxing inspire her to mark this activity with this particular hashtag?

One will never know her intentions and, in fact, her intent is irrelevant. She used this word, and she used it in association with her son boxing. Would she have used this hashtag had her son been practicing piano? What if he was preparing for an equestrian competition or polo match? What about preparing to take a test or audition for the ballet? I doubt it.

The word and its use in association with boxing highlight the entrenched nature of stereotypes. As Mark Anthony Neal notes in his book Looking for Leroy, blackness is often only visible as athlete, as violent, and as a physical body: “When we think about black men and boys, when we see them in certain kinds of roles we don’t even think twice about it,” noted Neal, a professor of African American Studies at Duke University. “When we see a black man with a basketball we don’t even have to process that… we know exactly what that means. If we were to see a black man with a violin that gives us reason to pause.”

For Madonna, her son boxing illustrated his blackness; his whiteness notwithstanding, his body was legibly black. The fact that Madonna saw her son as black, because he was, because it illustrates the power of stereotypes; the fact that she sought to identify this blackness with a racial slur tells us how un-post racial we are.

The faux apology is also a reminder of how far we have to come with regards to race in this country. Responding to the criticism, Madonna sampled from the greatest hits of non-apologies, noting “I am sorry if I offended anyone.”

Worse yet, she apologized for giving “people the wrong impression.” While claiming there is “no way to defend the use of the word,” she does just that with references to her intention and what she “meant.” #Weak! Rather than taking responsibility for her words, choices, and actions, she instead focused on how others may have (mis)perceived her “provocative” words.

Clearly, Madonna is preparing for her next album: “Confessions of White Privilege.” Her intentions for using the word are irrelevant, and to be clear, the word isn’t “provocative,” it’s seeped in a history of racism and white supremacist violence. She doesn’t have the power – much less the right – to simply say, “I mean it to be something else,” or to say, “it’s a term of endearment.”

I can hear the responses already; all of which will emphasize how she is a victim of “political correctness” and that this illustrates America’s racial double standards. Ignoring the fact that this entire piece is “one of endearment,” let me respond: America is a nation founded on double standards that provide daily benefits and structural advantages to whites in America. Madonna’s latest post is just more of the same #whiteprivileged #entitlement.

via #Madonna: The Legibility of Racial Slurs – Urban Cusp.

Blame the Institution, Not Just the Fathers

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Blame the Institution, Not Just the Fathers

Illustration by Harry Campbell for The Chronicle

**

Blame the Institution, Not Just the Fathers

Originally Published, Chronicle of Higher Education

Many recent studies analyzing the challenges facing academic mothers seem to blame their stalled careers on the failure of academic fathers to be equal partners.

I’ve seen that easy explanation offered again and again in studies and articles: Men are slacking off at parenting, leaving women overburdened by family obligations and struggling to meet their career demands in academe.

In some families, the incompetent or lax father, or one still attached to 1950s gender roles, may indeed be part of the problem.

But when the issue of struggling academic mothers is reduced primarily to failures by men, that not only lets the university off the hook but also erases the ways in which institutions fail to support nontraditional families or childless couples caring for elderly family members. It ignores the cultural and structural context that affects us all.

The media coverage of these studies focuses on the failure of male academics to transcend traditional gender roles. The premise is that despite the successes of their partners and despite their purported liberal or progressive dispositions, male academics fall back into line with patriarchy. At one level, that is not surprising. Male academics—like male lawyers, doctors, construction workers, civil servants, or men in any number of occupations—are socialized into a society that renders the home as the responsibility of women.

Higher education is no different. It, too, perpetuates the system of patriarchy that positions men as breadwinners and women as “homemakers.” Men are expected to put the job first. Female academics are pushed to care for family and then punished careerwise when they do. In a new book, Do Babies Matter? Gender and Family in the Ivory Tower, Mary Ann Mason and a team of researchers concluded that “the most important finding is that family formation negatively affects women’s, but not men’s, academic careers. For men, having children is a career advantage; for women, it is a career killer.”

But male academics who are equal parents also feel the consequences. They suffer within an environment that sees parenting as a private issue, a women’s issue, and not a workplace issue. Men feel the tensions of a university culture that tells them over and over again, “Focus on your work; she’s got you.”

“Universities do not seem to care if staff and faculty are parents unless legally obligated to do so,” said my colleague Richard King, a professor of critical culture, gender, and race studies at Washington State University. “Do the work. Have kids on your own time. Any conflict is your responsibility to manage so long as you prioritize us over them.”

His observation is confirmed by a study of doctoral students at the University of California, conducted by Mason and her team there. It found that more than 50 percent of men and 70 percent of women saw research universities as “not friendly to family life.”

It’s not just the lack of child-care options and useful family-friendly policies, it’s the regular reminders that kids are not a university problem, they’re a mother problem.

“When I was a junior faculty member 15 years ago, I got into it once with an older colleague over the timing of a faculty meeting (in the evening),” Mark Anthony Neal, a professor of African-American studies at Duke University, said in an e-mail. “When I told him the meeting cut into family time, he intimated that my wife should take care of the child.”

Things have improved somewhat since then, he said. But he wondered how a faculty member’s gender and tenure status, as well as the type of university, determine the level of improvement. Universities are neither encouraging nor creating the conditions for male academics to be equal parents.

A 2012 study of married tenure-track fathers with young children found that only three out of 109 fathers reported completing half the child-care work. An article about the study in Businessweek was headlined: “Even in Academia, Dads Don’t Do Diapers.”

In response to such findings, Neal described his parenting life as one of multiple shifts and obligations: “I did a lot of diapers. I did a lot of early-morning feedings. Do the vast majority of the cooking. Still do carpool regularly. When I’m sitting in carpool lines, I see lots of fathers. … I’m sure such studies miss the complex ways that men parent—often out of the limelight and with diminishing resources.”

The ability to rearrange work schedules and work odd hours also helps fathers assume greater responsibility over child care. Being an academic is both a privilege and burden in that regard. “Being an academic and a parent really means that you serve two gods—neither can be arranged around a traditional 9-to-5, five-day, 40-hour week,” said Neal. “I find that I am most successful at both when I’m willing to be flexible and improvise around my time and energies.”

King, the Washington State professor, said one of the best perks of academic life “is a flexible schedule. It has allowed me to be present regularly, with much greater frequency than peers in other professions. This fostered better co-parenting and a stronger bond with kids.”

So some fathers are pulling their weight, and more of them need to. With shifts in campus policies toward a greater emphasis on balancing work and life issues, and with more efforts to change the culture of university life, one can hope that we might see change across the board.

Hope for alternative approaches is already evident. In response to the headline, “Even in Academia, Dads Don’t Do Diapers,” Oliver Wang, an associate professor of sociology at California State University at Long Beach, pushed back at the conclusions of those parenting studies. The fathers in his academic network have had ample exposure to feminist thought and theory, he said, noting: “I don’t see that finding as reflective of the academic fathers I know.”

Randall Craig, a professor of English at the State University of New York at Albany, agreed: “Insofar as it concerns parenting, this study bears no resemblance whatsoever to my own experience.”

Yet in many departments, the lingering expectations about male and female roles when it comes to children continue to affect both the women and the men.

I remember the day as if it were yesterday. I had a faculty meeting, and my child-care arrangements had fallen through. No problem, I thought. I headed to the campus with my infant daughter, Rea—diapers, bottle, and bag of toys in hand. All was well in my mind, but for my department chair, not so much. On that day, as with others, I was reminded that my responsibilities as a parent and as a professor were anything but complementary.

The department chair told me that I was not allowed to bring her to the office, and told my colleagues not to hold Rea, because doing so was a “liability.” In another instance, I was encouraged to reduce my appointment to part time if I couldn’t meet my responsibilities as a professor. On that particular day, I had had the audacity to note my child-care responsibilities in response to a demand that I attend a meeting the following day. Again the message was clear: Focus on my job, and leave the parenting to someone else.

As a father, in seeking to defy the heteronormative script that told me to leave the bulk of parenting to my wife, I was reminded over and over again to stay in my proper role. For my female colleagues with kids, for those without children, or for those caring for other family members, the lessons come at different moments, but each in the end makes clear how universities are failing to promote a work environment that nurtures the appropriate mix of work and life, that mentors people alongside professionals.

Is a picture worth a 1000 words? Race and the politics of mourning

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Hank Willis Thomas

***

June 26, 2013

By

A couple weeks back, Melissa Harris Perry and her guests discussed the power of images, focusing on the debate as to whether or not the public should see images of Newtown violence.  While recognizing the pain and difficulty for the Newtown parents, each seemed to conclude the stakes were too high and that the public needed to see the images.

Michael Skolnick called upon Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy to release the pictures. The past reveals that the sight of images has the potential to change the course of history.  Amid the gun debate, the sight of young (middle-class white) children brutalized may galvanize change.  Skolnick, who later noted, “Newtown changed the conversation because they were white,” highlights the power of the photographs of whiteness.

I think that for Americans, we have to see these images. This is not about politics. This is about lifting the consciousness of our nation. We have to know, yes, these were angels that went to heaven, but this was a brutal, brutal attack on children whose hands were blown off, whose faces were blown off and torsos were blown off. This is not just about glamorizing or sensationalizing what happed in Newtown. This was horror.

Yet, so much of the conversation was about the universal power of seeing evil; that viewing the horrors of gun violence, brutality, or abuse compels outrage and action.  In fact, Melissa Harris-Perry started the show by highlighting the power of images to sway public opinion; pictures shape the debate, elicit emotion, and inspire action:

So it’s a tough choice. And when it comes to choosing to show the image, the slain child, it’s a decision no parent should be faced with having to make. But it is a decision that Mamie Till-Mobley did make in the case when her son Emmett Till was killed in 1955. Instead of having a reserved, low-key, private family funeral, Mamie decided to open the casket. To make the funeral a public experience. To show how killers, lynchers, J.W. Milam and Roy Bryant brutalized and tortured her 14-year-old son to death. Her decision to show the world the battered body and unrecognizable face of her son Emmett served as a spark for the civil rights movement. Till’s example might lead all of us to ask Newtown parents to release those pictures. Be as brave as Mamie Till was.

To illustrate the power of image, Harris Perry and others noted how the sight of Emmett Till, beaten beyond recognition, compelled national attention and outrage, spurring the civil rights movement. In reality, it galvanized and inspired action, among African Americans.  However, the sight of Till’s disfigured body didn’t produce systemic change; it didn’t lead to legislation from congress nor did it compel federal intervention.  It didn’t lead to white America to look in the mirror or confront racism because it had seen its brutality.  Even the acquittal of two men didn’t propel a national movement across communities demanding justice and change.  Till’s death and his life, his humanity, wasn’t, to borrow from Mark Anthony Neal, “legible.” Black suffering was and continues to be “illegible” to much of white America.

Instead, Till’s death and the horrifying images impacted Black America.  Much of white America continued to accept Southern apartheid.  All images are not created equally; the white supremacist gaze clouded the moral, political, and cultural responses. 

It is no wonder that as we look at the Till generation, as we look into the historic archives to bear witness to the impact of the lynching of Till had, we see examples of how the lynching of Till galvanized activism from within the black community. Muhammad Ali and Diane Nash, Langston Hughes and Gwendolyn Brooks, Audre Lorde and James Baldwin, Anne Moody and members Black Panther Party all spoke of the transformative impact of Till. Harvey Young describes the importance in “A New Fear Known to Me”:Emmett Till’s Influence and the Black Panther Party”

While spectacular murders of black people, both male and female, by white individuals and mobs had occurred for centuries within (and across) the United States, the Till case proved extraordinary thanks to Bradley’s concerted efforts not only to openly display her son’s bloated and misshapen corpse but also her maternal grief for the world to see. Although not recognizable as a person – much less a teenager, the face of Till, captured by a photographer and circulated via print media, promptly became a representation of the severity of racial hatred, prejudice, and violence that continued to exist in the nation. … It asserts that the killing not only encouraged a newfound self-­awareness among black youth as “black” and, therefore, as being susceptible to violence, but also provided additional motivation toward the formation of political organizations like the Black Panther Party, which advocated a more aggressive pursuit of social reform than the NAACP and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). Till’s influence on “the Party” appears not only in the recollections of members, who were nearly the same age as Till when he was murdered, but also in the Party’s skillful use of images of injustice to raise civic awareness and mobilize a new movement for social reform, efforts to monitor the police, and establishment of community-based, social service programs which sought to create a hopeful future for new generations of black youth.

Death and its meanings is clouded and constrained by race, class, and nation; bloodshed and violence is narrated through America’s white racial frame.

The differential levels of mourning and outrage afforded to different bodies are visible throughout history.  In fact, the civil rights movement used white supremacy and codified white privilege as part of its struggle to bring down the walls of Jim Crow segregation.  The Freedom Rides and Freedom Summer relied on violence against white civil rights workers to compel national attention, governmental intervention, and widespread outrage.   One organizer noted that, “the death of a white college student would bring on more attention to what was going on than a black college student getting it.”  In other words, the reports of the beating, bombing, brutalization, or murder of African Americans didn’t elicit sufficient outrage and action; images of maimed black men and women, and those who lost their lives to white supremacist hands, did not compel mourning or calls to action.  The sight of maimed white bodies, of whiteness, marked as innocence, as civility, as citizen, and as the future, provoked a differential emotional, political, and media reaction than did violence directed at black bodies.   Writing about a SNCC Poster entitled “For Food . . . For Freedom,” which featured a blond haired white child, Leigh Raiford reflects on the powerful ways that SNCC used the accepted humanity of white bodies in their fight for justice:

The “for food . . . for freedom” poster also suggests SNCC’s increased awareness of the value assigned white bodies over black bodies in the estimation of U.S. liberals, a cognizance that prompted the recruitment of more than eight hundred predominantly white, predominantly northern college students for the massive voter registration efforts of Freedom Summer. James Forman and Bob Moses rightly anticipated the media attention and general sympathy that would come to bear as young white men and women experienced, if only for a few months of 1964, the same vulnerability that beleaguered African Americans in the face of white supremacist violence. The poster speaks to the precarious situation of whites dehumanized by the matrices of race and poverty.

Pictures exist in a social context; the sight of violence and death is always read through socially-produced scripts and gaze.   Gun violence is profiled racially. Victims are profiled racially. Perpetrators of violence are profiled racially; communities are profiled racially.  The visibility and invisibility of death perpetuates this profiling schema; it reflects the logics of racial profiling as well.

The notion that visibility of violence or death compels national outrage erases the real world context of Trayvon Martin, who has been turned into the perpetrator rather than the victim within some parts of white America (see Fox news).  Look at Jordan Davis, Hadiya Pendleton, Chicago and New Orleans.  What about Oscar Grant, and so many others who have died at the hands of “law enforcement” #every28hours?

When talking about photographs, we must recognize that every life is not treated equally; every person’s humanity is not seen so much so that every image will elicit action and change. As Rebecca Wanzo argues in The Suffering Will Not Be Televised: African American Women and Sentimental Political Storytelling, shaming or “sentimentality” is an “insufficient means of political change.”  Substantive change, especially when we are talking about the suffering and bodies that aren’t “legible” to white America, requires more than exposure.  A photograph that potentially forces white American into a moral crossroad does not guarantee reaction and action toward transformation.   Consciousness isn’t a natural outcome of knowledge; it’s not all about the photo.  Change results from organizing and agitation.  That is the true lesson from history.

Post script

After watching the George Zimmerman trial all week, and listening to a defense team along with the media portray Zimmerman as sympathetic terms; after watching the trial and listening to the demonization of Martin, and the deafening silence as it relates to the case from much of white America, it is clear to be that a picture is sadly not always worth 1000 words.  A picture’s worth is very much wrapped up in the scripts of race, gender, class, innocence, criminality,

Dr. David J. Leonard: Got Solutions? Beyond Denial and Toward Transformation (Part 2)

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Got Solutions?

Beyond Denial and Toward Transformation (Part 2)

David J. Leonard

As I noted in part 1, white denial about racism and demands for solutions (for the racial injustices often dismissed) go hand in hand. As Mark Anthony Neal brilliantly reminded people in a Facebook status update: “The very essence of ‘privilege’ is when you enter into a space and are fundamentally unaware that not only have you changed the conversation, but have made the conversation about you.” Beyond attempting to turn the conversation into what they want, what these demands fail to recognize is white denial about racism, male denial about sexism, and heterosexual denial about homophobia is problematic and is instrumental in the perpetuation of violence, inequality, and privilege. While I remain wary of the demands for solutions, especially in absence of a willingness to work toward social change and accountability, there are many individual and systemic changes that will not only foster greater equality and justice but will address historically produced inequalities. There is much that can and must be done as part of a movement of racial reconciliation and change.

Universal Health Care: A consequence of America’s history of racism, violence, segregation, wealth disparity, and inequality represents stark differences between life and death. Whether looking at life expectancy, infant mortality, and countless illness, we see that racial inequality has consequences. In other words, racism kills. To combat the health consequences of American Apartheid, we must adopt a single-payer national health system. The grave impact of a Jim Crow system of “health care” is seen each and every day. According to a recent study from Harvard University, “Nearly 45,000 people die in the United States each year — one every 12 minutes — in large part because they lack health insurance and can not get good care.” Race matters here. Tim Wise notes that each year 100,000 African Americans die “who wouldn’t if black mortality rates were equal to that of whites.” Universal health care would not solve these disparities but it would certainly dramatically intercede against racism’s assault on the basic human right of life. Lesley M Russell makes this clear:

Racial and ethnic minorities make up more than half of America’s uninsured and they suffer higher rates of chronic illness than the general population. They are more likely to experience risk factors that predispose them to chronic illnesses such as obesity, and are much less likely to receive preventive screenings, regular care, and to fill needed prescriptions that could prevent or ameliorate their conditions. Because being uninsured often means postponing needed heath care services, people of color are diagnosed at more advanced disease stages, and once diagnosed, they receive poorer care. Inevitably, they are sicker and die sooner.

A single payer system may not be a complete solution but it is a way to save lives, improve lives, and challenge the ongoing history of racism. Who is on board? It would seem that providing health care and dismantling America’s prison nation is the ultimate fulfillment of family values. You want a solution, how about respecting and valuing every person’s family; now that’s some values I can get on board with.

While we are nationalizing things, how about we abandon the inequitable local funding formulas employed by school districts and ensure that equity and equality is maintained in each and every school district. Since I know everyone is interested in change, how about a higher education that is open and accessible to everyone.

Solutions are a-plenty. Abolish the Electoral College and move toward publicly funded elections.

There are of course many solutions, from the Dream Act to dramatically changing the tax code and increasing minimum wage would take us on a path toward equality, justice, and racial reconciliation. If you want solutions, join me in fighting for them: if people get to deduct mortgage payments from their taxes, how about rental tax deductions; if children are deductible what about no children? Free childcare for all; what about public transformation in every community – interested? An end to the war on drugs and the military industrial complex! Are these the solutions you had in mind?

Continue reading @ Dr. David J. Leonard: Got Solutions? Beyond Denial and Toward Transformation (Part 2).

Sexual Harassment in a Culture of Misogyny | The Feminist Wire

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Sexual Harassment in a Culture of Misogyny

By David J. Leonard

At least once year, the media highlights the issue of sexual harassment within the sport world. Often focusing on an athlete harassing a member of the media or someone within the organization, the narrative plays upon sensationalism, often depicting sexual harassment as the result of the confluence of highly sexualized male athletes, products of the über-masculine world of words, with an increasingly integrated sports world. In other words, the media coverage often reduces sexual harassment to tawdry tales involving athletes, seemingly leaving readers to believe that had women remained outside of these “male spaces,” sexual harassment would decline proportionally. Erasing power, legitimizing male privilege, all while denying the frequency of sexual harassment at every level of sporting culture and society at large, the media discourse surrounding sexual harassment often fails in documenting this societal evil.

At the start of the 2011 NBA season (and at its conclusion with a settlement), one story received ample coverage without much analysis and discussion. A former employee of the Golden State Warriors filed a lawsuit against Monta Ellis and the team for alleged sexual harassment. The AP Story described the lawsuit and the allegations as follows:

A former Golden State Warriors employee filed a sexual harassment lawsuit against star guard Monta Ellis on Wednesday, alleging Ellis sent her unwanted texts that included a photo of his genitals. In her lawsuit, which also names the team, Erika Ross Smith alleges Ellis began sending her several dozen explicit messages, sometimes several times a day, starting in November 2010 through January while she worked for the team’s community relations department.The messages included lines such as, “I want to be with you,” and “Hey Sexy,” and periodically asked her what she was wearing or doing, according to the lawsuit.

Sensationalistic, a series of headlines without much analysis, context, and examination, the spectacle here did little to address to problem of sexual harassment within the NBA and throughout society. The allegations against Ellis and the Warriors are not the only instance of reported sexual harassment. One week prior, Warren Glover, a former NBA security official, alleged that he was fired from his position with the NBA, one that he had held for ten years, because of his efforts to expose sexual harassment in the league office:

A former N.B.A. security official says that he repeatedly warned his superiors that women in the office were being sexually harassed or discriminated against, but that his concerns were ignored and that he was ultimately fired for his actions on the women’s behalf. He is suing the league for lost wages and damages.

These two instances, as well as the 2007 case involving Isiah Thomas, contribute to a narrative of the NBA as having a sexual harassment problem. Reinforcing the image of sport as a space of heightened sexism, where sexual harassment is rampant because of sport (macho) culture, the media discourse isolates the injustices, thereby comforting the rest of society. In other words, rather than using these moments to confront sexism and sexual harassment found in the NBA and society at large, such discourse isolates it to sports/NBA culture, thereby reinforcing a pacifying narrative of hypersexual black ballers (the Glover case works a bit different) preying on women.

Continue reading @ Sexual Harassment in a Culture of Misogyny | The Feminist Wire.

Looking for Leroy by Mark Anthony Neal

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Forthcoming book from Mark Anthony Neal will be a must read

 

Preface: Waiting for Leroy

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. A Foot Deep in the Culture: The Thug Knowledge(s) of A Man Called Hawk

2. “My Passport Says Shawn”: Toward a Hip-Hop Cosmopolitanism

3. The Block Is Hot: Legibility and Loci in The Wire

4. R. Kelly’s Closet: Shame, Desire, and the Confessions of a (Postmodern) Soul Man

5. Fear of a Queer Soul Man: The Legacy of Luther Vandross

Postscript: Looking for Denzel, Finding Barack

NewBlackMan (in Exile): Jim Crow University?: The State of Racial Tolerance on America’s Campuses

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Jim Crow University?: The State of Racial Tolerance on America’s Campuses

by David J. Leonard | NewBlackMan

Racial slurs; racist graffiti; taunts and jeers; nooses hanging from doors; and blackface. No, I am not talking about the South circa 1960, but the climate of America’s colleges and universities. If you look around the country, it would seem that some want to take our colleges back to the Jim Crow era when schools and curriculum were white only.

In the last two months of the mockery of post-race America has been quite evident. The “N word” was scrawled on a dorm room and a bathroom at Fordham University. That same month, students at University of Wisconsin-Madison hurled bottles and racial slurs at two African American students who had the audacity to walk past THEIR fraternity house on THEIR campus. At Cornell University, black students walking through campus faced a barrage of racial epithets, flying bottles and catcalls of “Trayvon.” At the Ohio State University, since April, racist and anti-religious epithets have been found on a dorm room door and within the community, including the defacement of a mural of President Barack Obama. These incidents followed the appearance of “Long Live Zimmerman” on a campus building.

For white students the college experience is defined by parties, football games, and new experiences; for students of color it is one often defined by hostility, racist violence, and the same old experiences. Last year, “All N-word’s must die” was found at Williams College. At University of Alabama, a white student screamed a racial slur at a white student, with slurs popping up on campus sidewalks. At Murray State, a faculty member chastised a black student for arriving 15 minutes late to a film screening, noting, “slaves never show up on time.” And the list of incidences goes on and on. This is the sort of racism and violence that has become all too common at America’s liberal institutions of higher education, those places often praised as the breeding ground for the post-racial millennial generation.

Latinos, Asian Americans, and Native Americans also face an increasingly racially hostile environment evidence in cowboy and Indian parties, anti-immigrant chants at basketball games, and countless other examples. While certainly more visible as a result of the power of social media, racism is obviously nothing new to America’s colleges and universities. Whether looking at the history of integration or the practice of “ghetto parties,” institutions of higher education have a long history of racial injustice.

Students of color and faculty of color experience this history each and every day. According to Howard J. Ehrlich, director of The Prejudice Institute, between 850,000 and one million students (roughly 25 percent of students of color and five percent of white students) experience racially and ethnically-based violence (name calling, verbal aggression, harassing phone calls and “other forms of psychological intimidation”) each year. And this only reflects what is reported and what is seen. As Leslie Picca and Joe Feagin have discovered with Two-Faced Racism: Whites in the Backstage and Frontstage, white students use the n-word and tell racist jokes with frequency, a reality that impacts the culture and environment of America’s colleges and universities.

The Jim Crow signs remain visible even as conservatives whine about liberal universities and the discrimination of conservative students. I haven’t seen any Bigots and Liberal parties, or groups of conservative student subjected to catcalls and slurs. There hasn’t been an assault on white history and literature, which remain central to the college experience.

It is also increasingly difficult for ethnic studies, evidence in the attacks on Mexican American Studies in Arizona or the recent blog post in the Chronicle of Higher Education. Excoriated as a “cause not a course of student,” and denounced as “promoting resentment toward a race or class of people” the white only signs are being constructed in classrooms and in college communities throughout the country. These unwelcome signs demonstrate a lack of commitment to and value in diversity, but also how the presence of students of color and the practices of African American and other ethnic programs challenges the very privileges of whiteness.

“What I’ve learned most explicitly about the often racist depictions of Back Studies at primarily White institutions, is that it is a by-product of the on-going project of the discipline to make explicit connections to the work that we do and the communities of folks that exist beyond the four walls of the classroom,” notes Mark Anthony Neal. “Even as some Black Studies faculty are no invested in such a project–and such a project looks very different now than it did during the 1960s, Black Studies continues to reject that idea that it exists in a vacuum.” The continued attacks on the fields of ethnic studies and students of color makes this all too clear.

via NewBlackMan (in Exile): Jim Crow University?: The State of Racial Tolerance on America’s Campuses.