:: Running from the Thought Police ::

:: Thursday, January 11, 2007 ::

Trib Has Its Own Story

And my, did they get some choice new bits:

One member of the Facebook group said she didn't think the group was racist.

"I'm sure that when the group was started, I don't think that anybody took it seriously," said student Lizzy Cunningham, 19, who was a member of the group before the Web page was taken down. "Students were upset about losing the Chief and were trying to get some huge movement started. I don't think they were trying to make racial statements. They were more like angry outbursts."

Alright, Lizzy. According to Facebook (I'd link her profile, but she's got the privacy settings jacked up right now - not that I blame her), you're an alumna of Benet Academy, the same Benedictine institution I attended for high school. As such, I know that you at least have the raw potential to think. Sadly, it appears that you do not know how to realize this potential. Case in point - you're now on record, for posterity, saying that you did not think that joining a group that says you will be come racist was a racial statement.

To repeat it for those who didn't see it the first two times - you claimed not to think that claiming that one will become a racist was a racial statement.

I'll just let that one hang in the air a little, so that all may admire how oblivious one must be in order to utter such words.

This, by the way, is one of the more passive ways that the hostile and abusive nature of the Chief affects our university community: it creates an atmosphere in which such outrageous comments as those which caused the group's demise are not perceived as being horribly racially insensitive, and in which those who utter such broadly hurtful things are only very rarely made to realize the injury they cause others with their words. This is not the active racism of the civil rights era and before, nor is it that which is fondly looked back upon by those who wish Strom Thurmond had been elected president in 1948. This is more insidious, the compounding of many small statements and actions to make minorities, and Native Americans especially, feel alienated and unwelcome on their own college campus. This is the racism that I spoke about earlier, and which IP apparently likes to pretend doesn't exist.

:: The Squire 6:03 PM :: email this post :: ::
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