I should have perhaps said “letting incidents like this become overblown by others.” My apologies to Mr. Bollinger.
Although I wouldn’t disagree that someone who perpetrates such an act probably has some kind of personality problem or desire to get attention, that can certainly go hand in hand with or not contradict another purpose, such as trying to bring attention to racism. It seems from what I remember that oftentimes these fake hate crimes are done by people who have previous involvement with racial issues. No cite at the moment…will try to dig one up when I get some time later.
I might be willing to buy that those people did it to bring attention to their causes. But as far as who did this, I think it’s either some jackass racist/prankster, or, less likely, the professor. Do you know of a lot of dumb, “well-meaning” leftists who fake crimes against others?
Are you thinking of Kerri Dunn here?
Then why doesn’t this kind of thing happen every day there?
NYC is very diverse and densely populated. Why would a purely random racist single her out? Sure, she’s active in opposing racism, but so are a lot of people, and on a broad political front rather than by clashing with a specific group. If she had dissed the FDNY or something–or General Petraeus–then maybe.
There’s good chance an obnoxious student of hers is pushing her buttons. But Prof. Constantine appears to have the motive to want to provoke a Jena-style anti-racist backlash, so maybe it’s a hoax.
Thanks…I do think that might be one I was thinking of, because I recall it taking place in California.
I never called them dumb or well-meaning…I don’t think I would use those terms to describe them. But I don’t see why a hate crime couldn’t be faked on someone else. In this case, say the person who did it is white? It would be somewhat confusing for them to hang a noose on their own door, and certainly wouldn’t do a good job of drawing attention to racism.
Sorry, those were my terms.
There’s no reason it couldn’t, but the difference in penalties is probably enough to dissuade people from doing it. Xander Saide lied about being threatened at knifepoint. If he’d threatened someone else at knifepoint, he could have been killed or beaten, then sentenced to a long time in jail. Instead, when the whole thing fell apart, he only got charged with filing a false police report. If you hang a noose on your own door, that’s basically all you’ve done. If you do it to someone else, even if you later say there was no threat, you’ve committed a hate crime.
I’d be curious to know how many people’s first thought in relation to this incident was “I wonder if it’s just a hoax”.
Dear me. why doesn’t every woman raped, or every black family get a burning cross on their lawn, or every soldier get shot, or every bridge not collapse?
My feeling is the same. I’m very skeptical that it’s the result of racism/anti-semitism that’s organized, institutional, widespread, or otherwise reflective of Columbia as a whole. I think there’s a good chance that the author isn’t anti-Semitic but is just someone who either wants to stir things up or wants to whip up peoples’ emotions against racism/anti-Semitism.
No, they suspended the students for 3 days. That is not ignoring or dismissing it.
They could have done more, but characterizing it as ignoring/dismissal is incorrect.
A slap on the wrist for a death threat is dismissing it, by most people’s standards. Especially when they overrode the principle to do it.
What principle did they override??
I believe he is referring to the PrinciPAL (who may or may not have had principles). The Principal in Jena wanted a stronger punishment for showing the noose - the school board overrode that. The students were still suspended for 3 days for something that could have been defended as freedom of speech (IMHO).
I started a separate thread on nooses & punishment (in hopes of separating out some of the other issues):
Ahh. I thought he might be refering to something from Engels.
:smack: Yes. Principal.