Recently, someone spotted a Dominican priest on the Indiana University campus, and word spread far and wide that there was a hooded Klansmen with a whip.
A few years back, Oberlin College shut down completely for a day over bogus reports of a Klansman on campus.
Now, personally, I think organized racism is all but dead in the USA, but mine is a minority view on the SDMB. Regardless, if local news here in Austin said there were reports of a white-sheeted Klansman on campus, I’d find such claims ridiculously implausible. Such rumors should have been laughed at in Oberlin. But apparently, fear of the KKK is still strong at liberal colleges.
What about you? At your closest college campus, if rumors abounded that a Klansman had been spotted, would your first reaction be, “I’m not surprised,” “Gotta be a hoax,” or something in between?
I don’t see why misidentifying a Dominican as a Klansman makes anyone a delicate little flower. The KKK plays a WAY bigger role in US cultural history than the Dominican order; it’s natural that white robe + hood would = Klan in many American minds. I bet large chunks of the US have never heard of a Dominican friar, never mind knowing what he wears, but almost everyone has a mental image of Klansmen.
The bit I don’t get is why Oberlin would ‘shut down completely’ over reports of a Klansman on campus. Did the reports say he was armed? Or what?
IU may be over-reaction central, but I was living in Bloomington about 15 years ago, when a crazy guy spent a semester on campus trying to get a hate group started. He was mostly anti-Semitic, but no friend to other minorities.
He ended up somehow in Chicago where he did a drive-by on some men on their way to synagogue on Saturday morning, then came back to B-ton, and killed a Korean student on his way to the Korean Methodist church. He ended up committing suicide, but while the police were looking for him, we had them swarming over the synagogue Sunday morning when we had religious school. The Hillel rabbi had her own personal body guard for the day. For a couple of years afterward, there was a police car parked in the parking lot, just being present when we had religious school, and on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, the days when there were lots of people in the shul.
So everyone is pretty sensitive.
I’ve seen people over-react to groups of people dressed in what turned out to be white coverings over karate gis, hiding the giveaway belt (the logo had an equilateral cross, so it was kinda confusing).
Closing down campus over what may have been nothing was obviously not a necessary action, but there had also been racial slurs scrawled all over campus, “whites only” written above a water fountain, threats and swastikas placed in faculty members’ mailboxes, and an assault that involved some kind of racial slur being used. astorian meant to mention that, but he forgot.
Mine too. Probably some clueless posh kid. A few years ago the UK’s Prince Harry went to a fancy-dress party dressed as a Nazi, for God’s sake.
Different story. The Dominican ‘had a whip’. Oberlin was the one that shut down.
That definitely sounds way more serious than the way **astorian **put it, but I still don’t get why the response would be a campus shutdown. I don’t see what it would accomplish - how it would do anything to stamp out the hate campaign, or identify the perpetrator(s), or make students feel safer, or anything useful at all. I could well be missing something, but I don’t get the logic.
Was it the same year as the shooting at IU? That might explain it. The student belonged to some kind of weird, racist church-like organization, and if there was a whiff of it at Oberlin around the time of the IU shooting, it makes sense.
I agree with astorian. Given how all of these supposed “hate crimes” in recent years have turned out to be hoaxes by the supposed victim, I’d assume it was a hoax. Apparently blacks like to hang nooses and scrawl “NIGGER” on walls a lot more than whites do.
I’d assume it was either a student attempting to stir up trouble for the fun of it or someone heading to a legitimate, but lame, Klan meeting. Couldn’t get very interested either way. It’s not like KKK members are ninjas or something, quite the opposite, I expect they have trouble even walking in those silly outfits.
I’m apparently going to need someone to explain it to me in small words. Why did the school shut down for a day? Because of the Klansman, threats on the walls, or both? Seems to me if some yahoo showed up dressed as a Klansman, security should have been called to escort him (or her) off campus. Threatening racist graffiti is a fairly common staple of school bathrooms and walls (at least, sadly, in my part of the country), and doesn’t seem to be a factoring point.
If I were a college student who saw a Klansman on campus, I’d have called security. I would not know what a Dominican Friar looked like, so I could see making that mistake. I don’t think of myself as a delicate flower.
Actually, I did see a funny video of a Klan rally where a guy tripped over his robe. I can’t find it on youtube, so I don’t know if I saw it someplace else, or if youtube took it down.
Two or three years ago, I saw a group of Dominican friars walking around the Washington, DC mall (the park area with the monuments and Congress) in full white habits and nobody seemed to mind. Maybe people in DC are just smarter or are raised in a wider world in which they are exposed to groups like the Dominicans?
I’m also dubious of the idea of closing a campus just on suspicion of a Klansman on campus. If anything, I would expect the result to be a lot of interest with people descending on said Klansman in order to engage in dialogue. Freshmen desperate for a topic to write about in composition class would be especially eager.
At the university I attended (which happens to be public, unlike Oberlin), there is guaranteed free speech access to the campus for religious and political groups. Don’t like all the Mormon missionaries? Don’t listen to them, or maybe you could try to engage them in some constructive dialogue on religion. They probably won’t listen though (which tends to be how it is). They can’t be kicked off campus as long as they behave decently and commit no crimes.