Tim Taliaferro, Huffington Post, November 5, 2009
Two white Northwestern University students are in hot water after photos of them wearing blackface for Halloween surfaced this week on Facebook and sparked campus-wide outrage.
Student leaders at the Evanston school are holding a forum Thursday night to discuss issues of racism on a campus of overwhelmingly white students that two years ago had a similar incident involving two PhD students wearing blackface. (Scroll down for updates on the forum)
“While I fully support the principles of free expression, at the same time I am deeply disappointed to see any example of insensitivity that demeans a segment of our community,” new Northwestern President Morton O. Schapiro wrote in an campus-wide e-mail. “It is my hope that we can use this incident as a catalyst to reflect upon the values of inclusiveness and respect for others that are central to Northwestern’s mission.”
One of the students covered himself in blackface and wore a T-shirt with the word “Jamaica” on it. The other dressed as a female tennis player in blackface, a stuffed bra and toting a tennis racket.
{snip}
“We as a community must take the responsibility to defy the oppressive nature of our past if we are ever to move past notions of race,” sophomore Kellyn Lewis wrote in a letter to the Daily Northwestern. “This act was not merely an act of discrimination or even racism; it highlights the severe need of a society to face demons of its past AND present to make a new journey.”
“Truthfully, when I saw photos of the blackface kid, I laughed myself out of my chair,” junior Carlton Barzon wrote in the student paper. “I could only think, “Wow. How can someone intelligent enough to be admitted to Northwestern University, ‘Harvard of the Midwest,’ lack the tact to recognize such a racially inflammatory costume choice?”
UPDATE: An estimated 600 students and faculty packed Thursday night’s forum on race relations at Northwestern. {snip}
[Editor’s Note: A video of the Thursday evening forum can be viewed at the original story.
Original article
(Posted on November 6, 2009)
Comments
Way back in 1984, when I was in college at the U of Illinois, I dressed up for a fraternity dance as an. explorer with a pith helmet, and a friend went as my porter, covering his face and arms with brown shoe polish.We got a few laughs, but it was no big deal.If we had done that now, we would be required to immolate ourselves in public.Good lord, it was only Halloween.
Blacks are always outraged over everything. A few years ago-late 1990s-some black rabble-rousers complained that a college picnic at the University of Albany, NY was racist because the term ‘picnic’ allegedly had something to do with lynching!
Everyone knows by now that blacks are always ‘outraged’ because they derive social and political benefits from feigning outrage. If Whites would only start to say ‘no’ to them, or reacting with indifference to their outrage, you would surely see this diminish. If the blacks counter by rioting, just say ‘go ahead and burn your own ‘hood down’. Gentrify the place while rebuilding.
Be sure to watch the second video at the original story page to see how this minor event was treated as an earth-shaking catastrophe by a Chicago news station. It has all the classic elements: the black anchorwoman at the news desk with her serious face on, a white female reporter at the scene of the crime calling it not just “insensitive’ but “horribly insensitive” because it harks back to the days “when slavemasters would mock their slaves,” and snippets from black students expressing the predictable disdain at the whole thing (including one black male who used the word “repercussions” when he meant “ramifications”). Not one peep out of anyone, of course, who thought the whole thing was blown horribly out of proportion. In the meantime, black-on-white crimes go unreported or underreported, and never as “hate crimes.” Just one reason why I never watch the contemptibly predictable (and predictably contemptible) television news anymore.
“…Estimated 600 students and faculty packed Thursday night’s forum on race relations at Northwestern…”
This even made my local paper here in California. Whites dressed in blackface? National Outrage! More need of Diversity Re-Education for Whites! More calls for Hate Crimes Laws! More screams of the need to ferret out White Racism! More rallies against inherent White Supremacism! Whites will always be irredeemably racist!
Meanwhile—blacks torturing and murdering Whites, as in the Knoxville Horror or the Wichita Massacre? Silence. From the media, the government, and academia. No calls for a ‘national dialog’ about the huge amounts of black-on-White rapes, robberies and assaults. No accusations or charges of Hate Crimes for non-Whites that attack Whites.
The Richmond High rape story is already old news, even here in California, off the news, out of the papers. The last thing I read? No Hate Crimes charges will be tacked on to the case as it appears ‘race had absolutely nothing to do with it.’
If not for the Internet, I would know little to nothing about this horrific, hours-long gang rape and beating even though it took place in my home state.
To the media, we Whites are expendable, never victims, only racist perpetuators, guilty until proven innocent (just ask the boys from Duke).
Bon
“We as a community must take the responsibility to defy the oppressive nature of our past if we are ever to move past notions of race,” sophomore Kellyn Lewis wrote.
Making a mountain out of a mole hill is not a good way to “move past notions of race”. In fact, it’s the perfect way to perpetuate, and exacerbate, all the racial divisions that leftists are so good at creating/maintaining. If they truly wish to move past race, then they should learn to either ignore such escapades, laugh at them or shrug them off. I’m wondering if there would have been a similar uproar had black students made themselves look like whites. Probably not.
About twenty-five years ago, I dressed up in an old dress and an apron, painted my face with dark brown paint, put on some big red plastic lips and went to a Halloween party with my new husband dressed as a pirate. Talk about a sight, a pirate and a mammy coming down the sidewalk. Everybody called me mammy all night. I was just having fun, not being an evil racist, as everything we whites do today is called anyway, no matter what if it isn’t bowing down to the almighty black man we are raising up to be a monster in this country.
And, I still have the picture of me at that Halloween party, if y’all want to see it!! Well, on second thought, it might get me run out of town and they might not let my kid get into a good college.
So blacks are superior than whites because they can “endure” more, yet they always complain they’re being oppressed, that they have no power, and even the slightest anti-black gesture from whites gets them foaming at the mouth. Such a thin-skinned people!
What’s wrong about disguising oneself as a black person? Actor Robert Downey junior recently did it to portray a character in an entire movie. I thought it was funny, and I honestly didn’t find anything offensive about the whole thing.
I think your Black population, in the States, is very susceptible.
““While I fully support the principles of free expression, at the same time I am deeply disappointed to see any example of insensitivity that demeans a segment of our community,” new Northwestern President Morton O. Schapiro wrote in an campus-wide e-mail.”
Actually, it’s often not Blacks but the uber White lefists that make a huge deal out of this. A lot of Blacks do have a sense of humor. This past Halloween, at our city’s block party, I saw a few Whites dresses as Blacks and a few Blacks dressed as Whites. The Blacks were not at all offended. Also, I saw Blacks dressed as typical “ghetto” characters ie. “pimp and ho” etc. just as I saw Whites dressed as hillbillies etc. It often is a certain element of uptight, humorless, extremely PC Whites that make a huge deal out of everything, not necessarily Blacks.
““While I fully support the principles of free expression, at the same time I am deeply disappointed to see any example of insensitivity that demeans a segment of our community,” new Northwestern President Morton O. Schapiro wrote in an campus-wide e-mail. “It is my hope that we can use this incident as a catalyst to reflect upon the values of inclusiveness and respect for others that are central to Northwestern’s mission.”
OK, let’s dissect this piece of hypocricy. He “FULLY supports” free expression but crawfishes on his “FULL” support by qualifying LIMITS of “expression.” In otherwords, he “supports free expression” as long as that “expression” meets his personal approval. Schapiro then laments about the sight gag “demeaning a segment of the community” when his own university (I’m sure)”demeans” Whites and our culture on a regular basis in certain college curriculum (as does practically every other university). Also, unless he has either a crystal ball or is some mystical sage, Schapiro is only guessing as to whether this Halloween gag “demeaned” or offended anyone other than a handful of shrieking activists. Then, at the pinnacle of hypocricy, he whines about “inclusiveness” and “respect” for others, yet has denied and “inclusion” and/or “respect” for the kids playing Halloween pranks. As usual, this is simply another in a long line of hypocritical hand-wringing much to do about nothing, other than the eternal victim classes and their lap-poodles simply love to watch us squirm.
Northwestern can get as offended as they want about what happened 100 years ago, I’m offended every time I turn on the Television. No one seems too concerned about that, not at all. And so I’m not concerned about the Historical-significance… By the looks of things, 100 years from now the times we’re living in Now will be viewed as the shameful times. . when ‘Blacks were portrayed as buffoons, as evil incarnate, and as less than the really are, at least judging by the written history here, as recorded by Huffington Post.
About 1970, there was a movie called “Getting Straight”, starring Elliot Gould. It was about a man in his late 20s who had spent the early 1960s working for Black power in the South, and was just now going to college. When asked what he thought of an anti-Vietnam demonstration, he says, “I think it’s sexy. Boys and girls running and screaming”.
There was a recent post on here about a blackface skit on Aussiehttp://media.canberratimes.com.au/entertainment/the-guide/john-safrans-race-relations-818173.html
he gets made up as very odd looking black man and hangs out in Chicago..as he is trying to look sympathetically from the `so called black point of view` he did not face any blackface type criticism
Years ago, at a company Halloween party, one of my female co-workers (of Ukrainian descent) dressed up as Tina Turner - this was at a time when Tina Turner came out with her “What’s Love Got to Do With It” LP. She put on a Tina Turner-style wig, a short dress and fishnet stockings. She used some kind of make-up to color her facial skin light brown in color.
You should have seen the responses from all the older Bantu men in the neighborhood (almost all of whom were derelicts). To say that they had their tongues hanging out, is to say Jared Taylor is a racial realist.
