Posted on March 6, 2013

The Coddling of College Hate Crime Hoaxers

Michelle Malkin, Townhall, March 6, 2013

American college campuses are the most fertile grounds for fake hate. They’re marinated in identity politics and packed with self-indulgent, tenured radicals suspended in the 1960s. In the name of enlightenment and tolerance, these institutions of higher learning breed a corrosive culture of left-wing self-victimization. Take my alma mater, Oberlin College. Please.

This week, the famously “progressive” college in Ohio made international headlines when it shut down classes after a series of purported hate crimes. According to the Oberlin Review (a student newspaper I once wrote for), anti-black and anti-gay vandalism/”hate speech” have plagued the campus since Feb. 9.

“‘Whites Only’ was written above a water fountain, ‘N*gger Oven’ was written inside the elevator, and ‘No N*ggers’ was written on a bathroom door” at one dormitory, according to the publication.

Swastikas and epithets were drawn on posters around the school. Activists implied the incidents were tied to Black History Month. The final straw? A menacing presence on campus who allegedly donned a “KKK hood” and robe near the segregated black dormitory known as “Afrikan Heritage House.”

{snip} The New York Times, Black Entertainment Television and The Associated Press all piled on with angst-ridden coverage of the puzzling crimes at one of the first U.S. colleges to admit blacks and women.

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{snip} While Blame Righty propagandists bemoaned the frightening persistence of white supremacy in the tiny town of Oberlin, city police told a local reporter that eyewitnesses saw no one in KKK garb — but instead saw a pedestrian wearing a blanket. {snip}

Moreover, after arresting two students involved in the spate of hate messages left around campus, police say “it is unclear if they were motivated by racial hatred or — as has been suggested — were attempting a commentary on free speech.”

Color me unsurprised. The truth is that Oberlin has been a hotbed of dubious hate crime claims, dating back to the late 1980s and 1990s, when I was a student on campus. In 1988, giant signs reading “White Supremacy Rules (Kill All N*ggers)” and “White Supremacy Rules, (F*uck (slashed out and replaced with ‘Kill’) All Minorities)” were hung anonymously at the Student Union building. It has long been suspected that minority students themselves were responsible.

In 1993, a memorial arch on campus dedicated to Oberlin missionaries who died in the Boxer Rebellion was defaced with anti-Asian graffiti. The venomous messages — “Death to Ch*nks Memorial” and “Dead ch*nks, good ch*nks” — led to a paroxysm of protests, administration self-flagellation and sanctimonious resolutions condemning bigotry. But the hate crime was concocted by an Asian-American Oberlin student engaged in the twisted pursuit of raising awareness about hate by faking it, Tawana Brawley-style.

Segregated dorms, segregated graduations and segregated academic departments foster paranoid and selective race-consciousness. {snip}

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I repeat: Mix identity politics, multicultural studies, cowardly administrators and biased media — and you’ve got a toxic recipe for opportunistic hate crime hoaxes. Welcome to high-priced, higher mis-education, made and manufactured in the U.S.A.