The College Conspiracy Full Documentary

The College Conspiracy Full Documentary - College Conspiracy is the most comprehensive documentary ever produced about higher education in the U.S. The film exposes the facts and truth about America's college education system.

'College Conspiracy' was produced over a six-month period by NIA's team of expert Austrian economists with the help of thousands of NIA members who contributed their ideas and personal stories for the film. NIA believes the U.S. college education system is a scam that turns vulnerable young Americans into debt slaves for life.


video of the documentary

Racist Threats at NJ University Warn Student: "You Will Die"

update:

students charged with faking racist graffiti




link

After racist threats were found on the door and adjacent wall of a Montclair State University student's dorm room, the sophomore has decided to move back to her parents' home in Newark, N.J.

On the wall were the words "BLACKS ONLY," with an arrow pointed toward the room. And on the door, someone wrote the N-word, and "Black B---- you will die."

"I instantly started crying," Olivia McRae, 19, told NBC New York..

McRae told her RA, who then called campus police to investigate.

Police were already in the middle of investigating an earlier bias incident from late January, when someone wrote anti-gay graffiti on walls in a commons area.

That sparked the university to sponsor a Day of Unity earlier this week.

Just hours after that rally, the racist writings were found outside McRae's room.

She wants the university to install security cameras in residence hallways, something that Montclair State was already considering, according to Karen Pennington, vice president for Student Development and Campus Life.

"This is just so much of an anathema to who we are as an institution," Pennington said. She added that the university is taking these incidents "very seriously."

McRae, a sophomore who is studying to be an accountant, has moved back to her parents' home in Newark.

She said she will not drop out of school.

"I'm never going to let anybody stop me from being successful -- I already had a hard enough life," McRae said.

Black Duke University Students Outraged At “Racist” Study

 another day more racism from Anglo-America's universities

link



DURHAM, N.C.— A group of about two dozen Duke University students urged administrators Tuesday to create a better climate and provide more financial support for black students, saying they’ve been disappointed so far in how top officials have reacted to their viewpoints.
The students, almost all of whom were black, unsuccessfully sought a meeting with university President Richard Brodhead at his campus office in hopes of explaining a document they describe as a call to action for the prestigious, private southern school.
Concerns range from the future location of a black culture center to the lack of support for a black student group’s annual event and a recent study that suggested African-American students switched to less-difficult majors.
“The university has affirmed through media outlets that it has a commitment to meeting the needs of all its students, including black students,” said Nana Asante, a senior psychology major and president of the Black Student Alliance, who led the procession Tuesday. “We have yet to witness any action that reflects this supposed truth.”
The most immediate cause for students’ anger is an as-yet unpublished study by Duke researchers saying black students match the GPA of whites over time in part because they switch to majors that require less study time and have less-stringent grading standards. Opponents of affirmative action are citing the study in a case they want the U.S. Supreme Court to consider.
But the students say the research is just one example of an environment in which many black students feel uncomfortable. The document they gave to administrators cites concerns over the future location of the Mary Lou Williams Center for Black Culture and the status of the Black Student Alliance invitational weekend, an annual event the students say is in jeopardy because of the administration’s lack of support.
“These are really just symptoms of a contentious and strained racial climate here,” Asante said.
Some of the students’ recommendations include establishing an endowment to create a stable funding source for cultural events and academic programs involving black students, and for the creation of a special university working group to assess whether blacks feel the climate at Duke is unwelcoming.
Brodhead was not in his office Tuesday morning, but an administrator came out to shake each student’s hand and promised to pass the document to the president.
“We welcome their call to action and we welcome their recommendations,” university spokesman Mike Schoenfeld said. Administrators plan to discuss the issues with students, he said.
“These are not new issues at Duke,” Schoenfeld said. “Many people have been working for a long time to create a positive environment for African-American students at Duke.”
The Durham university has about 6,500 undergraduate students, about 47 percent of them white and 10 percent black. The largest group of non-whites is Asian-American, representing 21 percent of the undergraduate population. The university community has been embroiled in racially charged debates before, as during the fallout over accusations of rape — later found to be false — leveled at white Duke lacrosse players by a black woman six years ago. Bad feelings over that case linger in Durham to this day.
Asante said the students will wait to hear the university’s response to their call to action before deciding on what steps to take next.
“We will do what is necessary to ensure that our voices are heard,” she said.

Racism from the University of Texas College Republicans

 more racism from anglo-america's higher educational institutions

link

Some Asians' college strategy: Don't check 'Asian'

racism in higher education

 link

Lanya Olmstead was born in Florida to a mother who immigrated from Taiwan and an American father of Norwegian ancestry. Ethnically, she considers herself half Taiwanese and half Norwegian. But when applying to Harvard, Olmstead checked only one box for her race: white.

"I didn't want to put 'Asian' down," Olmstead says, "because my mom told me there's discrimination against Asians in the application process."

For years, many Asian-Americans have been convinced that it's harder for them to gain admission to the nation's top colleges.

Studies show that Asian-Americans meet these colleges' admissions standards far out of proportion to their 6 percent representation in the U.S. population, and that they often need test scores hundreds of points higher than applicants from other ethnic groups to have an equal chance of admission. Critics say these numbers, along with the fact that some top colleges with race-blind admissions have double the Asian percentage of Ivy League schools, prove the existence of discrimination.

The way it works, the critics believe, is that Asian-Americans are evaluated not as individuals, but against the thousands of other ultra-achieving Asians who are stereotyped as boring academic robots.

Now, an unknown number of students are responding to this concern by declining to identify themselves as Asian on their applications.

For those with only one Asian parent, whose names don't give away their heritage, that decision can be relatively easy. Harder are the questions that it raises: What's behind the admissions difficulties? What, exactly, is an Asian-American — and is being one a choice?

Olmstead is a freshman at Harvard and a member of HAPA, the Half-Asian People's Association. In high school she had a perfect 4.0 grade-point average and scored 2150 out of a possible 2400 on the SAT, which she calls "pretty low."

College applications ask for parent information, so Olmstead knows that admissions officers could figure out a student's background that way. She did write in the word "multiracial" on her own application.

Still, she would advise students with one Asian parent to "check whatever race is not Asian."

"Not to really generalize, but a lot of Asians, they have perfect SATs, perfect GPAs, ... so it's hard to let them all in," Olmstead says.

Amalia Halikias is a Yale freshman whose mother was born in America to Chinese immigrants; her father is a Greek immigrant. She also checked only the "white" box on her application.

"As someone who was applying with relatively strong scores, I didn't want to be grouped into that stereotype," Halikias says. "I didn't want to be written off as one of the 1.4 billion Asians that were applying."

Her mother was "extremely encouraging" of that decision, Halikias says, even though she places a high value on preserving their Chinese heritage.

"Asian-American is more a scale or a gradient than a discrete combination . I think it's a choice," Halikias says.

But leaving the Asian box blank felt wrong to Jodi Balfe, a Harvard freshman who was born in Korea and came here at age 3 with her Korean mother and white American father. She checked the box against the advice of her high school guidance counselor, teachers and friends.
"I felt very uncomfortable with the idea of trying to hide half of my ethnic background," Balfe says. "It's been a major influence on how I developed as a person. It felt like selling out, like selling too much of my soul."
"I thought admission wouldn't be worth it. It would be like only half of me was accepted."

Other students, however, feel no conflict between a strong Asian identity and their response to what they believe is injustice.

"If you know you're going to be discriminated against, it's absolutely justifiable to not check the Asian box," says Halikias.

Immigration from Asian countries was heavily restricted until laws were changed in 1965. When the gates finally opened, many Asian arrivals were well-educated, endured hardships to secure more opportunities for their families, and were determined to seize the American dream through effort and education.

These immigrants, and their descendants, often demanded that children work as hard as humanly possible to achieve. Parental respect is paramount in Asian culture, so many children have obeyed — and excelled.

"Chinese parents can order their kids to get straight As. Western parents can only ask their kids to try their best," wrote Amy Chua, only half tongue-in-cheek, in her recent best-selling book "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother."
"Chinese parents can say, 'You're lazy. All your classmates are getting ahead of you,'" Chua wrote. "By contrast, Western parents have to struggle with their own conflicted feelings about achievement, and try to persuade themselves that they're not disappointed about how their kids turned out."
Of course, not all Asian-Americans fit this stereotype. They are not always obedient hard workers who get top marks. Some embrace American rather than Asian culture. Their economic status, ancestral countries and customs vary, and their forebears may have been rich or poor.

But compared with American society in general, Asian-Americans have developed a much stronger emphasis on intense academic preparation as a path to a handful of the very best schools.

"The whole Tiger Mom stereotype is grounded in truth," says Tao Tao Holmes, a Yale sophomore with a Chinese-born mother and white American father. She did not check "Asian" on her application.

"My math scores aren't high enough for the Asian box," she says. "I say it jokingly, but there is the underlying sentiment of, if I had emphasized myself as Asian, I would have (been expected to) excel more in stereotypically Asian-dominated subjects."
"I was definitely held to a different standard (by my mom), and to different standards than my friends," Holmes says. She sees the same rigorous academic focus among many other students with immigrant parents, even non-Asian ones.

Does Holmes think children of American parents are generally spoiled and lazy by comparison? "That's essentially what I'm trying to say."

Asian students have higher average SAT scores than any other group, including whites. A study by Princeton sociologist Thomas Espenshade examined applicants to top colleges from 1997, when the maximum SAT score was 1600 (today it's 2400). Espenshade found that Asian-Americans needed a 1550 SAT to have an equal chance of getting into an elite college as white students with a 1410 or black students with an 1100.

Top schools that don't ask about race in admissions process have very high percentages of Asian students. The California Institute of Technology, a private school that chooses not to consider race, is about one-third Asian. (Thirteen percent of California residents have Asian heritage.) The University of California-Berkeley, which is forbidden by state law to consider race in admissions, is more than 40 percent Asian — up from about 20 percent before the law was passed.

Steven Hsu, a physics professor at the University of Oregon and a vocal critic of current admissions policies, says there is a clear statistical case that discrimination exists.

"The actual dynamics of how it happens are really quite subtle," he says, mentioning factors like horse-trading among admissions officers for their favorite candidates.
Also, "when Asians are the largest group on campus, I can easily imagine a fund-raiser saying, 'This is jarring to our alumni,'" Hsu says. Noting that most Ivy League schools have roughly the same percentage of Asians, he wonders if "that's the maximum number where diversity is still good, and it's not, 'we're being overwhelmed by the yellow horde.'"
Yale, Harvard, Princeton and the University of Pennsylvania declined to make admissions officers available for interviews for this story.
Kara Miller helped review applications for Yale as an admissions office reader, and participated in meetings where admissions decisions were made. She says it often felt like Asians were held to a higher standard.
"Asian kids know that when you look at the average SAT for the school, they need to add 50 or 100 to it. If you're Asian, that's what you'll need to get in," says Miller, now an English professor at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth.
Highly selective colleges do use much more than SAT scores and grades to evaluate applicants. Other important factors include extracurricular activities, community service, leadership, maturity, engagement in learning, and overcoming adversity.

Admissions preferences are sometimes given to the children of alumni, the wealthy and celebrities, which is an overwhelmingly white group. Recruited athletes get breaks. Since the top colleges say diversity is crucial to a world-class education, African-Americans, Latinos, Native Americans, and Hawaiian/Pacific Islanders also may get in despite lower scores than other applicants.

A college like Yale "could fill their entire freshman class twice over with qualified Asian students or white students or valedictorians," says Rosita Fernandez-Rojo, a former college admissions officer who is now director of college counseling at Rye Country Day School outside of New York City.

But applicants are not ranked by results of a qualifications test, she says — "it's a selection process."
"People are always looking for reasons they didn't get in," she continues. "You can't always know what those reasons are. Sometimes during the admissions process they say, 'There's nothing wrong with that kid. We just don't have room.'"
In the end, elite colleges often don't have room for Asian students with outstanding scores and grades.
That's one reason why Harvard freshman Heather Pickerell, born in Hong Kong to a Taiwanese mother and American father, refused to check any race box on her application.
"I figured it might help my chances of getting in," she says. "But I figured if Harvard wouldn't take me for refusing to list my ethnicity, then maybe I shouldn't go there."

She considers drawing lines between different ethnic groups a form of racism — and says her ethnic identity depends on where she is.

"In America, I identify more as Asian, having grown up there, and actually being Asian, and having grown up in an Asian family," she says. "But when I'm back in Hong Kong I feel more American, because everyone there is more Asian than I am."

Holmes, the Yale sophomore with the Chinese-born mother, also has problems fitting herself into the Asian box — "it doesn't make sense to me."

"I feel like an American," she says, "...an Asian person who grew up in America."

Susanna Koetter, a Yale junior with an American father and Korean mother, was adamant about identifying her Asian side on her application. Yet she calls herself "not fully Asian-American. I'm mixed Asian-American. When I go to Korea, I'm like, blatantly white."

And yet, asked whether she would have considered leaving the Asian box blank, she says: "That would be messed up. I'm not white."
"Identity is very malleable," says Jasmine Zhuang, a Yale junior whose parents were both born in Taiwan.
She didn't check the box, even though her last name is a giveaway and her essay was about Asian-American identity.
"Looking back I don't agree with what I did," Zhuang says. "It was more like a symbolic action for me, to rebel against the higher standard placed on Asian-American applicants."
"There's no way someone's race can automatically tell you something about them, or represent who they are to an admissions committee," Zhuang says. "Using race by itself is extremely dangerous."
Hsu, the physics professor, says that if the current admissions policies continue, it will become more common for Asian students to avoid identifying themselves as such, and schools will have to react.
"They'll have to decide: A half-Asian kid, what is that? I don't think they really know."

The lines are already blurred at Yale, where almost 26,000 students applied for the current freshman class, according to the school's web site.

About 1,300 students were admitted. Twenty percent of them marked the Asian-American box on their applications; 15 percent of freshmen marked two or more ethnicities.

Ten percent of Yale's freshmen class did not check a single box.

Investigation at SUNY New Paltz after ‘Colored Only,’ other racist signs posted on campus

is it me or is there a racist problem in Anglo-American universities?


Link

Campus police and administrators at SUNY New Paltz have launched an investigation after several racists signs - including one on a water fountain that said "Colored Only" - were posted around campus this month.

On Nov. 8, a small "Colored Only" sticker was posted on a water fountain on the first floor of the university's Humanities Building, the school president said in a memo after the incident.

Hours later, another sign in the shape of a hand giving the middle finger was found in Lefevre Hall, a dorm, that said "Lynching n---ers program at 7:30 main lounge," according to a student Facebook page.

That sign originally advertised a dorm event before it was torn into the shape of a hand and scrawled with the racist message, a student said.

The signs were torn down and given to campus police, and SUNY New Paltz president Donald Christian sent an email to students condemning the incidents.

But two days later, another sign calling for "lynching" was spotted in an elevator, the school and students said.

The sign on the left referenced lynching and was posted in a dorm. The 'Colored Only' sign was posted on a water fountain. (Courtesy of a SUNY New Paltz student via Facebook)

Campus police told the Times Herald-Record that they had a few leads, but no arrests have been made.

In statements to students this week, Christian called for a campus-wide forum to address the incidents on Nov. 30.

"We condemn such acts as contrary to our community values, hopes, and aspirations," Christian said in an email on Wednesday.

"While we cannot know the motivations of the person(s) responsible for these acts, having them splinter our community may well feed into [their\] goals. We must not allow that to happen."

Junior Jonathan Espinosa, 20, said he was one of the first to see the water fountain sticker and called it a "hate crime."

The Bronx native told the Daily News that some suspected the signs were posted in reaction to Black Solidarity Day, a Nov. 8 event when many black students were given the day off to gather off campus and celebrate their heritage.

"We came together peacefully among each other as family and friends. And for this to happen the day after was very shocking," he said.

The university's student association and black student union called for students to attend a talk dubbed “Racism at SUNY New Paltz” on Thursday night.

“Some students have said to ignore it, but it think if we continue ignore it, we enable to people to continue to do stuff like this,” Espinosa said.

The Other Penn State Cover-Up: Death Threats Against Black Students

link



Hate mail to black students and a death, all swept away by PSU


As news unravels around the grand jury report revealing charges against former Penn State football defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky for raping and sexually molesting underage boys, some former black Penn State students are now painfully reliving a scandal that occurred at their university ten years ago. In 2000, the year a janitor witnessed a boy younger than 13 (“Victim 8” in a grand jury report) “pinned against a wall” while Sandusky performed oral sex on him, black students and football players on Penn State’s campus began receiving hate mail.
The hate mail sent to black students had nothing to do with Sandusky’s proclivities, but the two incidences shared something in common: both were ultimately covered up by the university, even as both chain of events grew worse. Sandusky went on to molest and possibly rape more boys, according to a grand jury report (Sandusky denies foul play), and hate mail against black students became death threats.
Ultimately, a black man’s dead body was found by police near Penn State as one of the death threats said it would. And some black students had to attend their graduation the following May with bulletproof vests on in fear of their life.
But few know about the death threats because Penn State and Joe Paterno were not willing to allow bad publicity to ruin the university’s image, say some of the black students at the center of the tragic events.
LaKeisha Wolf was president of Penn State’s Black Caucus ten years ago, and she received the lion’s share of life-threatening letters. Today, she watches the news about Sandusky’s rape charges, the firing of Joe Paterno and Penn State president Graham Spanier, and the student riots that ensued, and it takes her right back to her days dealing with the university.
In fact, Wolf and other concerned black students met with Paterno back in 2001 because of information circulating that black football players, like then-quarterback Rashard Casey, had been receiving death threats. Wolf recalls Paterno as almost emotionless.
“He didn’t necessarily blatantly show concern,” says Wolf. “He was just really composed -- kinda non-emotional I would say. It was like he would have had the same amount of energy and response whether we were talking about death threats or what was for lunch. It was just a non-descript kind of demeanor.”


Paterno is known for his deadpan deliveries during press conferences after Penn State games, win or lose. But this wasn’t a game. Students were fearful for their lives. That year, Penn State was experiencing an unusual losing season – a big deal in the college franchise that spawned multiple national championships and undefeated seasons under Paterno’s 45-year reign. Much vitriol was aimed at Penn State’s black quarterback  – also unusual in Penn State’s mostly white quarterbacked history – Casey, who along with losing games was arrested in the off-season for fighting a white cop, allegedly over the cop’s African American date. Casey was cleared of those charges, but even Paterno admitted that the quarterback remained the target of hate mail.
But Paterno wasn’t so moved to have Penn State confront the hostile climate.
Assata Richards, who was a leader of the Village student movement to increase diversity initiatives at Penn State, was at the 2001 meeting with Wolf and Paterno and today still remembers the cold response he gave them about the death threats.
“We asked him to talk to the players because we were concerned about their safety,” says Richards, “and he said in that meeting that he would never do anything to put the university in a bad light. So we said, ‘Then you are choosing the university over students lives.’”
Wolf was chilled by Paterno’s response also. She says Paterno told them, “I’m only a football coach.”
Says Wolf, “To me that said that even if he had specific knowledge of football players’ or students’ lives in danger that he wouldn’t allow that to risk Penn State’s image being tainted and that is something that has stuck in my mind for the last ten years.”
Today, in the Sandusky case, too many details have been revealed that show Penn State officials acted more to cover up crimes than to report them. Whether that was to protect the university’s image or not will eventually come out in court. But the grand jury report shows that when a grad assistant, who we now know is assistant football coach Mike McQueary, reported in 2002 seeing Sandusky raping a ten-year-old boy (“Victim 2”) in a locker room shower, that officials never reported anything to the police.
McQueary, who’s now on leave from the team, reported the rape to Joe Paterno who then reported it to senior vice president for finance and business Gary Schultz and now resigned president Graham Spanier. But no one reported to law authorities. Schultz testified that the allegations as heard from McQueary were “not that serious” and that he “had no indication that a crime had occurred.”
These same people – Paterno, Spanier and Schultz – were the same officials involved in the case ten years ago when Wolf was the target of death threats. But Wolf said none of them nor the police ever questioned her about the letters she was receiving.  Then one week in April, Daryl Lang, a reporter for Penn State’s Daily Collegian, received a death threat letter aimed at Wolf. It read:
“daryl nigger lover lang, since you love niggers so much, … maybe you can do president wolf, a favor by delivering the enclosed letter to her.”
Not long before that, Wolf received a letter from an anonymous source that said “we are determined to rid this place of this black blight on our community. Those like you have been run off or killed.” The letter told Wolf to “have the authorities search mt nittany near the summit, north slope” for the body of a dead “young black buck.”
A few days later, a the body of a black man was in fact found in the area.
Because Penn State officials wouldn’t do anything to alert the student body, and Paterno seemed careless about threats to his players, Wolf, Richards and other black students took matters into their own hands. On April 21, the day of Penn State’s famous “Blue-White” game, Wolf and 40 other students stormed onto Penn State’s football field just before kickoff to draw attention to the racial hate problems – call it an early "Occupy Penn State" move.
Cops apprehended 14 of them, but 26 made it to the center of the field, locked arms and sat down until police broke them up and carted them away. They were all arrested.
Compare that to last week, where hundreds of students occupied downtown State College (where Penn State is located) and held a riot after Paterno was fired, taking down lamp posts, setting cars on fire and overturning a local news van. When Loop 21 contacted State College police to ask how many were arrested in that melee we were told that they “couldn’t tell us because an investigation was ongoing.”
When Assata Richards looks at the Sandusky news, the university’s cover ups, and the students’ rioting protests she says she’s “not surprised at all.”
News outlets, says Richards, “are reporting and saying things today that they said back then: ‘This sounds like a cover up,’ ‘Why weren’t more people notified?’ ‘Why weren’t parents notified?’ It’s scary for me because all of these institutional leaders are the same ones we remember so well and interacted with.”
As for the riots, says Richards: “It’s so interesting because when I heard about Paterno being fired and how students responded, I’m thinking about when we were rallying around our issues and how we were arrested. We were not slapped on the wrist, but we were in no way doing anything harmful. We never destroyed property, but we were arrested for saying, ‘Hey something is happening, people are being harassed and threatened, and a person was killed.’ For that, we were treated as criminals.”

Racism is alive and well in Canada

source


The recent staging of blackface at an institution of higher learning in Montreal is disturbing, to say the least. But it can serve as a potent reminder of the ongoing legacies of racism and racist cultural practices against blacks in the west - and yes, this includes Canada.
As a professor of (among other things) Canadian art history, I can state unequivocally that there is a profound deficit of knowledge of Canada's racist past among university-aged students in Canada. When I introduce topics such as the vast visual culture of transatlantic slavery to my mainly white Canadian students, the majority initially approach the materials exclusively from a perspective of American and Caribbean slavery. It is always a moment of shock when they learn that Canadians (French and British) for centuries also enslaved peoples of African and native descent.
How has the 28-year period (1833-61) of the Underground Railroad (which remembers Canada as the saviour of African-American slaves fleeing northward to freedom) taken on such mythic status in our national consciousness, while the centurieslong history of slaving in the "Great White North" has been almost universally forgotten? The answer, though complex, can be summarized as follows: Canadians have a knack at off-loading their colonial history of racial marginalization and exploitation onto their southern cousins, the United States.
The events at the school of Hautes Études Commerciales should alert us to the fact racism is alive and well in Canada.
In one fell swoop, this student performance maligned various groups on the basis of race, nationality, religion, language and culture. The students not only vilified and marginalized black people in general by "blacking up," but also took underhanded swipes at the entire nation of Jamaica (carrying the flag and wearing the national colours), while criminalizing blacks as pot-smokers (chanting "smoke more weed"), ridiculing Jamaican patois (chanting "Yeah mon"), equating the use of marijuana in the religious, spiritual and meditative practices of Rastafari with getting high and partying for the hell of it, and finally, some even wearing hats with fake locks attached (a problematic appropriation of a black hair aesthetic).
It is hard to believe the students' and university's initial explanation that the group's dress and behaviour were meant to honour the Jamaican Olympian Usain Bolt. Could they not have honoured Bolt dressed as themselves, white students? And if Bolt had been on campus that day, would they really have greeted him dressed in this manner?
Although minstrelsy and its related practices, such as blackface, are most often associated with the United States, this once widely accepted form of popular culture did exist in Canada (as well as in Europe and other locations). A part of the problem is that the histories of minstrelsy in Canada have yet to be written.

Dating to the early 19th century, minstrelsy involved a public theatrical performance that included racist humour, singing and dancing. The mainly white male performers (often of marginalized or so-called "undesirable" white groups, such as Jewish and Irish men) often performed in blackface, applying dark black face paint and deep red lipstick. In this guise, the whites of their eyes were dramatically apparent.
Minstrelsy celebrated a white nostalgia for black enslavement. It is no accident that it reached its peak only after slavery had been abolished. The songs, dancing and "comedy" of the performances hinged on a recitation of the assumed inferiority of blacks and often-violent fantasies of the murder, torture and dismemberment of black bodies. Of course, this all helped to bolster ideas of white supremacy.
Whether or not the group of HEC students knew explicit details of the history of minstrelsy, it is difficult to imagine that they did not know that "blacking up" in 2011 could be construed as inappropriate and racist behaviour. Students are voracious consumers of popular culture (television, internet, print media, etc.). A quick glance at any of these media would tell you that images of blackface have been all but banned from the public domain. The old Hollywood movies where white movie stars donned blackface are almost never screened, and neither are the older versions of cartoons like Bugs Bunny and Tom and Jerry that used blackface.
The HEC students and a university spokesperson said that their actions should not be construed as racist, due to a lack of knowledge. But one could argue that not knowing that this type of spectacle is wrong is a perfect example of racism. Surely racism is not only a matter of intent. If our measure of racism is based solely on what people meant to do, we ignore the impact of the racist acts upon its victims.
The negative message that this performance sends to the black population of the university should not be underestimated. The white students who chose to don blackface eventually went back to classes and sat down beside their black fellow students, listened to lectures delivered by their black professors (although there are very few), checked out library books handed to them by black library staff, and ate meals in campus cafeterias served by black staff. Their disregard for the impact of their performance on the well-being of the black members of their shared university community is telling. It speaks of racial narcissism.
Lest we dismiss what happened at HEC as an isolated incident, we should remember the debacle that took place during Halloween at a Legion Hall in the town of Campbellford, Ont., last year. Unbelievably, the first prize was awarded to a pair of white men, one of whom wore a Ku Klux Klan costume with a confederate flag draped on his back and the other in blackface with a noose around his neck. The direct references to the American Civil War and the heinous practice of lynching made this spectacle particularly vile.

Back to university campuses: here and in the U.S., there is a rising trend of "gangsta" "hip-hop" or "ghetto" parties at which white students congregate in blackface, "tricked out" with "bling," even going so far as to pad their backsides in a disturbing parody of black anatomy. This resurgence of minstrelsy seeks to degrade blacks. Clearly black students are not welcome at such parties unless they consent to being the punchline of a racist joke.
It is unsettling that a popular cultural form that supposedly died in the mid-20th century is making such a strong comeback. It is fitting that we ask why, and why now. Is this not the age of Obama (the first black president of the U.S.), of Michaëlle Jean (Canada's first black governorgeneral), of Yolande James (Quebec's first black female MNA), of the likes of Oprah Winfrey, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice and Canadian businessman and philanthropist Michael Lee-Chin?
I see the resurgence of blackface and minstrelsy as a racist pushback against precisely these types of gains and accomplishments. There is a specific type of racism reserved for high-achieving blacks. Middle-and upperclass blacks - people with education, credentials, good careers, and money - often encounter what I like to call "how dare you?" racism: "How dare you be more educated than me?" "How dare you make more money than me?" "How dare you assume a position of power and leadership over me?"
It should perhaps be even more upsetting to us that blackface is making a comeback among young, educated whites. What does it mean that university-and collegeeducated young adults are engaging in these acts? Well, for one thing, we need to rethink the simplistic idea that racism is more abundant among older populations and non-existent among our youth. Furthermore, we need to ask if "education" is a cure for racism. Clearly education in general is not. In fact, the type of Eurocentric education that proliferates in the curriculum, methodologies, theories, course materials and resources of the majority of university disciplines is precisely what perpetuates the racist ignorance and racist behaviour of students like those at HEC.
Canadian universities' diversity policies, many of which are strategically unenforceable and unenforced, also contribute to the racial exclusion of blacks, people of colour and natives on university campuses, especially as faculty and upper administration. The policies help to propagate the idea of Canada as a race-blind, multicultural state, one that does not really need to engage with the issue of racism, since racism is supposedly not a problem in Canada.
As disturbing as it is, the HEC incident can act as a wake-up call to Canadians and a starting point for a broader public discussion. The university's initial reaction was inept, an attempt to downplay the incident as innocent fun; it was a shining example of how racism is typically "managed" in Canada. International media attention rendered that early response untenable. The question is, what will the university do now? Should the students involved be expelled? Lose a semester of study? Be forced to make a formal apology? Be made to do community service at one of the many black cultural institutions in Montreal, so they could spend time with and get to know some of the blacks and Jamaicans whom they ridiculed that day?
And what about the university's diversity polices and procedures? Why weren't there checks and balances in place to ensure the blackface idea never made it to the level of a public performance?
While I am disturbed by the fact that this blackface performance took place, I am pleased at the critical international media attention that it has spawned. In Canada, this is a long-overdue and worthwhile conversation.

© Copyright (c) The Montreal Gazette

University students in Montreal perform blackface and mock Jamaica and Jamaicans

source




MONTREAL—Students at an elite Montreal business school painted themselves in blackface and chanted in mock Jamaican accents at a back-to-school event that had the university expressing regret Thursday.
The frosh-week stunt was organized by a student sports committee at the Hautes Études Commerciales, the Université de Montréal’s business school.
Participants were encouraged to dress in Olympic-themed costumes, with one group choosing to portray Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt.
Along with donning the colours of the Jamaican flag, several students also covered their face, arms and legs in black paint. The colourful attire included at least one Rastafarian hat, one green underwear patterned with monkey faces, and a stuffed animal that students carried around.
One witness, who is of Jamaican descent, said he felt uncomfortable and was shocked to hear some students chanting, “Smoke more weed.” At one point the students also repeatedly chanted, “Ya man!”
“It was terrible and I felt awful seeing it,” said Anthony Morgan, a 25-year-old law student at McGill University.
“Students at that level can’t have the idea in their head that this is OK.”
Morgan happened to be on the Université de Montréal’s campus Wednesday afternoon as the event was taking place at the school’s football stadium. He recorded the mock sprinters with his BlackBerry camera.
He said he found the display deeply offensive because of the troubling historical connotations of blackface.
“It is connected to a longer tradition of minstrel shows, reducing black people to pretty much jokes,” he said. “They’re put on as a spectacle, to almost look grotesque.”
A spokesman for the business school said the stunt was unacceptable — but he said there were no ill intentions. He said the students should simply have chosen another way to get into the Olympic-themed spirit.
“They interpreted the theme poorly,” said Michael Lartigau.
“We spoke to the students and they found the reaction regrettable and are sorry.”
Lartigau would not comment on whether the students involved would face disciplinary actions.
The director of the sports committee that organized the event said a “great deal of misunderstanding has surrounded” Morgan’s video, which has since been posted on YouTube. In an email, Frank Sciortino said the event was part of the committee’s efforts to encourage physical activity and team spirit.
“My wish was simply to... assure you that in no way were they a racist act.”
Morgan said he doesn’t hold any hard feelings against the students, but questioned what institutional safeguards were in place to prevent such incidents from happening.
“As problematic as it was for the students to be doing this, I thought it spoke more about the university,” he said.