Black Mizzou Football Players Going on Strike...

[Homer_Rice]

...Over Campus Racism

[Jamie_B]

Good for them, hope to see some of their white teammates join them.

[MichaelWeston]

Seems like overkill from what I have heard. What did the president have to do with the racism?

[Jamie_B]

Looks like the President and Chancellor have resigned.

 

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2015/11/09/mizzou-faculty-walks-out-student-association-calls-presidents-removal/75448392/

[ColdWarrior]

Any campus with tens of thousands of students is going to have a smattering of racist idiots.  Do you think Mizzou is worse than other schools - especially southern schools?   The incidents I've heard described sound like they could have been anywhere.  A poop nazi symbol sounds like the work of a drunken redneck.

 

[Jamie_B]

I think the point is the administration didnt do nearly enough about it.

[ColdWarrior]

About some anonymous poop graffiti and some students yelling out of a moving vehicle?  What else happened?  

If I'm on a bowl committee, I would be very afraid to invite this team as a participant lest they choose to hold my event hostage to some new perceived racial slight.

It will also be interesting to see if enrollment takes a little dip next year at Mizzou.   I don't think I'd encourage my kid to enroll at a powder keg. 

 

[T-Dub]

Football team goes on strike and it's a "powder keg" your kids should avoid.

 

Mizzou wins a national championship & them tipping over cars in the inevitable postgame riots are A-OK, though.

[Homer_Rice]

What else happened?

Here...

Here...

And I imagine there are some in-depth looks at racism in MO., too.

[MichaelWeston]

I think the point is the administration didnt do nearly enough about it.

These things seem ridiculously minor. They are terrible but have nothing to do with the University. Anything that they would do would just be ceremonial. You can't insure that no one is a bigot on campus. 

[Jamie_B]

These things seem ridiculously minor. They are terrible but have nothing to do with the University. Anything that they would do would just be ceremonial. You can't insure that no one is a bigot on campus. 

Ceremonial? You can do alot more than ceremonial things. And while you cant insure no one on campus is a bigot you can deal harshly with matters in very concrete ways once people take their bigotry to places that make other students feel threatened.

[MichaelWeston]

Ceremonial? You can do alot more than ceremonial things. And while you cant insure no one on campus is a bigot you can deal harshly with matters in very concrete ways once people take their bigotry to places that make other students feel threatened.

What would you have them do?

[MichaelWeston]

Here...

Here...

And I imagine there are some in-depth looks at racism in MO., too.

I read the first article. Racism exists. But having to speak for your entire race in a class isn't racism. This is dumb stuff. We have a bunch of students saying isolated incidents happened and that is not worth firing a president over. 

[MichaelWeston]

There is racism. 

However, sometimes you just are not as smart as the kid sitting next to you. That's not racism. 

People wanting you to talk for your entire race isn't racism. It's ignorance. Education is meant to defeat ignorance. 

There seems to be a lot of misguided people here with backing from people in power who are gaining momentum with very little logic to back them. 

[MichaelWeston]

I want to point out how ridiculous this is and how much this might just be problems with an individuals own personality and mental health and then having groupthink move it forward. People know racism exists and they hate it so they see someone and they want to support it. But these types of statements actually have a negative effect once you actually stop to look at them.   

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/11/06/black-grad-student-on-hunger-strike-in-mo-after-swastika-drawn-with-human-feces/

“I already feel like campus is an unlivable space,” said Butler, who is African American. “So it’s worth sacrificing something of this grave amount, because I’m already not wanted here. I’m already not treated like I’m a human.”

Later........

Butler was just starting a Master’s degree in educational leadership and policy analysis when protests erupted in Ferguson. He had attended Mizzou as an undergrad as well and liked it enough to stay.

[Jamie_B]

What would you have them do?

Change the online diversity training to required in person training and make it required for all incoming freshman. Give out expulsions for behavior like this. Make it known that it will not be tolerated on or off campus. 

[MichaelWeston]

Change the online diversity training to required in person training and make it required for all incoming freshman. Give out expulsions for behavior like this. Make it known that it will not be tolerated on or off campus. 

All sounds reasonable. But firing the president? Did they do nothing for this?

FWIW Online diversity training is basically meaningless. How many of those things do you have to take? They are essentially ceremonial. 

[Jamie_B]

All sounds reasonable. But firing the president? Did they do nothing for this?

FWIW Online diversity training is basically meaningless. How many of those things do you have to take? They are essentially ceremonial. 

That's all they did to my knowledge, they set up an online diversity course.

[AmishBengalFan]

Mizzou's campus is in Columbia, MO.  A smallish city/town that has a campus with students, faculty and staff, but it also has local businesses, blue- and white-collar workers... salaried employees, hourly employees, and the unemployed.  It has smart people, average people, and dumb people.  It has those who embrace diversity, and redneck bigots.  I live in Bloomington, IN.  It's the same here.  It's the same in Muncie (Ball State).  It's the same in many, many towns of this size, where there's a sizable university presence in a town filled with folks who MIGHT NOT be affiliated with the university in any way.

Idiots hurling drive-by racial slurs from the back of a pick-up isn't the fault or the responsibility of the University president.  Hell, as bad as that is, I'm uncertain that it can be shown whether the persons doing that were university students, faculty, staff or just local yokels.  And regardless of who "said" those things, it is unclear to me whether a crime had been committed.  Short of yelling "Fire!" in a movie theater, I do not believe that yelling the N-word from a pickup - as reprehensible as that is - is anything other than an expression of Free Speech.  Sure, they are likely to get their asses kicked, and are just as likely to find themselves distanced from folks who don't want to hang with racist bigots, but that's all.

Indiana is hardly in the "South", but I've seen boneheads driving around here with huge Confederate flags waiving from the bed of their pickup truck.  Yeah, Free Speech, but to me the only thing they're saying is, "Look at me!  I'm an idiot!"  Here's a photo I snapped in a parking lot:

(Not sure, but that looks like a Confederate Rainbow Gay Pride flag to me.)

The owner of this truck could certainly drive his vehicle around campus - the roads in Bloomington connect right into the roads on campus.  If he were to do this, and if some of the students on campus announced that they felt "unsafe".... uhhh.... then what?  The President resigns?  Really?

The three "racial" incidents that I have heard reported about that provoked the student/team response were: #1 - The drive by insult in SEPTEMBER; #2 - A drunk white college kid using the N-word at a party in OCTOBER; and #3 - Someone doing fecal art to make a poop swastika.  I don't see any of these as evidence of institutionalized racism at the University, I am certain that the University president did not commit nor condone these acts, and I don't really understand what type of reaction these folks wanted from the University in response to them.

Do we even know (except for #2) that any of this was done by a member of the student body or an employee of the University?

[MichaelWeston]

Mizzou's campus is in Columbia, MO.  A smallish city/town that has a campus with students, faculty and staff, but it also has local businesses, blue- and white-collar workers... salaried employees, hourly employees, and the unemployed.  It has smart people, average people, and dumb people.  It has those who embrace diversity, and redneck bigots.  I live in Bloomington, IN.  It's the same here.  It's the same in Muncie (Ball State).  It's the same in many, many towns of this size, where there's a sizable university presence in a town filled with folks who MIGHT NOT be affiliated with the university in any way.

Idiots hurling drive-by racial slurs from the back of a pick-up isn't the fault or the responsibility of the University president.  Hell, as bad as that is, I'm uncertain that it can be shown whether the persons doing that were university students, faculty, staff or just local yokels.  And regardless of who "said" those things, it is unclear to me whether a crime had been committed.  Short of yelling "Fire!" in a movie theater, I do not believe that yelling the N-word from a pickup - as reprehensible as that is - is anything other than an expression of Free Speech.  Sure, they are likely to get their asses kicked, and are just as likely to find themselves distanced from folks who don't want to hang with racist bigots, but that's all.

Indiana is hardly in the "South", but I've seen boneheads driving around here with huge Confederate flags waiving from the bed of their pickup truck.  Yeah, Free Speech, but to me the only thing they're saying is, "Look at me!  I'm an idiot!"  Here's a photo I snapped in a parking lot:

(Not sure, but that looks like a Confederate Rainbow Gay Pride flag to me.)

The owner of this truck could certainly drive his vehicle around campus - the roads in Bloomington connect right into the roads on campus.  If he were to do this, and if some of the students on campus announced that they felt "unsafe".... uhhh.... then what?  The President resigns?  Really?

The three "racial" incidents that I have heard reported about that provoked the student/team response were: #1 - The drive by insult in SEPTEMBER; #2 - A drunk white college kid using the N-word at a party in OCTOBER; and #3 - Someone doing fecal art to make a poop swastika.  I don't see any of these as evidence of institutionalized racism at the University, I am certain that the University president did not commit nor condone these acts, and I don't really understand what type of reaction these folks wanted from the University in response to them.

Do we even know (except for #2) that any of this was done by a member of the student body or an employee of the University?

I completely agree. 

[steggyD]

Maybe the chess team should strike every time they're called nerds.

[Homer_Rice]

I think it's great that a collection of athletes have banded together to take a stand on something more important than a game. I mean, that's what sport is all about, isn't it? Developing qualities of leadership that translate to wider layers of society as a whole?

Could they be overreacting? Maybe, but maybe not. Most youngsters have a combo of emotion and sense of righteousness. We need a little more of that in this, our Age of Acquiescence.

I'd love to see more kids in the streets, protesting what they deem to be the ills of society. Liven things up a bit.

[Jamie_B]

I think it's great that a collection of athletes have banded together to take a stand on something more important than a game. I mean, that's what sport is all about, isn't it? Developing qualities of leadership that translate to wider layers of society as a whole?

Could they be overreacting? Maybe, but maybe not. Most youngsters have a combo of emotion and sense of righteousness. We need a little more of that in this, our Age of Acquiescence.

I'd love to see more kids in the streets, protesting what they deem to be the ills of society. Liven things up a bit.

You and me both.

[MichaelWeston]

I think it's great that a collection of athletes have banded together to take a stand on something more important than a game. I mean, that's what sport is all about, isn't it? Developing qualities of leadership that translate to wider layers of society as a whole?

Could they be overreacting? Maybe, but maybe not. Most youngsters have a combo of emotion and sense of righteousness. We need a little more of that in this, our Age of Acquiescence.

I'd love to see more kids in the streets, protesting what they deem to be the ills of society. Liven things up a bit.

That was a good read. 

The argument from the right would just be....The Rich will move. Why that isn't seen as unpatriotic by the side that says it is absurd to me. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zmji36q8E4o

[T-Dub]

 

Indiana is hardly in the "South", but I've seen boneheads driving around here with huge Confederate flags waiving from the bed of their pickup truck. 

 

I see them in Ohio too & it's confusing as hell considering this state is right up there with Illinois as far as contributing famous units that served in the Union army. 

 

I'd also point out that I grew up in Texas, part of that time in the central part of the state known as "hill country" which is supposed to be a hotbed of Klan activity 2nd only to the eastern part on the Louisiana state line (remember the Byrd lynching in Jasper?)  I've also lived in Kentucky, which has almost as bad a reputation.  The only time I've seen burning crosses in person was off the side of the interstate in Indiana on MLK day.  Indiana seems like the Midwestern Mississipi to me.