Posted on 04/27/2005 7:32:29 AM PDT by Chi-townChief
On the surface, it sounds like the story of 19-year-old Alicia Hardin is a bizarre twist in the supposed hate crime at Trinity International University.
But actually, Hardin appears to have a sickness that is affecting middle-class families.
I call it entitleitis.
Last week, school officials removed African-American and Latino students from the campus after receiving three letters containing racial slurs and threats. The letters, addressed to different students, were sent through the campus mail system.
About 43 non-white students were put up at hotels while Bannockburn Police and the FBI investigated, and nearly 260 other minority students went home or bunked with friends. They returned to campus Monday. On Tuesday, Hardin, an African-American student at the school, confessed to sending the letters. The Chicagoan told police she sent the racist mail because she was homesick and didn't like attending the small Christian university.
I'm sure her parents are devastated. Their baby girl has been charged with a hate crime.
They will have to post a $5,000 bond to get Hardin out of jail, and then spend the next few days answering relatives' and strangers' questions about how such a promising young woman could have ended up in such a mess.
"It was probably a cry for help," one white colleague told me.
I'd give her some help, all right, I thought to myself.
Scheme validates nonbelievers
As strange as all this may sound to white people, the average black person understands that Hardin was neither mentally ill, desperate or stupid when she allegedly mailed letters containing racial slurs to black students. She was brilliant in the way that only manipulative children can be.
Hardin wanted to shake up her parents to the point that she would have her way. So she played the one card that she knew would trump any other card in the deck. She seems to have created a situation in which they would be worried that her life could be in danger.
If race wasn't involved, maybe Hardin could have gotten away with her scheme. But Trinity officials weren't taking any chances and evacuated all the non-white students.
Besides harming her family with her lies, Hardin probably doesn't have a clue about the backlash she may have caused.
A lot of white people already believe allegations of racism are overblown or are outright lies.
That disbelief was an undercurrent in the series of racist radio transmissions that plagued the Chicago Fire Department a couple of years ago. White firefighters I talked to then didn't deny racism existed in the department, they just didn't believe the bold racist taunts came from a white firefighter. They believed black firefighters with their own agendas exploited the situation by making racial slurs.
And even if they don't say anything publicly, there are probably a lot of whites in this city who do not believe racism is still a problem. They will read about Hardin's scam and it will validate their disbeliefs.
'Truth' mirrors fiction
In 1999, Rebecca Gilman explored the theme of wrongful accusations in "Spinning Into Butter," which was performed on a small stage at the Goodman Theater.
Set in a small liberal arts college in Vermont, Gilman's play exposed the hypocrisy of a diversity administrator who is forced to confront her own racial conflicts when a black freshman receives threatening, racist letters. The fictitious campus wasn't evacuated, but the faculty and students were thrown into the same kind of turmoil that has gripped Trinity for the fast few weeks.
And in 1997, Angela L. Jackson, a 27-year-old black woman, was charged with mailing racially offensive letters and packages to herself and several prominent black officials. Jackson had demanded that the United Postal Service pay her $150,000 to compensate her for packages she claimed were damaged and defaced with racial slurs by UPS employees. She was convicted of fraud and sentenced to 60 months in prison.
Hardin appears to have fabricated a hostile racial environment at Trinity so that her caring parents would believe the school was too dangerous for her and let her go to another university. What she didn't count on was the university's evacuation plan.
If she is convicted of a hate crime, the young woman could go to prison for five years.
Still, I don't think Hardin had any idea what she was stirring up. Like a lot of other young African Americans who grew up with a lot more than their parents ever had, Hardin was blinded by her sense of entitlement.
Most parents don't want to believe we caused this problem, but we did. Most of us have given our children far more than we ever had, and we've done so even when they were undeserving. The pleas for leniency in this case have probably already started.
But the truth is, Hardin's didn't just hurt herself or her family. Her drama will make it more difficult for students who have real complaints about racism to be heard.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1391701/posts
I disagree - she understood and knew how to play they system like a significant amount of adult minorities do...
I expect that putting those kids in hotel rooms wasn't a cheap operation.
Doesn't the word 'responsibility' get taught as a family value?
Some where along the way, the parents and their lawyers will play the race card to excuse their daughter's behavior. Can't wait to read all about it.
There is a play called "Spinning into Butter" that is based on exactly this kind of incident. In the play, the white faculty members run the gamut from a whiny liberal to a vicious bigot who spouts quotes from , of all people, Ayn Rand (who spoke out vehemently against racism). Being a typical theater contrivance, however, it somehow manages to say at the end that white people are still responsible, even if the racism is perpetrated as a dodge by a minority.
I just thought that was interesting.
how come the university don't send HER the hotel bills?
If there is any justice in the world, they will.
So, for a few days,
the campus there was all white?!
Was there [coughs] looting?!
This reminds me of a just horrible movie named "The Animal."
One of characters was a black man who longed for confrontation but everyone would bend over backward to grant him his wishes because he was black. In the end a friend is facing a torch and pitchfork wielding mob looking for a monster. He confesses the he is the monster, not the white dude. Once he says that, the crowd shrugs and disperses with one commenting, "I ain't gonna be part of a mob lynching a black guy, that's for sure."
I call it racism. Hatred of white people, encouraged by a culture that promotes victimization.
Uh, maybe some have reason to become jaudiced about the racist card being overplayed, overplayed,overplayed, overplayed, overplayed, overplayed,overplayed, overplayed, overplayed, overplayed,overplayed, overplayed, record broke, record broke.
Uh, maybe some have reason to become jaudiced about the racist card being overplayed, overplayed,overplayed, overplayed, overplayed, overplayed,overplayed, overplayed, overplayed, overplayed,overplayed, overplayed, record broke, record broke.
Now for my Booker T addition:
"There is a class of colored people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs. There is a certain class of race-problem solvers who don't want the patient to get well."
--Booker T. Washington, 1911
jaudiced = jaundiced
yeah ,...my wife went to see this play , oh YEAH , I went also , it was tedious and awful to sit through , I was weary from such bolshevik drivel that I'd blocked it from my memory , until now!! ARGGHH
Excellent quote from Booker T.
This column mentions only a couple of "hate crimes" hoaxes, but there are plenty that we know about, and likely a multitude that we don't. Start with Al Sharpton and Tawana Brawley and proceed to black ministers burning down their own churches for the insurance money. Then there was that porky professor who vandalized her own car and spoke at the rally held on her behalf.
Yeah, I am definitely one of those who casts a skeptical eye at "hate crimes".
Come on now. Nobody wants to hear what Booker T. had to say. Haven't you got any quotes from Frederick Douglass or Malcolm X that would apply here? </sarcasm off>
It is an eye-opener.
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