Read a Book, Get Charged with Racial Harassment

The New Media Journal ^ | May 16, 2008 | Selwyn Duke

[NewMediaJournal]

The May 9 edition of the New York Post carries a short article by an Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis student named Keith John Sampson. He tells a story of being charged with "racial harassment" simply because he was "caught" reading an anti-Ku Klux Klan book. I'm not kidding. Sampson tells his story:

The book was Todd Tucker's 'Notre Dame vs. the Klan: How the Fighting Irish Defeated the Ku Klux Klan'; I was reading it on break from my campus job as a janitor. The same book is in the university library...

But that didn't stop the Affirmative Action Office of Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis from branding me as a detestable Klansman.

They didn't want to hear the truth. The office ruled that my 'repeatedly reading the book...constitutes racial harassment in that you demonstrated disdain and insensitivity to your co-workers.'

The affirmative-action officer – who draws a salary of $106, 000 a year to perform her crucial role and is obviously a woman of inestimable intellect – neither examined the book nor spoke with Sampson. He wasn't guilty until proven innocent. He was just guilty.

[G Larry]

My response:

“Since your reading and listening comprehension are clearly impaired, let me help you. I’m reading this book so I can do your job better than you do! This book is addresses “how a university DEFEATED RACISM!”

[bamahead]

Of course, fairness and leftist ideologues don’t have the same address. In creating abominations such as affirmative-action officers, diversity counselors and sensitivity trainers, we have empowered people of low character, often vile, ignorant, unintelligent individuals (who else enters such a field?) with degrees in nothing. Some are the epitome of the mediocre modern inquisitor, a person who holds the fate of far better men in his soiled hands as he ruins lives with the stroke of a pen and justifies his wanting existence.

What an absolutely eloquent description of the types of people in these positions. They literally 'fit the bill'.

[skeeter]

Liberals aren't liberal. They are facists, autocrats & despots.

Why everyone doesn't see this is beyond me.

[Sax]

Reminds me of my last semester of college. I had to tack on just a few credit hours, and being a bit of a history buff, I found a class on Nazi Germany that fit my schedule and job.

The professor (former Harvard professor, newly demoted to FL, I guess) required FIVE books. I sucked it up bought the five books and lugged them around with me.

My lady stops me one day as I pulled up and says “You’d better be more careful with those books with the swatiskas on them with your close cropped blond hair and all.” I look down on the front seat of my car and realized I ought to flip them upside down or keep them zipped up in my backback from then on.

[Hegemony Cricket]

Once again, Fahrenheit 451 proves to be almost prophetic...

[RossA]

When I was at Notre Dame (1960s), the stories of the fights with the Klan (which was as violently anti-Catholic as they were anti-Black) in downtown South Bend were still being told. We were told our predecessors had kicked their assets. This book was fairly popular.

[Mugwump]

Funny... I notice from Duke’s tone in this piece that there’s quite a lot of anger just beneath the surface. I refer specifically to the second-to-last sentence.

There are a lot of uppity crackers out there, and I hope we begin to speak out loud and clear that we’ve just about had enough of this nonsense.

I refuse to feel guilty because of who I am. I have had no special privileges in my life, and I don’t hate black and brown people. Never have.

</rant>

[catman67]

You should have accused her of racial profiling and cultural insensitivity.

[Sax]

Hell, it’s kinda ironic, but she’s of German decent, not me.

[Tammy8]

If this was an anti-KKK book, then what are they saying here-- that his co-workers are KKK members?

[vpintheak]

Liberal fascism. It is all they really want, to control the population, is that too much to ask?

[popdonnelly]

The university objects to this book? They should check some of the garbage in the course syllabuses their profs put out.

[Lurker]

Scratch a liberal, find a fascist.

L

[Captain Rhino]

No. She is saying that Negroes...er... Africans living in America...er... African Americans...er...Blacks are now of such tender sensibilities and delicate dispositions that they cannot bear to even see the letters "KKK" on a book cover without being sent into the very deepest chasms of distress, despair, and depression.

( This is, of course, complete nonsense. The blacks I know, work with, and like are much hardier souls than that. They'd never let something as petty as this bother them. But that's her story and she's sticking to it. Kind of has to now that the sierra has hit the fan.)

I can hardly wait for Professor Cornel West to defend this nonsense in his own, inimitable style. NOT!