random rants

USD Campus Racism/Sexism

To open class today, my World Civilizations teacher asked if we had heard any good jokes. Normally this is just 'small talk' or something to that effect, as no one ever has anything to say. One student today had a joke about Hellen Keller, most often known as a blind deaf girl (who actually was a leader in the American Socialist Movement and strong political critic of the racist policies of President Truman). It was something about her picking up an iron instead of a telephone and burning herself; basically just a stupid joke we could laugh at just for its randomness. Later in the class however, a different student responded to this with some incredibly sexist and racist remarks. He first said something to the effect of "I'm not sure if it was because she was blind and deaf, maybe it is because she was a woman." At this point the class is dead silent in disbelief. He follows up this "joke" with a second joke involving a family tree and a reference to the lynching of a black person. No one in the class seemed outraged however; I was the only student who stood up and said this was NOT ACCEPTABLE. Don't we live in the 21st century?! I have been with groups of people who at times make racist jokes, presumably not meaning them. But this is an academic setting. The class was at least 50% women and had a fair share of African American students. The comments themselves were inexcusable, but I was most surprised by the lack of reaction from our students. We don't need to stand for this crap, we are better than this.

Posted at 09:13PM Dec 11, 2007 by thomas.mackey in General  |  Comments[2]