Old miss is one of the main confederate supporting unis and had a pretty abismal record with segregation. When the first black american student joined in the 60s 100s of us marshall and national guards were used to protect black students alot were injured and multiple other peopled died. They dont have a great history with racismToday, out of boredom, I was reading an article from the Daily Mississippian which appears to have drawn some controversy.
I'll shorten the article for those who can't be bothered reading it: Old Miss Greek (I think a university group?) cancelled an event due to potential racism. Apparently, there had been a breakfast prior to a forum on racism. A student threw a banana peel in the tree, which was promptly spotted by a traditionally African-American sorority. This was perceived to be racist, as bananas are obviously associated with apes. Following this, a white male student admitted pretty quickly that it was him, and he threw it into the tree as he couldn't find a bin nearby.
His apology reads as: “I want to sincerely apologize for the events that took place this past weekend,” Swanson said in a statement to The DM on Tuesday night. “Although unintentional, there is no excuse for the pain that was caused to members of our community.
I would think that should be enough to quell the concerns as it sounds like he was pretty transparent. However, one of the complainants countered with the following:
McNeil said that if the banana peel incident was an accident, people need to consider the effects of their actions versus their intent.
“You see how much fear and how much anger you insight in black people just from an unintentional image,” she said.
To me, this seems pretty excessive. I agree that racism is a huge issue in society, and one that we should be trying to prevent. But is this being too precious? I tend to agree that we should also avoid something that offends people eg. the Adam Goodes booing. Another similar issue is the use of black face in Australia, while we might not have the same black face history, it is obviously insulting to certain groups.
But sometimes perceived racism is not racist at all. For example, the word niggardly has drawn controversy in the United States for obvious negative connotations. However, the word itself has nothing to do with race, it simply means stingy, and has done so since the middle ages.
I sometimes worry that certain sections of society are going too far to find offence. I think that we collectively find it hard to draw a line where bigotry is concerned. I guess racism is ultimately subjective. But when people lose jobs, lose opportunities and face public ridicule over something where there was no racial undertones, I think we have gone too far.
Now, to avoid debate on what I'm scared this thread is going to devolve into, let's all assume that the boy threw the banana into the tree because he had nowhere else to put it. Given this, do you think he should be publicly sorry for offence he caused? Or do you think he's ethically correct in assuming no blame?
Just trust the ABC to let you know when racism occurs, its only done by white christians and it hardly never occurs to jewish people.