“What is it about the term ‘racism’ that silences conversation and sends an anticipatory shudder of delight down the spines of politically correct vigilantes of virtue?”
So begins Roger Kimball, writing on Real Clear Politics about racism. Not surprisingly, the university comes up several times in the piece.
Here’s one example cited in the column, simply titled “Racism, Inc.”
In June, I wrote about an episode that took place a year or two ago at tony Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts. One night, a racist graffito was discovered on the wall of a student dormitory. Result? Red alert. The president of Williams shut down the campus, cancelled classes, and denounced the “horrifying,” “vile” act. He enlisted not just campus security and the local police but the FBI—the FBI!—to search for the perpetrator of this “hate crime.” The culprit was never discovered. At least his (or her) identity was never made public. I speculated what campus scuttlebutt had already concluded: that the offending graffito was scrawled not by racists lurking about the ivied purlieus of Williams College but by a member of the “minority community” whose special perquisites depended heavily on a steady diet of racialist provocation. I heard via friends that at least one other college president took grave offense at this suggestion. Not only, he said, did it make light of the racist incident, but the speculation was groundless.
Did it? Was it? About the first: Let’s say someone discovered a graffito reading “Bush = Hitler” on a student dormitory at Williams College one night. Would the president of the college have cancelled classes? Would he have called the police, the FBI?
To ask the questions is to answer them. But why not? Is “Bush = Hitler” any less offensive than a racial epithet?
About the second issue: Was my speculation about the identity of the perpetrator groundless? I might, of course, have been wrong. The rumor on campus suggests otherwise. But it is only a rumor. So far as I know, there has been no public announcement identifying the culprit. So we do not know. But that is not to say that such speculation is groundless. Why? Because of the evidence gleaned from many other campuses, high school as well as college.
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