The Nov. 6 edition of The Daily Athenaeum published a story about members of the West Virginia University women’s soccer team painting their faces and padding their buttocks to imitate black women for Halloween.
The President’s Office for Social Justice decided the incident was not racist because there was no ill intent and because they were participating in a fun team event.
The incident itself was not shocking.
Every Halloween, students at colleges and universities across the nation engage in racist activities.
It is as if Halloween provides blanket permission to engage in hateful behavior. Blacks, foreign and domestic, along with Mexicans, Mexican-Americans and Native Americans seem to be easy to reduce to cartoons and caricatures.
I am certain the girls on the soccer team knew they were doing something wrong, because if the report is correct, they asked their black teammates to agree with their choice of costume.
We do not ask permission for things we know are appropriate.
There is no need to.
But I am perfectly willing to believe they have no idea just why they needed to ask.
And I am sure they are unclear about why their Facebook photos should have found their way to the President’s Office for Social Justice for investigation.
Blackface has an ugly legacy that is not a part of our collective education.
We are not taught about how whites painted themselves as caricatures of blacks, to dehumanize us, making it all the more permissible to keep us bound, to marginalize us, to lynch us and to do it all with impunity.
What is now seen as excusable because it was fun was also fun public entertainment in the recent past.
It was particularly fun for audiences to gather during slavery and through Reconstruction to watch men painted in blackface with exaggerated facial features perform as jovial ignorant caricatures of blacks – Jim Crow, sambos and coons.
With the advent of film and television, people were able to enjoy the mockery on the big screen or in the comfort of their homes.
Here in the early 21st century, there is still much fun to be had in demeaning people of color.
The obvious lesson from this incident is that we have holes in our education.
People who would very much like not to be called racist deal in racist speech and activity on a regular basis because of their ignorance.
Blacks as well as whites are ignorant of our national history.
We could all stand to learn more about who we are and from whence we come.
I sincerely believe that if those members of the soccer team knew they were choosing to participate in something with such a hateful legacy, they would have made a different choice.
This is an important lesson, but a larger lesson can be taken from the institutional response to the incident. Truthfully, several messages have been sent by WVU.
First, WVU has said to people of color inside this institution, "You are on your own."
This institution is not interested in addressing the abundance of ignorance surrounding the legacy of racial hatred in the United States.
Nor is the institution interested in standing up against demeaning behavior toward members of this community.
In essence, WVU has told us that we can either suffer racial indignities or leave.
It is no wonder there are so few people of color on this campus if this is the institutionally promoted and maintained environment.
Statements from the President’s Office for Social Justice quoted in the original story are an invitation to dress up in blackface every Halloween to come and perhaps on any other occasion that arises.
Such students will always have this incident to point to and say, "It was a fun event."
Because if fun is had by anyone, even at the expense of other members of the community, it is okay.
So, blackface is fine if it’s fun? What other fun bigoted activities can earn exemption from the President’s Office for Social Justice?
Finally, WVU has said to people outside the University, "This is who we are."
We are an educational institution that looks at a teachable moment and pushes it aside. We believe if no one intended to hurt anyone’s feelings, no harm was done.
It does not matter if those girls cried their eyes out pleading they didn’t mean anything. Nor does it matter that students agreed in advance.
People charged with seeing racism at work and stopping it should be able to see the incongruity of needing to ask permission, or make agreement, when there is nothing wrong in the first place.
Furthermore, it should not be the job of students to balance the racial attitudes and dispositions of their classmates and teammates with all of their other responsibilities as students.
Perhaps they are not interested in teaching their peers. Maybe they are just as ignorant of history as everyone else in this situation seems to be.
It is not their responsibility as students to manage these kinds of circumstances.
If the University is serious about diversity, the Office for Social Justice needs to reconsider its approach to handling these kinds of incidents.
New to this environment, I am curious to know how many such incidents have been swept under the rug in this same way over the years.
How many victims of bigotry and hatred have been left to manage situations by themselves because people were just having fun or some other such excuse?
If this is a pattern, dramatic action needs to be taken to repair what is clearly a broken office.
Denials of the existence of racism are as old as racism itself. Such denials reveal an incapacity for complex thought or belie racism itself. But to demonstrate just how universal the aversion to being mocked is, I offer a parallel.
It did not take long as a new resident of West Virginia to learn how quickly people throughout the state – from the governor to the media to individual citizens – respond with rage when anyone outside the state mocks Appalachians.
Any use of terms like "hillbilly" or "redneck" in reference to West Virginians or any intimation of backwardness or inbreeding elicits deserved accusations of stereotyping.
I support decrying the bigotry in those characterizations.
And those who understand the sting of cultural and social class bigotry should be able to understand my position on having anyone attempt to reduce me to a caricature steeped in a history of hate. What kind of institution is this?
For better or worse, people of color both within the institution and those who may be considering it need to know where we stand.
I ask the President’s Office for Social Justice to make it plain ... if it has not already.
Williams is an Assistant Professor of Educational Leadership in the College of Human Resources and Education.
50 comments
As someone who has hired a number of college and graduate students, I can say that if these comments truly reflect some of the students here at WVU, I would never give any of them a job. Employers are looking for employees with good judgment. We check Facebook and Google candidates and, yes, we've decided not to hire people based on Facebook entries. I'm not going to entrust big-money deals or lots of responsibility to an ignorant person who is so tone-deaf to our multicultural world that he or she would be so willing to offend investors or clients from other countries or other cultures. If any of these ignorant and narrow-minded commentators had an interview with a multinational corporation and expressed the sentiments here, I guarantee that you won't get hired. I also guarantee that they wouldn't make these comments in such a venue because they know that such comments would be perceived as wrong. So go ahead and continue to say get over it already. The people with greater cultural competency and the skills to interact with other races and cultures that you lack will get all the jobs and make much more money than you.
Blackface is always derogatory, and these costumes were clearly offensive caricatures of stereotypes. It doesn’t matter if the event was private. Your published response represents the university’s official reaction to the incident.
And this is not the first time your office has repudiated racial issues. Last year, USA Today reported that Pat White had commented on WVU baseball coach Greg Van Zant’s supposed exclusion of black members from his team.
In the same article, you responded with the following statement:
“I think that's [White’s] opinion, and he's entitled to it. If you look nationally, indeed baseball has very few blacks on those teams.”
This dismissive statement, alongside your position that wearing blackface doesn’t constitute “wearing anything inappropriate,” certainly does not reinforce your office’s stated obligation “to promote opportunity, equality, civility, and respect for all people.”
Without a clear rejection of intolerant behavior committed by those who represent WVU, your office merely perpetuates our university’s (and our state’s) reputation as a narrow-minded center of an archaic, bigoted worldview.Sincerely,
Anthony Fabbricatore
"Ms. Williams, you have unfairly dragged this incident out of the deep abyss that is facebook and put these poor girls in the public limelight,... You have insulted these women by twisting their actions into something they weren't,... "
How can anyone make the perpetrator the victim here? It was insensitive, it was inappropriate, it should be seen as what is: offensive!
The office of social justice should only emphasize that it does not share, tolerate or condone this type of behavior from anyone on anyone else, period.
Facebook happens to be the antonym of abyss as far as public display is concerned and we do not believe that mocking any human for their immutable characteristics is permissible no matter what the circumstances. Halloween is not a license to be a crude, bigot, rude, bully, or any character that trespasses upon the rights of others.
One final reiteration: racism has nothing to do with intent. We all have hangups, we all possess ignorance of or bigotry towards a group of people. It may be professed in a hateful way, or in a humorous way. It does not matter what the intent was, it is the effect of these actions that is powerful.
It is the University's responsibility at the very least to comment on the inappropriate nature of these events, even if no harm was intended. The Office of Social Justice is just that...a forum for shaping and expressing university discourse on the nature of bigotry, of equality, and of how to navigate the sensitivities that exist in today's cultural and ethnic landscape. It is not the OSJ's job to ignore what happened and make light of it.
just because your mentor has the title of professor and her collection phd's and masters and is a ohhh .....wesley grad does not qualify her to be an expert on the mindset of these young women at THEIR event. (their are plenty of educated idiots out there from harvard or yale)
She certainly has a right to her opinion, but to make accusations about WVU and the girls that were part of this event while sitting behind her ivy walls of academia supports my point that college professors while they play a vital role of educating the students in the classroom too often put themeselves on a pedastal of having a monopoly on knowledge / opinions on matters that they become fixated upon.
You and ms williams have obviously made this your agenda and will continue to make accusations concerning all who have a difference of opinion than you. This matter was settled and to come out with a headline "continues to have consternation for some" shows your continual agenda to grasp for straws on this issue.