A thought-crime, in at least one college. Despite the fact that the book was held at the university library.
Keith John Sampson… was branded a racist by the PC police on his campus, for doing nothing more than silently reading a book on his work break.
Keith’s African American co-workers filed racial harassment charges against him after they saw him reading a book entitled “Notre Dame vs. The Klan”. It seems that they felt the images of the Klan on the cover of the book were racist, and that Keith was harassing them by reading the book in their presence.
At least until the ACLU stepped in, weakly, and “FIRE” stepped in more authoritatively, causing the university to rescind its toxic characterization of Sampson as a “racial harasser.”
This has much to do with Jeff Goldstein’s frequent “intentionalism” argument, wherein the accused offender loses control of his words the moment that they are uttered, allowing the listener to fold in his own interpretation of the speaker’s intent. It also has to do with the inevitable tendency towards abuse of unchecked authority.
Now, if only that was limited to the academy.
The really sad part about this is that I do believe that Notre Dame drove the clan OUT of their community…
If the victims of this subversive reader had any notion of history regarding this topic they would know that the Klan lost that battle. They might even have an interest in reading the book themselves (with a flashlight, under their covers, late at night)
Nah….
The book was subversive. It showed that whites (the “ice people” according to Dr. Leonard Jeffries of CCNY) recoiled from the Klan during its hayday. This cannot be truth; it does not fit in with the message being taught throughout the land today. America is all evil. If you say differently, you are definitely not PC and must be censored and censured.
It’s a good book. I’d never heard the story in my 4 years at ND.
The Indiana Klan was primarily anti-catholic at the time, so the racial component wasn’t even mentioned in the book. (I think – it’s been a while since I read it.)
While the Klan began as a reaction against the highly corrupt reconstruction governments, it was dead by the time the Hayes-Tilden presidential election was over (the settlement of the contested election required withdrawal of Northern troops from the south). The Klan revived as an anti-Black, Anti-Jewish, Anti-Catholic organization in the early 1900s. The Film “Birth of Nation” had scenes from a Klan event at Stone Mountain, Georgia, publicizing its revival. The Klan would never have gotten off the ground in the 1900 without Jim Crow, which existed in 26 states, Indiana included, if memory serves. In recent years the Klan was strongest in Ohio, of all places.
By that measure, I would find anyone reading a book with Obama on the cover to be causing me deep and grievous personal harm. Or a book about General Custer – I would have to assume that the reader was racist towards Native Americans.
We could take this all ar0und the block and back. And what makes it really funny to me is that it’s happened at a supposed bastion of liberalism and protection of free speech – a university.
I guess it’s only free speech when some nimrod doesn’t imagine the world revolves around them.
Funny, but in one of my favorite movies, a woman (portraying a conservative) rallies for a vote for the removal of an authors book from the local school library shelves and is painted as a raving lunatic complete with the moniker of being “Eva Braun”. They made her out to be evil, quite convincingly too.
Now we have a reversal in that course. Villification of a person for the mere act of engaging in reading of a book. How dare he do so in the presence of those whom find fault in anything that suits them. This is ironic at best, but mostly is serves as prophecy if we don’t watch where we’re going.
The PC Police have been subversing our culture for quite a long time, sublimally and now right in our face. The errosion of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights is constant, with relentless attacks from the liberal lunatics.
Oh, and the movie? Field of Dreams.
Did anyone notice in all of this two things? First, the “apology” from the IUPUI President was in essence a non-apology, apology if one reads the cya wording of his letter carefully–but that’s typical and to be expected from these kinds of bureaucratic weasels. Of even greater interest/evil is the fact that the idiot compliance officer who made the original finding–in the time honored bureaucratic tradition of “F**K Up and Move Up”–was PROMOTED to the position of Vice-President for EEOC compliance AFTER this incident.
Typical.
A “racial harasser”? And for just reading a book too…
Believe me, I have colleagues who have not spoken to me since 2003, when I took the administration’s side in a campus debate on the run-up to Iraq. It really is like this.