ANGERING COMMENTARY FROM WSJ

HEAD: American Politics Aren't 'Post-Racial'

The not-quite-concluded racial drama playing out at Indiana
University-Purdue University at Indianapolis (IUPUI) in the last months
can't be ranked with the embittering rape charge scandal at Duke that so
recently mesmerized the nation. And as news it's not in the same league as
the total war waged against Harvard president Lawrence Summers for having
had the temerity to suggest that factors in addition to prejudice might have
something to do with the underrepresentation of women in math and the
sciences.

Still, what happened at IUPUI is a pungent reminder of all that's possible
now in the rarefied ideological atmosphere on our college campuses - and in
this presidential election year, not perhaps only on our campuses.

The story began prosaically enough. Keith Sampson, a student employee on the
janitorial staff earning his way toward a degree, was in the habit of
reading during work breaks. Last October he was immersed in "Notre Dame Vs.
the Klan: How the Fighting Irish Defeated the Ku Klux Klan."

Mr. Sampson was in short order visited by his union representative, who
informed him he must not bring this book to the break room, and that he
could be fired. Taking the book to the campus, Mr. Sampson says he was told,
was "like bringing pornography to work." That it was a history of the battle
students waged against the Klan in the 1920s in no way impressed the union
rep.

The assistant affirmative action officer who next summoned the student was
similarly unimpressed. Indeed she was, Mr. Sampson says, irate at his
explanation that he was, after all, reading a scholarly book. "The Klan
still rules Indiana," Marguerite Watkins told him - didn't he know that? Mr.
Sampson, by now dazed, pointed out that this book was carried in the
university library. Yes, she retorted, you can get Klan propaganda in the
library.

The university has allowed no interviews with Ms. Watkins or any other
university official involved in the case. Still, there can be no disputing
the contents of the official letter that set forth the university's case.

Mr. Sampson stood accused of "openly reading the book related to a
historically and racially abhorrent subject in the presence of your Black
co-workers." The statement, signed by chief affirmative action officer
Lillian Charleston, asserted that her office had completed its investigation
of the charges brought by Ms. Nakea William, his co-worker - that Mr.
Sampson had continued, despite complaints, to read a book on this
"inflammatory topic." "We conclude," the letter informed him, "that your
conduct constitutes racial harassment. . . ." A very serious matter, with
serious consequences, it went on to point out.

That was in November. Months later, in February of this year, Mr. Sampson
received - from the same source - a letter with an astonishingly transformed
version of his offense. And there could be no mystery as to the cause of
this change.

After the official judgment against him, Mr. Sampson turned to the Indiana
state chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, whose office contacted
university attorneys. Worse, the case got some sharp local press coverage
that threatened to get wider.

Ludicrous harassment cases are not rare at our institutions of higher
learning. But there was undeniably something special - something pure, and
glorious - in the clarity of this picture. A university had brought a case
against a student on grounds of a book he had been reading.

And so the new letter to Mr. Sampson by affirmative action officer
Charleston brought word that she wished to clarify her previous letter, and
to say it was "permissible for him to read scholarly books or other
materials on break time." About the essential and only theme of the first
letter - the "racially abhorrent" subject of the book - or the warnings that
any "future substantiated conduct of a similar nature could mean serious
disciplinary action" - there was not a word. She had meant in that first
letter, she said, only to address "conduct" that caused concern among his
co-workers.

What that conduct was, the affirmative action officer did not reveal - but
she had delivered the message rewriting the history of the case. Absolutely
and for certain there had been no problem about any book he had been
reading.

This, indeed, was now the official story - as any journalist asking about
the case would learn instantly from the university's media relations
representatives. It would take a heart of stone not to be moved - if not
much - by the extraordinary efforts of these tormented agents trying to
explain that the first letter was all wrong: No reading of any book had
anything to do with the charges against Mr. Sampson. This means, I asked
one, that Mr. Sampson could have been reading about the adventures of Jack
and Jill and he still would have been charged? Yes. What, then, was the
offense? "Harassing behavior." While reading the book? The question led to
careful explanations hopeless in tone - for good reason - and well removed
from all semblance of reason. What the behavior was, one learned, could
never be revealed.

There was, of course, no other offensive behavior; had there been any it
would surely have appeared in the first letter's gusher of accusation. Like
those prosecutors who invent new charges when the first ones fail in court,
the administrators threw in the mysterious harassment count. Such were the
operations of the university's guardians of equity and justice.

In April - having been pressed by the potent national watchdog group FIRE
(the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education) as well as the ACLU -
University Chancellor Charles R. Bantz finally sent them a letter expressing
regret over this affair, and testifying to his profound commitment to
freedom of expression. So far as can be ascertained, the university has
extended no such expressions of regret to Keith Sampson.

This case and all its kind are worth bearing in mind for anyone pondering
the hypersensitivity surrounding the issue of race today. The mindset that
produces those harassment courts, those super-heated capacities for
perceiving insult, is not limited to college campuses.

Its presence is evident in this election campaign, which has seen more than
a touch of readiness to impute some form of racism to all tough criticisms
of Barack Obama. The deranged response that greeted Bill Clinton's remark
that certain of Sen. Obama's claims were "a fairy tale," told the story. No
need to go into the now famous catalogue of accusations about the Clintons'
"sly racist" tactics.

There will be much more ahead, directed to the Republicans and their
candidate. Some more, no doubt, about the Willie Horton ad of 1988, whose
status as a quintessential piece of racism is - except for a few rare voices
of reason - accepted throughout our media as revealed truth. To be sure, the
Willie Horton charge has for some time been overshadowed by ominous
predictions of all the Swiftboating Republicans are supposed to be readying.

And Mr. Obama himself, the candidate of racial transcendence, has now taken
a plunge of sorts to old-style race politics. In a pre-emptive dismissal of
future criticism, he warned a Florida audience on June 20 of the racist
tactics the Republicans planned. "We know the strategy," he said.
Republicans planned to make people afraid of him. They'd say "he's got a
funny name. And did I mention he's black?"

All this may be far from the world of the universities. But to those
aforementioned campus ideologues, the thinking is familiar.
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We see it in these NG's when the silly cry of racism is "haacked" like some
"louie" by some of our less sophisticated correspondents for the mere
repeating of one black newspaper columnist's appellation for Obama, i.e.,
Barack, The Magic Negro. The orange fright wig-wearing red noses here should
go back and re-read this cautionary tale...and reflect on their inevitable
regretting on what they wished for.

Dionysus