> 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.
> **********
> 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.