White trick-or-treaters in blackface: C/D?

Speaking of churches, I had a very unsettling time at a church Halloween
carnival recently. My children and I attended the carnival at Pulaski
Heights Methodist Church last Sunday at the invitation of a friend/member.
Walking around and laughing with all of the adults was a young gentleman
dressed completely in blackface, including full afro, carrying a wine
glass. He may have been portraying some funny character from a movie -- I
dunno, not as hip as I used to be.

Its ironic, because the same day the D*G referenced a judge who had been
suspended for 6 months for doing that exact same thing. Am I missing
something? I'm not very PC, but it still seems rather offensive and taboo,
not b/c its offensive in and of itself, but simply b/c of the cultural
history including the old Step n' Fetchit bs. Kind of like flying an
airplane into a building isn't offensive per se, but given the context
after 9/11, it is now.

Did his parents not say anything to him? What about the older adults at the
church? They didn't have many AA's in attendance, so maybe the church
members thought it was no big deal.

Oh, and quit sniveling .......... You'll get over it soon, white boy.

but, again, you have no proof, unless U of C actually releases stats on minority recruitment, which i doubt they do. i'm going to assume it's a failure, perhaps it's just my pessimism, but i'm not sure what drives your defense of an institution that has never particularly seemed to try too hard, afaik, to recruit from its own community.

hstencil, you can recruit all you want, but if it's not the right situation, kids are not going to go. It's pretty much as simple as that.

sure. but there's a lot more that can be done than just half-hearted efforts at recruitment (if that's the problem - none of us knows the actual reasons the percentage is so low). i am not so sure, as gabbneb is, that the reason the percentage is so low is because qualified black students go elsewhere, esp. if it's local students we're talking about.

xpost - bard is in the middle of nowhere, not the "capitol of black america" gabbneb.

OTM. (Sorry for calling you a dumb ass, Ethan.)

I was picking schools that, like UoC, have unfortunately low yield rates due to their particular image. Oberlin is in the middle of nowhere, too, and is 7% black.

even just a short walk away from louis farrakhan's house

right across the street from Richard Epstein

Probably because the majority of the posters are male? I could be wrong though.

oberlin was founded by abolitionists, and is only 45 minutes from cleveland.

Also black people don't want to live around Hyde Park, either.

i always thought it was a nice neighborhood! ok, some not nice parts near it, but in general it seems pretty good.

oberlin was founded by abolitionists, and is only 45 minutes from cleveland.

you get 7% at Swarthmore too. and how long does it take to get to NYC from Bard?

I left immediately -- not only because it was offensive, but also EMBARRASSING that the kids did not realize how offensive it was. Also, because there were no blunts.

http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/27.html

xpost

And Gabbnebb, of course personality's an issue. There's nothing at all about the U of C that tries to entice students in normal ways. It's rigorous and it's weird, and that's obvious. It's hard to leave the neighborhood, and the undergrads act like grad students, and they "value neurosis." They have t-shirts that say "where fun comes to die." It self-selects for a particular kind of person, you know, and that needn't make a huge difference with white people or Asians -- the pool of qualified applicants is large enough that you can select and select your way as much as you want. But when you're fighting over the not-yet-proportionate pool of qualified black students, you don't have room to select that fiercely. To be honest I'm surprised they're even close to competitive with some of the other schools listed here.

City Percentage of Total Population
Gary, IN 85.3%
Detroit, MI 82.8%
Birmingham, AL 74.0%
Jackson, MS 71.1%
New Orleans, LA 67.9%
Baltimore, MD 65.2%
Atlanta, GA 62.1%
Memphis, TN 61.9%
Washington, D.C. 61.3%
Richmond, VA 58.1%

does Gary count as Chicago? among the top 10 absolute largest cities, Chicago is 3rd after Detroit and Philly

(2000 numbers)

My understanding is that the Chicago area contains the largest settlement of african-americans north of the mason-dixon. Thats not percentage but pure numbers. Not that I'm taking sides in the SEARCH FOR THE CAPITAL OF BLACK AMERICA

“We all assume that more progress has been made than has really been made,” says Beverly Tatum, president of Spelman College. A psychologist and the author of Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria and Other Conversations About Race, Tatum says: “While colleges and universities are more diverse today than they were 20 or 30 years ago, that isn’t true for public schools, many of which are more segregated. So you have a lot of young people growing up in racially segregated schools and their only exposure to other groups comes from stereotypes in the media.”

Popular culture gives these students — many of whom are clueless about those who are different from themselves — a false sense of race relations, says Charles A. Gallagher, an associate professor of sociology at Georgia State University who studies white attitudes about race.

“People who are 18 to 20 have been raised in a cultural environment with ‘Cosby Show’ re-runs, hip hop, identifying with black characters, they have gone through the multicultural training — for whatever it’s worth — in school,” he says. “They have the perception that they are not only not racist, but they share a kind of social space with non-whites through the media, so they think race doesn’t matter anymore, which just isn’t the case.”

“These pranks reflect the students’ idea that we are in a post-race society and we can make fun of everyone, and make fun of everything,” Gallagher says. “So they don’t see the difference between a ‘ghetto’ party and a toga party.”

Not only are students unaware of the feelings of minority students, many have so little sense of history that they don’t know instinctively that images like lynching aren’t going to be looked at casually by black people. And for all the talk about how colleges these days focus on multiculturalism, experts points out that most white students never study minority history in a sophisticated way or have any sustained focus on race relations.

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2005/10/27/race

well, school diversity statistics often include International stats, but I would imagine that most schools want to count Caribbean students, say, in both categories

As a white man, I feel threatened by lots of things: 1) people that watch TV; 2) terrorists; and gangs, to name a few. However, every time I claim that I feel “threatened” by people they tell me that because I am “white” I can take care of myself. (In fact, a black administrator once mocked me because of my fear of TV-watchers!)

(...)

There is an irony that Kuh’s comments are included in an article addressing how stereotypes continue to cause students pain, but yet he stereotypes fraternity members and their actions.

(...)

I don’t think that there is too much “institutional racism.” Instead, there may be clashes of cultures. In my culture it is considered dishonorable to blame others for one’s problems or watch TV and talk about basketball. In other cultures, watching sports, blaming people, or talking about basketball is acceptable. Is it wrong to notice that our cultures differ in so many profound ways ?

PS: I like rap music.

and West of the Hudson

And that's a pretty great book...not that I needed to read it. I got placed into the all-black dorm frosh year (not by choice) and it was always the source of all sorts of uproar from the rest of the student body. One (white) kid actually argued at a forum that he came to the school for diversity and it wasn't fair for kids to be in a dorm where he couldn't see them. As if it was in Siberia and not like across campus. And as if the only reason we came to college was the bring some color into his life.