Studies in Race
Fear, slurs and incremental progress in HSU’s pursuit of diversity
(Nov. 5, 2009) The announcement just over a month ago from Humboldt State University President Rollin Richmond was confusing and alarming: An unidentified faculty member had resigned in fear after finding a note expressing racial hatred. Beyond that, the contents of the note were not released, nor was the identity of the faculty member, who had requested discretion. Richmond simply called the incident “a hateful and cowardly act,” and on behalf of the university he pledged an “absolute and unequivocal refusal to tolerate this kind of behavior.”
That wasn’t enough explanation for most of us. The event just didn’t jibe with our vision of the university as an open-minded intellectual harbor where prejudice is banished to the world beyond the stucco, mission-style sentry gates. We wondered who would write such a nasty message. Even more confusing, though, was the faculty member’s reaction. Why quit over a simple note, one that, according to reports, didn’t specifically threaten or even name anyone? There must be more to the story.
When the Times-Standard reported what little was known, online commenters went so far as to suggest that the faculty member (a female tenure-track professor, as it turned out) probably wrote the thing herself.
It’s comforting to dismiss the event as merely an unfortunate but probably isolated prank that prompted an absurd overreaction. And since few other details have emerged, that seems as likely an explanation as any. That is, until you start to look closer at the complex dynamics of race and ethnicity on the HSU campus. People have been looking closer, and what they’ve discovered is troubling.
In 2003, a team of administrators, faculty and staff assembled by President Richmond developed a Diversity Action Plan designed to increase the ethnic diversity of the campus community and curriculum. As part of their research, the committee examined a wide range of diversity-related indicators, from the ethnic makeup of the student, faculty and staff populations to the performance and persistence rates for each group, as well as their personal feedback.
Last spring, HSU Provost Robert Snyder requested annual reports from this group, known on campus as the Diversity Plan Action Council. The first of these reports was released in August. In the introduction, Snyder identifies “the twin goals of diversity and inclusion.” What the report reveals, according to authors Radha Webley and Patty Yancey, is exactly the opposite: “Section by section, these pages tell a story of inequity and exclusion, a story where Students of Color on our campus feel isolated and uncomfortable…and marginalized academically.”
In Humboldt County — inordinately opinionated, proudly individualistic, disproportionately white — the mere mention of race can raise hackles. Then again, we may be no different in that regard than anywhere else. Despite (or is it because of?) the election of Barack Obama, the subject remains exceedingly touchy, with accusations of racism, reverse discrimination and “playing the race card” regularly streaking through the national dialog. College campuses, far from immune to these allegations, are frequently characterized as indoctrination factories where liberal professors implant their skewed ideologies on vulnerable young minds, or, conversely, as bastions of critical thinking where ignorance, prejudice and a legacy of institutional oppression get systematically and righteously torn apart.
The diversity report provides context for a slew of recent events that, viewed together, suggest HSU may be just as vexed and anxious about race as the rest of us. A professor was intimidated into leaving HSU, and there is indeed more to the story. But to see it, you have to look past the protagonists to their surroundings.
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23 Comments
Comment / By JOHN ESIIN / Nov. 5, 2009, 6:53 p.m.
I NEVER SHOULD HAVE ELECTED OBAMA. NEVER EVER AGAIN.
Comment / By Thirdeye / Nov. 5, 2009, 9:44 p.m.
Face it, Arcata is a white flight town no matter how groovy it tries to be.
I’m happy that the two black students in the article appreciate the lack of tension relative to LA, but what they were getting away from was not racism. They were getting away from urban decay culture.
Comment / By Drew / Nov. 6, 2009, 9:24 a.m.
We can talk all we want about how there are a disproportionate amount of white people here, and they’re right, but it isn’t a local problem. At the very least it’s a national problem - call it systemic racism. Where does our student body come from? Mostly the bay area and southern california, and other urban areas where the neighborhood you grow up in determines what the future holds for you. Simply put, if you’re poor and/or black, the cards are stacked against you.
Sure, we could enact affirmative action and it would probably succeed in bringing more diversity to the CSU student body, but the reality of it is that affirmative action is a band-aid on a much larger problem. If politicians really cared about bringing equality to those disenfranchised from birth, then they’ll stop taking token measures designed to win them elections, and start a concentrated effort to bring good paying jobs and good schools into these communities. When you have a good job, you’re less likely to commit crime, you’ll do a better job of raising your child, and with a good K-12 education your child will have a much brighter future - and magically the number of minorities at HSU increases.
Give a man a fish, he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish, he eats for a lifetime.
Comment / By Thirdeye / Nov. 6, 2009, 4:16 p.m.
Drew - you’re right that affirmative action is a band-aid solution and improving education in minority schools is the real solution. And in many ways improved education is a prerequisite to bringing jobs to minority communities. But it’s too simplistic to simply call the problems in minority schools systemic racism. Minorities are well represented in the power structures of urban school districts. For political reasons, minorities in school administration are often resistant to efforts to raise academic and disciplinary standards. Remember the “ebonics” fiasco? I suppose that could be seen as racism. Ghetto culture seems largely a product of internalized racism among minorities.
Comment / By Adama / Nov. 9, 2009, 8:39 p.m.
At HSU, the White Race is the only race that’s spoken of in negative and derogatory terms with disrespect by faculty. All other races are encouraged to have their “Pride” clubs and rallies, except the White Race, and everyone is supposed to be happy and engage with this “Diversity” agenda. Everyone but the the White race, that is.
According to some HSU faculty, the White race, and White males specifically, are responsible for all the problems in the world, and that is heard long and loud from some HSU professors. This biased in inaccurate analysis of history is intended to create ‘White Guilt’ which creates lifelong damage and an aberrant mindset for White students.
Are Asian students held responsible for Genghis Khan? Pol Pot? Are Black students held responsible for Edi Amin? Certainly not, but White students and the White race is supposed to be, and is held responsible for all negative things since time began, according to these ‘social engineers’ and ‘Agents of Change’ who are playing with our society on our taxpayer dollars and working at HSU.
It is pure and unadulterated anti White racism and bigotry that’s being taught by some professors at HSU. This agenda is also being taught at CR, but that’s another part of the extended issue. It’s an overall Marxist agenda to make living impossible for people who are White. These followers of Noel Ignatiev and his ilk, do not have the welfare of everyone in mind. Especially not White people, just everyone else.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_W8tBCDif8&feature=PlayList&p=C22457A68DA9890C
We enjoy living in a community that’s for the most part, free from urban rot and the disproportionate ‘diverse cultural’ crime rates and gangs. We’d will keep it that way, and oppose those, who by artificial means and government grants, seek to disrupt it’s existing racial and cultural balance and the relative safety we enjoy here in Humboldt County.
The faculty at HSU is there to teach their respective areas of expertise, not change the racial proportions of one of the few places where Whites can feel relatively safe from minority crime. HSU must not be allowed to turn Humboldt into another ‘Diverse’ hell hole.
Comment / By Jeanne / Nov. 10, 2009, 2:07 a.m.
European American Heritage Month Guest Column By Jeanne Brown Published: Thursday, October 22, 2009
October is European American Heritage Month. Humboldt State University claims to embrace diversity, to promote heritage, but if you look at many of the text books and listen to what is said in the classroom, you will see that diversity means bashing everything European. It means that college students are subjected to this indoctrination day after day and our tax dollars pay for it.
Students have repeatedly heard that practically everything Europeans ever did was bad. Everything they did exploited or hurt another group. There are few heroes in European culture. Even the dead white men called the Founding Fathers were opportunists who were only concerned with preserving their property holdings. Nothing is said about their accomplishments, and if it is, they always accomplished what they did on the back of someone else. We always hear they owned slaves while not hearing that one of the reasons for the Revolutionary War was because the King of England wished to extend the slave trade into America.
Let’s take the Confederate flag issue for one moment. I bring this up because the Confederate flag is constantly designated as a symbol of hate. However, Southerners hold that flag up as meaning something important to the South: Heritage. Part of that heritage includes having fought against Lincoln’s illegal war of aggression against the South. It is a mistake to say that Lincoln was an emancipator because no one in the north was fighting to free slaves while no Southerner was fighting to keep slaves, while the Emancipation Proclamation was empty rhetoric: It freed no one.
[to be continued…]
Comment / By Jeanne / Nov. 10, 2009, 2:10 a.m.
[European American Heritage Month continued…]
What college professor at Humboldt has told students that the majority of white Southerners didn’t own any slaves, that they were poor farmers who saw the Northern armies as aggressors against their country? What college professor has told them they felt that way because they never signed onto the U.S. Constitution but were the Confederate States of America (C.S.A.), which means they were a separate nation? Required reading for college history and diversity courses should include “The Real Lincoln” by Economics Professor Thomas DiLorenzo and “The South Was Right!” by James Ronald Kennedy and Walter Donald Kennedy. At least students can borrow these books through the inter-library system and get a dose of reality.
Regarding illegal immigration into California, we constantly hear how the “gringos” stole the land. After having fought a war with Mexico, the United States compensated that country. Doesn’t count? Okay, let’s go back further: When do we hear college professors stating that Europeans were in America thousands of years ago building cities, aqueducts, solar complexes, etc…? Che-na-wah Weitch-ah-wa, a Klamath Indian, wrote a book called “To the American Indian.” In this book, she mentioned the white people who lived on the Klamath called the Wa-gas who inhabited the whole continent long before anyone. She said they were a highly moral and civilized people who gave the arts and sciences to the Native American people. Her book is found online.
There are many examples that could be cited, but the point is that Humboldt State University and many tax-supported universities and college campuses are teaching college students to despise European heritage. What sort of campus environment is created for white students when their ancestors, even their contemporaries, are painted in a bad light every time they turn around? What sort of self-esteem are they going to have? How does a hostile learning environment help anyone? If other ethnicities are being encouraged to celebrate their ancestral heritage and heroes, then white students have the same right, and certainly the right to learning materials which encourage just that.
Comment / By Adama / Nov. 10, 2009, 6:32 p.m.
Quote
More important than white students’ inaccurate perceptions are minority students’ experiences at HSU, and the diversity report’s graphs and figures tell only part of that story. The report also summarizes student feedback, in which black and Native American students in particular reported feeling less supported academically, less sense of community and less connection to HSU as an institution.
Unquote
The above quote from the North Coast Journal article is a perfect example of the arrogance and dismissive attitudes that White students face when they voice their concerns when the ‘Diversity agenda’ is shoved in their faces. Our perceptions are ‘innacurate’ our thoughts don’t matter. Just the thoughts and feelings of the minorities matter in our Educational Institutions now.
The Majority, according to the ‘diversity social engineers, are supposed to step back and dance around minorities. Their thoughts, feelings, and ideas are dismissed when they voice objections to the Marxist agenda called “Diversity”.
The Diversity crew wonders why larger proportions of minorities fail classes?
If they were ‘getting empirical’ they’d know the ‘minorities’ seldom show up in classes.
They show the first class, maybe the second one, and before anyone in a class has gotten a chance to know them, or hear them participate in the class, they’re gone.
Some are kind enough to drop by for the final, many aren’t. Minority students who show up regularly for classes are an exception to the rule, but do exist. It’s as simple as that. The ones who hang in, and come to the classes, and do the work, do well. College is not easy, and it challenges everyone.
But oh no, let’s blame the minorities not showing up for class on ‘White racism’ and spend more taxpayers money on bring more students here who really aren’t interesting in studying and learning. That should fix the problem. Not.
On adding ‘Diversity’ to the faculty, it may be possible to hire Professor Lionel McIntyre of Columbia.
If justice exists, he’ll be looking for a job, since he just sucker punched a White female student he was having a ‘discussion on White privilege’ with.
Many of the ‘diverse’ faculty nationwide simply do not have the personal restraints necessary to discuss these issues in an Academic way. We realize they’re a dangerous lot, and seek to minimize our contact with them.
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/prof_busted_in_columbia_gal_punch_JmsXQ3NzaAt8uG6uUySGTN
Those who push White privilege on our campuses are poor losers in debate, and may take their revenge on White students grades for simply defending their race and their thoughts, or in this particular case mentioned above, may take it out on their face.
(continued below)
Comment / By Adama / Nov. 10, 2009, 6:33 p.m.
Indeed, those who push ‘diversity’ on campuses are a vile and fascist lot nationwide.
There is no ‘discussion’ of these issues in most classes. Stopping them from pushing Anti White racism and bigotry is goes unheard.
Indeed one may find themselves on academic charges at some universities simply for voicing objections to having their race, male gender, heterosexuality, family centric orientation, and their religion denigrated by certain faculty.
It’s ‘their way or the hiway’.
Whites are forced to listen to their race, their gender - if they’re male, their religion - if they’re Protestant, their family centered orientation, and their sexuality - if they’re anything but gay or pro gay, being ran into the ground and publicly denigrated. This is not the ‘American way’.
You call this ‘Diversity’? I call it hell. I call it a force fed lie. I call it Communist Indoctrination into an agenda designed to create White guilt, and White Genocide in the end.
Another “Diversity” Professor President Richmond might consider is Professor Kamu Kambon. Professor Kambon will speak for himself. He too is looking for a job the last I heard. He’s highly qualified and speaks well of the overall objective of the “Diversity Agenda”.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMOkDOXAovQ
Or since a very large percentage of the “Diversity” professors are Jewish, perhaps they could bring Rabbi Yitzhak Shapiro, head of the Yitzhar settlement in the occupied West Bank for at least a seminar in Jewish thought on ‘Diversity’. I quote from the Rabbi’s excellent assessments of “Diversity”.
Quote
Kill Enemy Children: Jewish Edict
Tuesday, 10 November 2009 19:01
A Jewish rabbi has issued a book giving Jews permission to murder non-Jews, including babies and children who pose an actual or potential threat to Jews or Israel. Rabbi Yitzhak Shapiro, head of the Yitzhar settlement in the occupied West Bank, says: “It is permissible to kill the Righteous among non-Jews even if they are not responsible for the threatening situation.” Shapiro writes in his book The King’s Torah: “If we kill a Gentile who has sinned or has violated one of the seven commandments…there is nothing wrong with the murder.” Shapiro claims his edict “is fully justified by the Torah and the Talmud.” The anti-goyem edict came in response to the arrest by Israeli police of a Jewish terrorist who confessed to murdering two Palestinians in the West Bank. The terrorist, a US-born immigrant named Yaakov Teitel, also confessed to trying to assassinate leftist Jewish figures. Source
Unquote
The above are just a few examples of what the “Diversity” agenda is really about.
Comment / By hawkeye / Nov. 10, 2009, 11:17 p.m.
Greetings Ryan Burns, You have constructed an excellent article, and illustrated the depth of the meddling ‘zocial’ engineers. You have lightly tread on the crystal carpet that leads into their stucco cult of personality. As a subject, this should not even arise outside the tomb of some half lit seminar room. They have a ‘Plan’…so did Stalin. Just because you have a plan does not imply that it is any good. In an ideal college setting the ‘plan’ should be to provide a high grade education in the field of choice and be as colorblind as you claim to be. But no…no such luck. This is racial preoccupation, toying with the social structure as would a child with his miniature legions. If it were not so dangerous, it would be funny. Mr. ‘Pink feather boa’ on the cover fits into all categories of ‘Diversity’. This is what the ‘college’ seeks to produce??? The End!!! Last one out of here, turn off the lights. The fat lady sang, and it was a lousy song. Perhaps you should send out fliers to the ganglanders since they are the ones with the money to fund this evil scheme. Then you can import some real ‘Diversity’…Thug SU. Let’s get a picture around that table for the cover of your next issue. o.
Comment / By Fenria / Nov. 11, 2009, 7:59 p.m.
Think they have these discussions in China, or India, or any country in Africa? Probably not. You know why? Because no one in those countries would EVER entertain the thought that they should be displaced by some other racial demographic in the interest of “feelgood-ism”. Only here, in the west, where we have the luxury of decadence and complacency, have we been cajoled into this bizarre mindset that now white people must lie down like doormats in order to have all others walk upon us because of our success on this planet through the ages.
Why aren’t we seeing this whole diversity message imposed on places like fundamentalist Islamist Saudi Arabia, or Mexico, with it’s militarized southern border, for instance? If we’re all so equal, why isn’t anyone at HSU clamoring for a chance to attend a college in sub Saharan Africa somewhere? Why are people emigrating from the third world into the first world? Hey, we’re all so equal, right? That means, of course, that you should be able to find the exact same quality of civilization in ANY other country of the world as you would here in the west, right? How come that’s not so, I mean, we’re so equal and all….
Comment / By Hank Sims / Nov. 11, 2009, 9:04 p.m.
OK, race-obsessed white folks! Thanks for chiming in, but it’s time to take it back to your underground Internet lairs. We’ll shut down comments here shortly.
Comment / By Adama / Nov. 11, 2009, 10:26 p.m.
More dismissive attitude by the North Coast Journal. I’ll be picking up a copy to note your advertisers, so I’ll know where not to shop.
Comment / By Thirdeye / Nov. 12, 2009, 4:52 p.m.
wow….wow….just…..wow
Any of you kiddies ever consider that it’s the critical thinking abilities you’ve shown on this thread, and not minorities, that are holding you back?
Comment / By Jessica Bateman / Nov. 12, 2009, 9:26 p.m.
Mr. Sims what are you talking about? Can’t the Northcoast journal handle an open dialogue? Maybe you shouldn’t have published, on the front page, a picture of a man wearing a pink boa. What kind of message does that send to the community about diversity? “underground internet lairs?” Oh, please! That’s so easy to say when one wants to dismiss others’ opinions. I see nothing wrong with any of these comments above. And quite frankly agree with most of them. Gotta go now…see ya in the basement.
Comment / By hawkeye / Nov. 12, 2009, 11:21 p.m.
I would like to agree with the comment above by Jessica. I would also like a definition of the term ‘critical thinking’. More than my ‘internet lair’, I am engaged in my community life here in Arcata. What we are discussing is a social experiment being perpetrated on the citizenry of Arcata by an elitist mob that functions like a Mafia Church. As I have a home here, the effect is amplified for it is like an amoeba infiltrating, spreading, and corrupting its host. Ever changing in shape and intent, and always hungry for a little more. Just one more compromise; one more loss of freedom to PC lies. Let the defenders come and attempt to discredit the words written here and speak on behalf of this…’Plan’, if they have any courage outside the realm of a government funded sanctuary. o.
Comment / By Adama / Nov. 13, 2009, 11:10 a.m.
As far as critical thinking abilities go, I believe I have an “A” from the class in it I took at HSU.
The posts here are valid arguments except for Third Eye’s ad hominim attack, and Mr. Sims ad hominim reference to our ‘internet lairs’.
I don’t feel ‘held back’ by minorities. I do well in my profession, in my continuing studies at HSU, and have been elected and served in public office in Humboldt County.
My objections are that my race, my heterosexuality, my family orientation, and my Protestantism are allowed to be demeaned in classes conducted by a wannabe social elite whose real agenda is to rip apart White cultural and society by any and all means and have had to ‘do research’ to find out what it is to be White so they can better ‘deconstruct White society’. That is what I am talking about here. That is what I am objecting to.
Not only that, this wannabe social elite pushes an artificially created legitimization of homosexuality on gullible kids who are in the process of finding out who and what they’re going to be in life, as if it was the best thing since sliced bread, which it is absolutely not. Let them figure things out for themselves, don’t push corrupted social agendas on them.
Such agendas should be no part of Education. Nor should students and the public at large be exposed to them, especially not our Elementary School children who are being forced fed these same agendas from an early age by the cultural Marxists. Such ideas should be thrown into the ashcan of history and burned immediately.
The idea of “White privilege” is easily dispelled simply by shopping at WINCO in Eureka a few times, where one will discover what’s really happening to Whites in our community, while Mexicans and other minorities are being trucked in to take the few jobs we have.
Such research does not require multimillion dollar grants. All one must do is open their eyes to what is going on around them.
Comment / By Jessica / Nov. 13, 2009, 11:58 a.m.
And another thing,Mr.sims,who’s race obsessed?
Comment / By Thirdeye / Nov. 13, 2009, 1:47 p.m.
If Adama got an “A” in critical thinking, yet the quality of her thinking is manifest in this thread, that’s grade inflation redefined.
Gotta love the idea that Communism is somehow about genocide against whites. Adama must have some brilliant insight into that from reading Das Kapital with her much-vaunted critical thinking abilities.
Just out of curiosity, what public office have you held in Humboldt County?
Comment / By Adama / Nov. 13, 2009, 7:50 p.m.
[Deleted: white-rage, anti-Semitism]
Comment / By Hank Sims / Nov. 13, 2009, 8:08 p.m.
Buh-dee-buh-duh-dee-buh-duh-Dee th-th-th-that’s all, folks!
I didn’t get around to hacking up the thing that would shut down comments on certain articles, so you can go ahead and post something if you want. But anything posted below this line gets deleted eventually and your address gets banned. That goes for comments on the sidebar, too.
We don’t want you here. Go away.
Comment / By Jessica / Nov. 14, 2009, 9:05 a.m.
No! YOU go away. And take your pink boa with you!!
Comment / By Me / Dec. 4, 2009, midnight
Can I say something not hateful? You people sound like ignorant rednecks, quoting crappy conservative talk radio to try and sound educated (okay that was a little hateful). You may be getting an education, but in no way are you actually learning anything. I KNOW those people in the picture, and I’m friends with many of the students (of all races) at HSU. You are both disrespectful not only to them, but to yourselves. Take a step back and look at what America really is: a country founded by immigrants. I’d like to explain more of my opinions but it doesn’t really matter. Nothing I say will change your minds, but if you can take anything away from this, stop being such assholes. Really.