Will an all-healing Obama presidency cure America of this?

How can anyone be discouraged and disappointed at life (as Michelle Obama is constantly telling us she is) when there are so many ever-new things to be amazed at? As Nietzsche said in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, even now, there are a thousand healths and hidden isles of life, unexplored and undiscovered.

Let us explore one of them.

Crime and Punishment for Reading
By Kathleen Parker

… [Todd Tucker’s] book was a nonfiction account of a real incident in American history—“Notre Dame vs. the Klan: How the Fighting Irish Defeated the Ku Klux Klan” (Loyola Press).

The current controversy began last fall when Keith John Sampson, a student and university employee in his 50s, was reading Tucker’s book during a break from his janitorial duties.

Wrong place, wrong time, wrong book.

On the basis of the cover alone, a co-worker sitting across from Sampson complained that the book was offensive. The cover shows the Notre Dame dome and two burning crosses amid a crowd of robed and hooded Klansmen.

The pages inside tell the story of a 1924 street fight between Notre Dame students and Klansmen, who had gathered in South Bend purposely to terrorize the university’s Catholic students. The clash lasted two days, during which the fighting Irish prevailed, and is recognized as a turning point in Klan history.

But never mind. The co-worker apparently wasn’t interested in the content. The cover art was deemed traumatizing enough to prompt the shop steward to reprimand Sampson, saying that reading a book about the Klan was comparable to bringing pornography into the workplace.

A few weeks later, Sampson heard from the school’s affirmative action office that a racial harassment complaint had been filed against him. In a November 2007 letter, affirmative action officer Lillian Charleston told Sampson that he demonstrated “disdain and insensitivity” to his co-workers.

“You used extremely poor judgment by insisting on openly reading the book related to a historically and racially abhorrent subject in the presence of your black co-workers.”

The letter also noted that by the “legal ‘reasonable person standard,’ a majority of adults are aware of and understand how repugnant the KKK is to African-Americans.” Sampson was ordered not to read the book in the presence of his co-workers.

Charleston is right that reasonable people know how repugnant the KKK is to African-Americans. But reasonable people also know how repugnant the KKK is to people of all races. Reasonable people also know that history is what it is. Reading about it isn’t an incitement to riot or an endorsement of the bad guys.

Following a few weeks of relatively quiet controversy, a smattering of media reports and chatter in the blogosphere, Sampson received another letter from the affirmative action office saying that no determination could be made as to whether his reading choice was intentionally hostile. Therefore, no disciplinary action would be taken.

This time, Charleston insisted that the university doesn’t restrict reading materials and that she was merely addressing “the perception of your co-workers that you were engaging in conduct for the purpose of creating a hostile atmosphere of antagonism.”

“Of course, if the conduct was intended to cause disruption to the work environment, such behavior would be subject to action by the university,” she wrote.

Was Sampson being intentionally hostile and antagonistic?

One might argue that he was inconsiderate to continue reading the book once he realized others found it distasteful. Maybe Sampson has bad manners, but if bad manners are our new standard for disciplinary action, everybody’s under arrest.

You see, meanwhile, how vexing mind reading can be.

Yet, mind reading was the crux of this case and scores of others where the interpretation of speech codes hinges on unanswerable questions that require the power of divination: What was he thinking? What was she feeling?

And who decides what thoughts are acceptable and which feelings are sacrosanct?

A reasonable person might like to flip the question Charleston posed about whether Sampson’s book choice was intentionally hostile as follows:

What could be more hostile in a university environment than investigating a student’s reading choices on the basis of a bystander’s perceptions? That’s not just hostile, but sinister.

To read is sublime; but to read a mind is tricky.

- end of Parker article, end of initial entry -

Sebastian writes:

This story, though worse because of the college setting, reminded me of my own rather more dangerous brush with guilt for reading the wrong book. Returning from law school one night (about 9:30 PM), I was literally assaulted by a very large black woman with a newspaper on the A train between Columbus Circle and 14th. She repeatedly hit me over the head yelling “racist, racist mother f*cker,” prompting the attention of younger, more formidable riders. Why? I was browsing a copy of Buchanan’s State of Emergency I had just picked up. “That’s white power code,” she screamed, “you can’t read that filth, evil Nazi book in public.” I was growing concerned (I was the only white person in the vicinity, the A being express from 125th) until a middle-aged guy removed her off me, insulted her and told her off in very extreme language. She insulted us for the next few minutes but did not leave her seat. I noticed she had a Learning Anex catalogue—she was having her consciousnes raised. Though I was headed to Fulton, I bolted at Union Square and bummed a cigarette from some hipster. True story. I never read those types of books on the subway anymore. Personally, the light trashing was preferable to an affirmative action official contacting me.

LA replies:

That is shocking. I’ve never heard of an incident like this before. And to think of the kinds of books I’ve read in public places in my life.

Stewart W. writes:

No, these sorts of incidents will increase dramatically, once Obama is president. Not only will blacks feel that they are owed this respect, but a large proportion of them will be strutting around with a “We in charge now, cracka” mentality that will be positively insufferable. For the lower classes, that will inevitably take the form of physical intimidation and outright violence, and for the government-employed middle classes, it will take the form of institutional intimidation and bullying.

I’m glad I don’t live in a large city.

LA writes:

And will this kind of thing stop, under the reign of the all-healing Obama-god? The story was originally from the Hartford Courant:

A coffee mug used by Department of Public Safety Commissioner John A. Danaher III showing the Confederate flag in a Civil War battle has angered black leaders who said it was insensitive to display a symbol of hate, particularly when the state police have been under fire for complaints of racism.

The issue arose Wednesday night after the NAACP met with members of the Commission on African American Affairs to discuss how to address recent allegations of rampant racism within the state police and state Department of Correction. The African American Affairs Commission is a group of citizens appointed by the legislature to improve and promote the well-being of African Americans in the state.

After the meeting, Dawne Westbrook, the attorney for the NAACP, said she was contacted by a state trooper who was offended by the mug, which she saw Danaher drinking from when she met with him in his office over the racism issue and other problems within the department. Danaher has written a letter of apology to the trooper.

The mug incident fueled concerns about racism that were raised after state police Sgt. Andrew Crumbie filed a complaint in June with the Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities, saying derogatory words were used about his race by high-ranking state police officers. Crumbie, who is black, had been chief of staff to former Public Safety Commissioner Leonard Boyle, and then director of the state police forensic laboratory. He said he was removed for political and racial reasons. He also said the state police had a history of unfavorable treatment of minorities. [cont]

N. writes:

Perhaps the Obama Presidency will heal us of such things by removing books that offend the appropriate groups from libraries, and then removing them from the world in an appropriate ceremony? Can you see any liberal group at all opposing book-burnings so long as they were organized by the Left? I can’t think of any offhand.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at March 07, 2008 01:36 AM | Send