Intercultural Center Event: Marquette Seal a “Microaggression”

From Marquette undergraduate Zachary Petrizzo on Campus Reform:

Marquette forum calls university seal a “microaggression”

• During a recent forum at Marquette University, students and faculty members enthusiastically agreed that the university’s seal is a “microaggression” because it depicts a white explorer being guided by a Native American.
• According to one professor at the forum, the seal shows how Marquette’s namesake, French explorer Fr. Jacques Marquette, “took advantage of an economic disparity to have a Native American as his guide.”

At a recent forum, Marquette University faculty members declared that the school’s seal is a “microaggression” because it depicts a white explorer being guided by a Native American.

The Marquette University Intercultural Center, which is funded through a combination of tuition and student activity fees, hosted the March 23 event, titled “Men to Men: Responding to Microaggressions and Why They Matter.”

Guided by MU counselor Nicholas Jenkins, the forum began with a discussion of how microaggressions happen, the various types of microaggressions, and how there are targeted microaggressions by whites towards minorities.

At one point, Jenkins suggested that the university seal is a microaggression because one section of it depicts Marquette’s namesake, French explorer Fr. Jacques Marquette, standing in a boat being paddled by a Native American guide.

“Do you know what the Marquette seal looks like? Is that a microaggression?” he asked the audience, which responded with enthusiastic cries of “Yes!”

And then:

“Where does this stem from? I look at the Church,” he [Simon Howard] continued, noting that the primary image he associates with the Church is “a white Jesus,” and that this is true even of many people who don’t actively participate in religion.

Read the whole thing.

Audio

Petrizzo recorded the entire event, which you can listen to here (warning, it includes a lot more politically correct whining):

The Grievance

Below is the painting by Wilhelm Lamprecht which is the basis of the Marquette seal.



And here is the Marquette seal:



Clearly, the Marquette seal crops the painting to emphasize Fr. Marquette. And just what is wrong with this?

The place is named “Marquette University,” not “Some Indians Who Happened to Be Around When Marquette Was Exploring the Midwest University.”

Marquette was the great explorer. The Indians were probably perfectly fine people, and helped guide Marquette around, but they didn’t get a university named after them.

So just what kind of whiny brats feel “microaggressed” seeing the seal? The sort that academia is turning out in considerable numbers these days. And the sort the Center for Intercultural Engagement panders to.