“Bluebloods” on Campus Social Justice Warriors

Not all network TV is liberal propaganda. Example: a recent episode of “Bluebloods” that has a campus feminist playing the victim. It starts with a campus leftist wanting some fellow student punished for unkind (but perfectly legal) messages posted on the campus message board.

Would campus leftists do this? Absolutely. As The Volokh Conspiracy records:

A large coalition of advocacy groups has asked the U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights to pressure colleges to (1) punish students for their speech and (2) block student access to certain Web sites — especially sites such as Yik Yak, which allow students to anonymously post their views.

Now, some of the speech that the groups mention consists of true threats of violence, including threats of attack and even rape. Such speech is constitutionally unprotected. (Indeed, some of it — threats against people for speaking, for instance, in support of feminist causes — itself attempts to suppress speech.) It is rightly criminalized and can certainly be punished.

But the letter goes very far beyond just calling on universities to punish threats. Here are some other examples of speech that the coalition points to:

• “[S]uccessive invidious comments targeting African-Americans, such as ‘Their entire culture just isn’t conducive to a life of success. It just isn’t. The outfits. The attitudes. The behavior.’”
• “Another comment” that said “Slavery was the worst thing to happen to this country, bringing them over here . . . ugh.”
• A statement that “I would be completely ok with Clemson being an all white school. Except for football.”
• A statement that “The only thing niggers are good for is making Clemson better at football.”
• A statement that “Jesus I hate black people.”
• A comment saying, “Guys stop with all this hate. Let’s just be thankful we aren’t black.”
• Statements “target[ing] Indian students and East Asians, referred to as ‘chinks,’ in addition to LGBT students, Mormons, and women.” ”[S]tudents post[ing] dozens of demeaning, crude, and sexually explicit comments and imagery about three female professors.”

All of this speech, offensive as it may be, is protected by the First Amendment. (There is no “hate speech” exception to First Amendment protection.) But despite that, the coalition is arguing that the speech should be restricted precisely because of the viewpoints it expresses, and the offense and “hostile environment” that those viewpoints cause.

The first statement seems to us a perfectly reasonable comment about ghetto culture, and the penultimate one accepts the notion of white privilege and says “stop the hate.” Wanting Clemson to be segregated is certainly a racist comment, but is probably just hyperbole from students unhappy with being berated for being white and being told to “check your privilege.”

But as Volokh says, all are constitutionally protected.

A Bogus Hate Incident

“Bluebloods” then goes further by including in the plot something that frequently happens on college campuses.

Yes, campus activists have often staged racist incidents in order to provoke more “diversity” initiatives.

So what we have here is the reality of contemporary college life. Social Justice Warriors really believe that any expression of opinion they dislike should be made illegal and punished. And since they believe the end justifies the means, they will stage fake incidents to promote their cause.

Faked Hate Crimes on College Campuses

Two sources that are not new, but continue to have relevance whenever somebody claims to have been victim of a “hate crime” on a college campus. First, from The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, No. 22 (Winter, 1998-1999), p. 52:

In the 1990s hoaxes disguised as hate crimes have become common. JBHE’s sister publication The Race Relations Reporter has documented about a dozen such racial hoaxes over the past several years. Hate crimes have been staged at several college campuses. But in these cases the motive for the hoaxes has not been financial gain. Rather, the hate crime hoax is usually conceived as an effort to energize black student activism or to press the administration to move more quickly on black students’ concerns. Here are some examples of hate crime hoaxes that have occurred on college campuses in recent years.

The article also includes a short list of racial hoaxes.

Then there is John Leo, writing in U.S. News & World Report:

Like Tawana Brawley’s hoax, some recent fake hate crimes seem intended to cover personal embarrassment. . . . But more of the college hoaxes seem to reflect an acted-out commitment to a cause, not just personal difficulties. One factor is that colleges now stress the need for each identity group to express its “voice” or “narrative,” without much scruple about whether the narratives are literally true. (Postmodern theory says there is no such thing as truth anyway.) After the Brawley hoax, an article in the Nation magazine argued that it “doesn’t matter” whether Brawley was lying, since the pattern of whites abusing blacks is true.

This, of course, has not changed since the 1990s. What the literal, empirical truth is matters less than what serves a politically correct agenda.

Still Another Campus Racial Hoax

These keep popping up.

LITTLE FALLS — Two Montclair State University students who reported racist graffiti written on their dorm room door are facing charges after campus police determined they were actually responsible for the message, authorities said.

Olivia McCrae and Tanasia Linton, both 19 and from Newark, were arrested on campus Tuesday afternoon and charged with making false reports, criminal mischief and disorderly conduct, according to the university.

The arrests came a week after the roommates reported a hateful message aimed at African-Americans and women scrawled in marker on their door at the Heights residence complex Feb. 7.

As we have said before, if the hothouse liberal atmosphere of college campuses did not promise such large rewards for racial (and gay, and Hispanic) grievances, these sorts of things would be much less common.

Supposed hate incidents should be cause for criminal investigation, not a lot of rhetoric and questionable “initiatives.”

Another Campus Racial Hoax

From the Racine Journal-Times:

SOMERS — Kenosha County sheriff’s officials are recommending charges be filed against a Kentucky woman who allegedly created a “hit list” of students — including herself — before posting it in a residence hall at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside, according to the sheriff’s department.

Detectives are requesting that the Kenosha County District Attorney’s Office file charges against Khalilah N. Ford, 21, of Louisville, after detectives said evidence implicated her amid an investigation into a series of reportedly racially motivated incidents on campus last week, which included two purported nooses and the alleged “hit list.” Ford’s name was released Monday afternoon as the person who created this list of targeted students.

The incidents coincided with the beginning of Black History Month.

If approved, Ford could be charged with disorderly conduct and obstructing an officer, the sheriff’s department stated.

Efforts were made to reach Ford on Monday for comment, but she couldn’t be reached.

A student on Wednesday found a noose-like contraption made from rubber bands and plastic string in the Pike River Suites residence hall, which sheriff’s Sgt. Bill Beth said was “hanging near the trash chute in the middle of the hallway.”

After reporting it, the student — senior Aubriana Banks, 22, of Beloit — said she found a second noose and a threatening note on her door Thursday, according to investigators and Banks. Later that night, fliers containing racial slurs were found listing several black students and Ford by name and stated they were going to die in two days.

Beth on Monday said Ford did not make the nooses.

“The first one was string and rubber bands hanging in the hallway. I guess it was interpreted as a noose by Khalilah and Aubrey,” Beth said. “That’s how they perceived it. But we haven’t heard an explanation” for why nooses would be hung at those locations.

“There was some heated discussion (recently) in a class along racial (lines). I don’t know if that’s related to this,” Beth said.

Ford and Banks are friends, he added.

Investigators don’t know who hung the nooses, Beth said. And they are not even sure whether the contraptions are nooses, he added.

Ford, a junior at Parkside, reportedly confessed Friday evening to making the list after being confronted with evidence pointing to her involvement in this incident, according to the sheriff’s department. However, because of the ongoing investigations, detectives wouldn’t release details about this evidence.

Ford told them she created the “hit list” to draw more attention to the issue, according to investigators. They, in turn, told students the threats were a hoax.

“We’re very confident there’s no threat to anyone’s safety,” Beth said.

If prosecutors agree to charge her, Ford would be sent a notice through the mail informing her to appear in court. No court date has been set.

Unfortunately, hoaxes like this from racial and other victim groups have become increasingly common. Here is one case at the University of Virginia. Gay students can get in on the scam. And here is a compilation from the Los Angeles Times.

There are certainly cases where this or that black student (or gay student) has been harassed or even attacked. But the politically correct atmosphere of most college campuses (and the imperative that administrators act politically correct, whatever their real opinions should be) creates an incentive for these hoaxes on behalf of victim groups.

The University of Wisconsin-Parkside is certainly a campus with this sort of politically correct administrative ethos.

“Hate crime” incidents do not result merely in the investigation of the incident, and the punishment of whomever was guilty.

Rather, they are the excuse for escalated demands from the victim group. To combat “hate” it is demanded that a university institute sensitivity training, start an African American studies program (if one does not already exist) or a Queer Studies program (if the purported victim is gay). There are demands for the hiring of more “diverse” faculty, the setting up of committees on “inclusion” and the hiring of campus bureaucrats to cater to this or that politically correct group.

One incident, in other words, can be parlayed into a cornucopia of goodies (or if the goodies don’t come, a cornucopia of grievances).

Thus universities themselves bear much of the blame for these hoaxes, having created a climate where there is a large premium on having a racial (or gay, or Hispanic) grievance.

Playing the Race Card on a College Campus: Another Fake Hate Crime

From Inside Higher Ed:

Many campuses experience bigoted incidents of various types, but for many years now, hoaxes have emerged as well. Typically these cases involve undergraduates who make charges and — after some period of time — are found to have faked whatever it is they said happened to them. The fake hate crimes tend to frustrate just about everybody on campus. Minority students worry that truthful complaints in the future will be doubted. College officials bemoan wasted time and money investigating a fake report, and damage done to the reputation of the institution or individuals.

When a fake report is filed with the police, it is also can be a violation of the law. A gay student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill was charged last month with filing a false police report after authorities determined that he had made up his story of being attacked for being gay — a story that generated considerable concern on the campus.

Another hoax was uncovered last week at the University of Virginia — and in this case, the university is being criticized for opting not to press charges against the black law student who made up a story about police harassment in the form of apparent racial profiling. The student — Johnathan Perkins — is scheduled to receive his degree May 22.

Perkins made his allegations in a letter to the editor of the U.Va. law school’s student newspaper, Virginia Law Weekly. He sent a copy to the university’s police department, which treated the essay as a formal complaint. Perkins described walking home from a bar review session and being stopped by the flashing lights of a University of Virginia police car. Two white officers, he said, questioned him, told him that he “fit the description of someone we’re looking for,” made fun of him as a law student, frisked and searched him, refused to give their names and badge numbers, and then followed him home after saying he was free to leave.

Invoking the names of victims of police brutality, such as Abner Louima, Perkins wrote that he knew he could not resist. “I knew that there would be no remedy for the indignity that I suffered at the hands of two of the University of Virginia’s ‘finest.’” he wrote. “As I stood there, humiliated, with my hands on the police car, my only thought was: ‘There is nothing I can do to right this wrong. I have absolutely no recourse.’ I hope that sharing this experience will provide this community with some much needed awareness of the lives that many of their black classmates are forced to lead.”

As soon as the letter was published, the university’s police department began an investigation, bringing in some outside experts to assist. Perkins gave several interviews to local reporters, and many students said that they were outraged by the way he said he had been treated.

On Friday, however, the university released a statement announcing that the investigation found that Perkins had made up the story. The university’s statement (not available on the university’s website, but posted on the Virginia Law Weekly’s Facebook page) quoted Perkins (without naming him) as saying that he fabricated the story. “I wrote the article to bring attention to the topic of police misconduct,” he said in a written statement. “The events in the article did not occur.”

The university said that its investigation included a review of all relevant dispatch records, personnel rosters, police radio tapes, surveillance video from the university’s cameras and those of businesses near where the incident was alleged to have taken place, and interviews with Perkins. The university said that Perkins cooperated in interviews and admitted the fabrication as the “facts of his story came into question.”

The part of the statement that has attracted the most discussion was a quote from Michael A. Gibson, the chief of police at Virginia, who announced that he would not press criminal or other charges.

“I recognize that police misconduct does occur,” he said. “Pressing charges in this case might inhibit another individual who experiences real police misconduct from coming forward with a complaint. I want to send the message just how seriously we take such charges and that we will always investigate them with care and diligence.”

Of course, the message is also that playing the race card, even to the point about lying about an incident to the police, is excused if a politically correct minority does it.

None of this is new.

According to the Los Angeles Times:

Several researchers say the liberal atmosphere at many of the nation’s colleges creates an environment ripe for deception.

“There’s the preconception that if a charge is made, it’s true,” said John Perazzo, author of “The Myths that Divide Us.”

“One common thread running through many such incidents is the accuser’s sense of victimhood.”

One can file this, of course, under “the corruptions of political correctness.”

Of course, bogus claims of victimization poison academia as much as genuine victimization would. Genuine victimization of minorities is everywhere met with condemnation — no excuses allowed. That’s the morally healthy response.