Another tale from the Church of the Perpetually Offended
Keith John Sampson never thought he could get in trouble for reading a book, especially not on a college campus. But that’s what happened. Sampson is a man in his early 50s. He does janitorial work for the campus facility services at IUPUI, where he’s been gradually accumulating credits for a degree in communications studies. [...]
Sampson is an avid reader. It’s been his habit to bring books to work with him, so that he can read in the break room when he’s not on the clock. [...]
At the time, Sampson was reading a book he had checked out from the public library. Notre Dame vs. the Klan: How the Fighting Irish Defeated the Ku Klux Klan, [...] The book is about how for two days in May 1924, a group of Notre Dame students got into a street fight with members of the Ku Klux Klan.
Come on now, you know what’s coming next.
Sampson recalls that his AFSCME shop steward told him that reading a book about the Klan was like bringing pornography to work. The shop steward wasn’t interested in hearing what the book was actually about. Another time, a coworker who was sitting across the table from Sampson in the break room commented that she found the Klan offensive. Sampson says he tried to tell her about the book, but she wasn’t interested in talking about it.
A few weeks passed. Then Sampson got a message ordering him to report to Marguerite Watkins at the IUPUI Affirmative Action Office. He was told a coworker had filed a racial harassment complaint against him for reading Notre Dame vs. the Klan in the break room. Sampson says he tried to explain to Watkins what the book was about. He says he tried to show her the book, but that Watkins showed no interest in seeing it.
Outside of wondering what the fig is an “Affirmative Action Office”, reading this letter is educational (ahem)
Upon review of the matter, we conclude that your conduct constitutes racial harassment in that you demonstrated disdain and insensitivity to your co-workers [...]
[Y]ou 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 coworkers [...]
Please be advised, any future substantiated conduct of a similar nature could result in serious disciplinary action.
Of course, a little publicity has Lillian Charleston, Affirmative Action Officer (wtf?!!) squirming …
I wish to clarify that my prior letter was not meant to imply that it is impermissable for you or to limit your ability to read scholarly books or other such literature during breaktime.
Of course not! Just a misunderstanding. I have no idea how it got this far …
It was the perception of your co-workers that you were engaging in conduct for the purpose of creating a hostile atmosphere of antagonism.
Facts be damned, it’s all about Teh Perception! and when the aggrieved belong to the protected group du jour, then the accused is guilty. Q.E.D.
(h/t Patterico)
***UPDATE***
Bio on Ms. Charleston states in part: Lillian Charleston is nationally recognized for her expertise and knowledge of Affirmative Action and related issues. In addition to serving as the Affirmative Action Officer for IUPUI for the past 16 years, she previously worked as a desegregation specialist for the Indianapolis Public Schools.
And under her reign, the AAO produces Myths and Facts about Affirmative Action containing such exercises of logic and morality as: Racism is power plus discrimination. The parameters of discrimination based on race are distinguished by the power dynamics. Reverse racism is not, therefore a reality if people of color are not in positions of power [...] Though affirmative action is believed to have harmed white men, this contradicts the reality that white men hold structural power in society today. For example, a Washington Post study shows that 95% of top corporate executives are white males Because, ya know, what actually happens to individuals because of the color of their skin is not of any consequence if said skin is lacking in the melanin thingy. Or if said individual is a penis-person.
Comment by Techie on 3/7 @ 12:17 pm #
Republicans, the lot of them. Only a Rethuglican could ever wish to engage in a blatant display of overreaction, powerlust and blind adherence to dogma.
Amirite?
Comment by happyfeet on 3/7 @ 12:26 pm #
That’s Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. I had to google.
Comment by Lost My Cookies on 3/7 @ 12:28 pm #
It’s pronounced eww-eee-poo-eee.
Comment by Jeff G. on 3/7 @ 12:29 pm #
Ah, Brave New World!
Can’t say I haven’t been warning about this — and detailing exactly how it will happen, both from a linguistic and cultural standpoint — since this blog began.
The academy truly is one of the most anti-intellectual places in the country. And I’m being serious. You’d do better to discuss these issues in a pub.
Just like God wants you to.
Comment by kelly on 3/7 @ 12:30 pm #
Sheesh. What would the reaction been had he been reading Moby Dick? Great White Whale and all.
Comment by happyfeet on 3/7 @ 12:31 pm #
Whatever. He’s a moron. You don’t dignify some sad little Get Whitey incident by dressing it up as being about intellectual freedom. It is what it is. Lillian showed at least the good sense to be embarrassed. This guy really seems kind of clueless.
Comment by BJTexs on 3/7 @ 12:31 pm #
Reminds me of the poor staffer on then (several years ago) DC Mayor Marion Barry’s team who got canned and then reinstated for telling a group of black activists that some agency was being “niggardly” with their grants.
Now if our poor, deluded janitor had been reading a book by Pol Pot about the necessity of slaughtering 6 million Cambodians, he would have been just fine. Or, for that matter, somehthing about how badly Asians were treated in California in the 1800’s.
Identity is the key word in Identity Politics, ‘thuglicans!
Comment by jdm on 3/7 @ 12:40 pm #
I’m looking forward to any comments from datadave. I expect he’ll be able to clear things up.
After all he was so helpful with the post about eight dead Israeli students.
Comment by sashal on 3/7 @ 12:41 pm #
good discussion about it at VC
Comment by Darleen on 3/7 @ 12:42 pm #
boss
I’m not trained to do your linguistic jujitsu … and I remain in awe when you engage in it. Best I can do is continue to expose and mock as often as possible.
Comment by JD on 3/7 @ 12:58 pm #
These people reside in my town. I am embarassed.
Comment by Rob Crawford on 3/7 @ 1:02 pm #
Jeebus.
Comment by mcgruder on 3/7 @ 1:06 pm #
these people are the enemy.
the only people in America telling you that you are not ALLOWED to think, say or do something are on the left.
Comment by JD on 3/7 @ 1:07 pm #
This has recd scant (read : barely any) local coverage by the TV and paper. The local independent weekly, insanely liberal, has been the only one to touch this story. It is grand that a bright light is being brought to bear on this story. Why is it that an Affirmative Action position is meting out their perceived justice for a campus hate crime?
Comment by JD on 3/7 @ 1:10 pm #
mcgruder – BINGO. All of their teeth gnashing about President Bush and Republicans seems to be a matter of them envisioning what they would do were they in the same position.
Comment by Education Guy on 3/7 @ 1:24 pm #
Orwell Lives. Apart from the complete ridiculousness of this episode, the book is about those who stood up to the Klan. It’s history. It actually happened and pretending it didn’t, or worse punishing those who would dare find out about it, only increases the danger of groups like the Klan getting traction again.
OT Bleg – For the last year I have been seeking to remedy my complete lack of a liberal arts education by devouring books on philosophy, history and biography, and as such I am looking for input for what to read next. Right now I’m leading towards either Locke’s “Essay Concerning Human Understanding”, Hume’s ” A Treatise of Human Nature”, or Keynes’s “The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money”. Any input from you all would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.
Comment by Scrapiron on 3/7 @ 1:35 pm #
Sixteen years in a job which creates problems where there are no problem, and then she can’t solve them. Sounds like she is the entire affirmative action problem at that ‘lost in wonderland’ institution.
Comment by Dan Collins on 3/7 @ 1:37 pm #
F*ck you, you f*ckin’ c*nt, you c*nt fire me, because I have the f*ckin’ power. Beeyotch.
Comment by BJTexs on 3/7 @ 1:38 pm #
Then again, an over the top intolerant concept of racial diversity training was tried last fall at The University of Delaware, the famous “all whites are racist” progra, taught in dorms by RA’s.
that progrtam was suspended in extreme embarrassment after bloggers and FIRE raised a ruckus.
Comment by BJTexs on 3/7 @ 1:40 pm #
Link Failure: university of Delware Controversy
http://libertypost.org/cgi-bin/readart.cgi?ArtNum=205067&Disp=3
Comment by Scape-goat Trainee on 3/7 @ 1:40 pm #
I’m sure we’re just all overreacting. I have no doubt that the Leading Lights of the Left (The LLLs) are all over this and stridently preparing to go to virtual war for this guy.
I’m gonna head over to DailyKos, Firedoglake, Huffington and DU and look, I’ll be right back
…….
……
……
Okay. I didn’t find anything, but I DO now know all about the best and worst of celebrity poetry, that Hillary just ADORES Cluster bombs (especially when used by the evil USA), and apparently McCain is only going to appeal to racists and bigots. So I guess it’s not a total loss. I’m sure the Left will get around to condemning this any day now. Yep, any day.
Comment by Belvedere jones on 3/7 @ 1:42 pm #
“Racism is power plus discrimination. The parameters of discrimination based on race are distinguished by the power dynamics. Reverse racism is not, therefore a reality if people of color are not in positions of power […] Though affirmative action is believed to have harmed white men, this contradicts the reality that white men hold structural power in society today.”
Does this mean white supremacist groups aren’t racist? Or that white spremacist groups are indicative of the whitey race in general? And why the introduction of gender into a subject of race?
Comment by Rightwingsparkle on 3/7 @ 1:43 pm #
That is too weird. Almost to the point where I don’t think we are getting the whole story. Maybe he said something about supporting the Klan??? I just can’t believe they would go to this extreme in reading a book that was about defeating the Klan.
But then again, elite liberal academia never surprises me in it’s arrogance and lack of common sense.
Comment by William Teach on 3/7 @ 1:45 pm #
He would have probably been in less trouble if he had been “reading” a copy of Penthouse.
Comment by Belvedere jones on 3/7 @ 1:47 pm #
“It’s pronounced eww-eee-poo-eee.”
Actually it’s oo-ee-poo-ee. Don’t ask me about IUPU-Ft Wayne, tho’ I suppose oo-ee-poofer might pass muster.
Comment by Education Guy on 3/7 @ 1:59 pm #
Do you hear that white men? Affirmative action has not harmed you, so shut up, boy. God what a joke.
Comment by sashal on 3/7 @ 2:00 pm #
and bingo to you too, JD at # 15.
The funniest self-revealing post of the day.
Comment by BJTexs on 3/7 @ 2:01 pm #
Affirmative action is now entrenched in our society. I’m going to hit me a tanning salon, burnish my Portuguese browness to an Obama like glow and GET ME MINE!
Later, you bunch of ‘thuglican racists!
Comment by JD on 3/7 @ 2:05 pm #
Education Guy – It is not some obscure event from another state either. I am not even a native Hooiser and I knew that story. That event happened less than 3 hours north of where I sit. I would suggest a book not in that same vein, but the Clapton auto-biography.
Wrong sparkle. That is the story. In all its fucking glory. That is happened right up the street is embarassing.
Comment by JD on 3/7 @ 2:09 pm #
BJ – Your self loathing and self denying makes you an even worse racist than the rest of us.
Comment by Rob Crawford on 3/7 @ 2:10 pm #
Given that she threatened a guy’s job for a Thought Crime, and conceivably could carry through on the threat, doesn’t that mean she’s in a position of power?
Doesn’t that make her a reverse racist, by her own criteria?
Comment by Education Guy on 3/7 @ 2:11 pm #
Thanks JD, I’m a big Clapton fan so that one is on my list.
Comment by BJTexs on 3/7 @ 2:15 pm #
that may be, white boy, but as soon as the cocoa butter curdles and i curl up the mop I’ll be leaving your lilly white asses far, far behind. AFFIRMITIVE ACTION IS MINE FOR THE TAKING!!!
Comment by dicentra on 3/7 @ 2:16 pm #
I just can’t believe they would go to this extreme in reading a book that was about defeating the Klan.
The word “Klan” was on the cover. That was enough to set them off.
They’re not actually worried about people being offended or about actual hatred being perpetrated. Had the dude reading the book been a female student from Kenya, this never would have happened.
“Being offended” is a
passive-aggressive way of wreaking revenge on all the people who have wronged you, including (especially) those you have never met.Because remember, if white men are in power, and you are white (or a man), you are in power by association and are oppressing non-white, non-male folks right and left.
Though I have no doubt that in shirtless season, the blinding fish-bellies that are all too often exposed could count as a form of oppression that is prosecuted far less often than it ought to be.
Comment by Patrick Chester on 3/7 @ 2:17 pm #
Next up: a history book about the WW2 Allied campaign in Europe brings complaints because it’s “about Nazis” or similar.
Comment by malaclypse the tertiary on 3/7 @ 2:23 pm #
I assume you’ve all seen this by now.
Comment by JD on 3/7 @ 2:23 pm #
EG – It is so incredibly compelling, and soul bearing. I felt like I was intruding in his life reading it. But, such words from a fellow addict worked better than a meeting today.
Comment by BJTexs on 3/7 @ 2:26 pm #
M the T:
My favorite quote from that article? “I’m not black but I found it highly offensive.”
Wha?
Comment by mcgruder on 3/7 @ 2:46 pm #
here’s the other thing: this guy is trying to improve himself, his station, his life. he has a tough job, but is taking classes at night. he wants better for himself and to learn.
this is why we fight. this is why this nations is great, and still a great idea.
and some “darkness at noon” thug does this to him, and no one will say a word to her.
Comment by N. O'Brain on 3/7 @ 3:06 pm #
“#Comment by sashal on 3/7 @ 2:00 pm #
and bingo to you too, JD at # 15.
The funniest self-revealing post of the day.”
There’s nothing new under the sun with the reactionary left:
“It was only after the soviet regime became unmistakably totalitarian that English intellectuals, in large numbers,
began to show interest in it. Burnham, although the English Russophile intelligentsia would repudiate him, is really voicing their secret wish: the wish to destroy the old equalitarian version of Socialism and
usher in a hierarchical society where the intellectual can at last get his hands on the whip.”
-George Orwell
Comment by kelly on 3/7 @ 3:10 pm #
EG,
Normally I’d steer someone away from Keynes’s “The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money,†but Bush and Congress apparently want to exhume the old chap and his thoroughly discredited notions about government spending as “economic stimulus.” So have at him. Better yet, read anything by Thomas Sowell.
Comment by Old Texas Turkey on 3/7 @ 3:19 pm #
Education Guy – Von Hayek’s “Road to Serfdom” would be high on my list. I consider it more philosophical than economic by a country mile.
Comment by Old Texas Turkey on 3/7 @ 3:21 pm #
Kelly, don;t forget Bernanke who is showing his colors as a committed supply sider as he blithely drives the economy towards hyper-inflation.
Comment by Pablo on 3/7 @ 3:31 pm #
Would this have ever gotten to the investigation stage if Sampson were black? I think not.
This IS racism.
Comment by Percy Dovetonsils on 3/7 @ 3:36 pm #
“Reverse racism is not, therefore a reality if people of color are not in positions of power.”
Okay… so whitey here is a janitor, and his possible continued employment depends in large part upon a multi-degreed African American woman.
Yep, no difference in the power dynamics there.
Comment by kelly on 3/7 @ 3:45 pm #
Noted, OTT. Seems Bernie also wants to single-handedly rewrite contract law as well. At least Volcker had some stones.
Comment by kelly on 3/7 @ 3:48 pm #
In fariness, though, as he was nearing the end of his career, Keynes reportedly informed a roomful of adoring acolytes, “I am no longer a Keynsian.”
Comment by Education Guy on 3/7 @ 4:25 pm #
kelly & OTT – Thanks. Sowell and Hayek are definitely on my to do list. I figure Keynes (and Marx) are both theorists who have influenced people, so it is not a bad idea to try to find out why they were at one point so appealing. At the very least it can’t hurt to know what their arguments are.
That said, I never intend to read Franken or Moore if I can help it.
Comment by Education Guy on 3/7 @ 4:31 pm #
Also, I’m contemplating reading Locke’s “Two Treatises of Government” before “Essay Concerning Human Understanding”, since I understand that was the more influential of his works.
Comment by Rick Ballard on 3/7 @ 4:48 pm #
EG,
I’d take a whack at Montesquieu’s The Spirit of the Law before tackling Locke. Then The Portable Edmund Burke, Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations, Tocqueville’s Democracy in America then Locke and/or the empiricists as a somniferent. Mises Socialism is the proper lead into The Road to Serfdom. Mises had the commies pinned to the mat in ‘26, Hayek just did a good job of kicking them while they were down.
Comment by ThomasD on 3/7 @ 5:15 pm #
Comment by Patrick Chester on 3/7 @ 6:30 pm #
Racism is bigotry based on a perception of race. The addition of “power” is so some racists can claim their racism isn’t racism because they claim to not have any power.
Oh, and there is no “reverse” racism. It’s just racism with a different target.
Comment by Merovign on 3/7 @ 7:34 pm #
Yes, BUT you and I should both be aware that when a college “racial representation” administrator says “there is no reverse racism,” THEY aren’t talking about grammar.
We need more private academies where people can actually LEARN things as opposed to endlessly politicking or juggling offenses.
Comment by JD on 3/7 @ 9:43 pm #
In fact, studies show that white women tend to be the primary beneficiaries of affirmative action.
I am sure that would be an interesting study to take a look at.
Comment by Cincinnatus on 3/7 @ 10:22 pm #
Harassing a 50yo janitor is as close to ’sticking it to the man’ and ’speaking truth to power’ as Ms Charleston is likely to get. Glorious.
Comment by Education Guy on 3/8 @ 7:57 am #
Thanks Rick.
Comment by Brett on 3/8 @ 8:57 am #
That the book was anti-clan is irrelevant. No matter the content, a citizen’s reading isn’t anyone else’s business.
As for the fat-cat academy, not only is it anti-intellectual, it is philosophically opposed to individual liberty–one more reason to reduce its financial dependence on the citizens of the United States.
Comment by guinsPen on 3/8 @ 9:50 am #
@ #16
EG, Layton’s And I Was There: Pearl Harbor and Midway – Breaking the Secrets is a good read.
Comment by Techie on 3/8 @ 12:54 pm #
The Commanding Heights is an excellent read on the development of the world economy over the last 100 years.
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