Purdue Student: My “Racial Harassment” Nightmare
NY Post:
by Keith John Sampson
May 9, 2008 — IN November, I was found guilty of “racial harassment” for reading a public-li brary book on a university campus.
The book was Todd Tucker’s “Notre Dame vs. the Klan: How the Fighting Irish Defeated the Ku Klux Klan”. I was reading it on break from my campus job as a janitor. The same book is in the university library.
Tucker recounts events of 1924, when the loathsome Klan was a dominant force in Indiana - until it went to South Bend to taunt the Irish Catholic students at the University of Notre Dame.
When the KKK tried to rally, the students confronted them. They stole Klan robes and destroyed their crosses, driving the KKK out of town in a downpour.
I read the historic encounter and imagined myself with these brave Irish Catholics, as they street-fought the Klan. (I’m part-Irish, and was raised Catholic.)
But that didn’t stop the Affirmative Action Office of Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis from branding me as a detestable Klansman.
They didn’t want to hear the truth. The office ruled that my “repeatedly reading the book . . . constitutes racial harassment in that you demonstrated disdain and insensitivity to your co-workers.”
A friend reacted to the finding with, “That’s impossible!” He’s right. You can’t commit racial harassment by reading an anti-Klan history.
For months, I felt isolated and dejected. Yet I knew that most of the faculty, staff and students at Indiana University were good people. The campus is a growing, thriving part of Indy, where people of all colors and religions come to study.
But the $106,000-a-year affirmative-action officer who declared me guilty of “racial harassment” never spoke to me or examined the book. My own union - the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees - sent an obtuse shop steward to stifle my freedom to read. He told me, “You could be fired,” that reading the book was “like bringing pornography to work.”
Shame on the affirmative-action people and my union for displaying their ignorance and incompetence. Their pusillanimous actions, in trying to ban Tucker’s anti-Klan history book, played into the hands of the hateful KKK.
After months of stonewalling, the university withdrew the charge, thanks to pressure from the press, the American Civil Liberties Union and a group called the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, or FIRE.
Let me be clear: I don’t view this episode as a black-against-white or conservative-vs.-liberal issue. It’s a basic civil-liberties issue.
Martin Luther King Jr. wanted a world where people “will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” The affirmative-action people at Indiana University never saw past the color of my white skin. (Ironically, I detest the Klan and I have dated a woman of color.)
Abolitionist Charles Sumner said, “Prejudice is the child of ignorance. It is sure to prevail where people do not know each other.” The people at the Affirmative Action Office were so myopically intent on finding a Klansman, they failed to see a natural ally standing before them.
The unchecked power of such campus bureaucrats needs to be restrained. And if a union like AFSCME won’t protect its workers’ constitutional rights, it should go out of business.
If they can stop me from reading one book, then they can stop any American from reading any book.
Keith John Sampson is a communication-studies senior and janitor at Indiana University/Purdue University-Indianapolis.
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This is pure bullshit. I read controversial material all the time studying law, you have to in order to understand how certain laws came into being and why.
He won’t be ‘janitoring’ after his law suit is settled.
affirmative action.
May 9th, 2008 at 3:29 pmOutrageous. This really shouldn’t of been a problem for more than five minutes if the affirmitive-action officer acted like a reasonable human being and looked at the book he was reading.
Uh oh, wait a second guys, better fire the whole history department too, turns out their textbooks talk about the Nazis!
Oh well, like Jeff said this guy will be made in the shade once this is all done with.
May 9th, 2008 at 4:22 pmYou know what is worse then a person that are RACIST? A Person(s) playing the Race Card! For they in my opinion are equal or worse then a RACIST!!
RACISM KNOWS NO COLOR!
May 9th, 2008 at 6:54 pmI thought it was encouraged to read subversive texts at college? No matter who was being subverted…
May 9th, 2008 at 8:07 pmGuess I won’t be ordering up my copy of “Folk Songs of the Catskills.” Wouldn’t want anyone thinking I was trying to bring back an old classic like “Sally Come Up.”
http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&id=v7QBAAAAQAAJ&dq=sally+come+up&printsec=frontcover&source=web&ots=b_Q9jSEzts&sig=q0PgnVHJeYV3n0WTxl4KW70LbmE#PPR4,M1
May 9th, 2008 at 8:21 pmYep. Play your cards right Mr. Sampson and that university and the hack accuser just paid your tuition.
May 9th, 2008 at 9:25 pmFuck ‘em.
Oh for crying out loud, that ruling goes against the FIRST amendment of the constitution-I thought free speech at school was encouraged
May 10th, 2008 at 2:22 amanother sign that a revolution is in order
it goes beyond denial of reading certain books to the destruction of a persons income and possible incarceration
if the ignorance of political correctness is allowed to continue to advance we will be creating a new dark ages
May 10th, 2008 at 3:47 amAnd this is a suprise on college campus’ why?
May 10th, 2008 at 7:36 amDuring the cold war I had a high security clearance in a sensitive job, I was actually ORDERED to read the Communist Manifesto,and was issued a copy to better understand the enemy we were up against then. Now I recommend the Koran for the same reason.
May 10th, 2008 at 7:58 amThis really exposes the root problem of harassment and hate crime laws or rules. They are a wide open door for real thought police and, in practice, they trump and trample the bill of rights. (as you said, Mindy) Good laws remain ones that say no harm, no foul, and mean physical harm.
A law that makes merely hurting someone’s feelings a crime is terrible and dangerous since no person can control anyone’s feelings except his own–and often not even those.
May 10th, 2008 at 9:37 amYet, when my daughter started her first year at UNC-Chapel Hill the book freshmen students were required to read was one about the koran.
The tunnel-visioned campus PC gestapo evidently found no harrasment content in that book…..higher education my ass.
May 10th, 2008 at 10:20 am“I thought it was encouraged to read subversive texts at college? No matter who was being subverted…”
Only if it’s about destroying America through Jihad, or about killing all Jews and wiping Israel off the face of the planet.
May 10th, 2008 at 10:40 amThis is nothing I haven’t heard many times before. This guy needs a lawyer, and a real one. Union stewards are almost always just other employees who want to rise on the union ladder. Nobody with a brain will take them seriously.
If Sampson wants any justice, he must obtain a lawyer and must bring a lawsuit for MONETARY COMPENSATION against the school.
This is precisely why countries have militaries.
Walk softly and carry a big stick. (T Roosevelt)
You can get further with a kind word and a gun than you can with just a kind word. (Al Capone).
Libs and PC retards in positions of power fuck decent people every day. It’s when you drag their asses in front of a court and force the constitution up their ass that justice is served.
CALL A LAWYER!
May 10th, 2008 at 12:39 pmBOO
May 10th, 2008 at 1:05 pm