http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=4531
Selwyn Duke
The May 9 edition of the New York Post carries a short article by an Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis student named Keith John Sampson. He tells a story of being charged with “racial harassment” simply because he was “http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=3798" reading an anti-Ku Klux Klan book. I’m not kidding. Sampson tells his story:
“The book was Todd Tucker’s ‘Notre Dame vs. the Klan: How the Fighting Irish Defeated the Ku Klux http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=4081‘; I was reading it on break from my campus job as a janitor. The same book is in the university library…
“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.'”The affirmative-action officer – who draws a salary of $106, 000 a year to perform her crucial role and is obviously a woman of inestimable intellect – neither examined the book nor spoke with Sampson. He wasn’t guilty until proven innocent. He was just guilty.
To make a long story short, the charges were only dropped months later after the institution of lower learning came under pressure from the media, the ACLU (hey, even a blind squirrel…) and a more noble entity called the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education.
Since Sampson works as a janitor to, I would assume, help finance his education, he obviously wasn’t born with a silver spoon in his mouth. Perhaps he was assumed to be one of those bigoted working class people of whom Barack Obama spoke. Anyway, it’s good to see he is getting something for the many thousands of dollars he is paying to attend his illustrious Indiana university.
As outrageous as the story is, what is more troubling than the facts Sampson provided is what he omitted. He failed to identify the cultural forces responsible for his persecution or even hint at the wider problem. Perhaps the Post insisted he stick to only uncontroversial facts or maybe the fault lies with his own political correctness. It’s probably both, as Sampson seems like a somewhat liberal man who is painfully naive about the power of the thought police (despite being victimized them).
For starters, Sampson fails to point out that the affirmative-action officer is a black woman named Lillian Charleston. Oh, that’s not relevant? Sorry, but this is all about race. Mr. Sampson would never have been charged with racial harassment for reading a history book relating to the Klan were he not white; in fact, it’s hard to imagine such a charge being leveled against a black person for any reason, given the double standards in the academy’s politically-correct environment.
http://www.newmediajournal.us/staff/duke/2008/05162008.htm