By Michelle Malkin
Wednesday, March 06, 2013
American college campuses are the most fertile grounds
for fake hate. They're marinated in identity politics and packed with
self-indulgent, tenured radicals suspended in the 1960s. In the name of
enlightenment and tolerance, these institutions of higher learning breed a
corrosive culture of left-wing self-victimization. Take my alma mater, Oberlin
College. Please.
This week, the famously "progressive" college
in Ohio made international headlines when it shut down classes after a series
of purported hate crimes. According to the Oberlin Review (a student newspaper
I once wrote for), anti-black and anti-gay vandalism/"hate speech"
have plagued the campus since Feb. 9.
"'Whites Only' was written above a water fountain,
'N*gger Oven' was written inside the elevator, and 'No N*ggers' was written on
a bathroom door" at one dormitory, according to the publication.
Swastikas and epithets were drawn on posters around the
school. Activists implied the incidents were tied to Black History Month. The
final straw? A menacing presence on campus who allegedly donned a "KKK
hood" and robe near the segregated black dormitory known as "Afrikan
Heritage House."
Oberlin President Marvin Krislov and three college deans
ostentatiously published an "open letter" announcing the administration's
decision to "suspend formal classes and non-essential activities."
The campus body immediately jumped to conclusions and indulged in collective
grievance-mongering. The New York Times, Black Entertainment Television and The
Associated Press all piled on with angst-ridden coverage of the puzzling crimes
at one of the first U.S. colleges to admit blacks and women.
Oberlin alumna Lena Dunham, a cable TV celebrity who
starred in a pro-Obama ad likening her vote for him to losing her virginity,
took to Twitter to rally her fellow "Obies." The Associated Press
dutifully reported Dunham's plea as news: "Hey, Obies, remember the
beautiful, inclusive and downright revolutionary history of the place you call
home. Protect each other."
But what the AP public relations team for Dunham and the
Oberlin mau-mau-ers didn't report is the rest of the story. While Blame Righty
propagandists bemoaned the frightening persistence of white supremacy in the
tiny town of Oberlin, city police told a local reporter that eyewitnesses saw
no one in KKK garb -- but instead saw a pedestrian wearing a blanket. Yes, the
dreaded Assault Blanket of Phantom Bias.
Moreover, after arresting two students involved in the
spate of hate messages left around campus, police say "it is unclear if
they were motivated by racial hatred or -- as has been suggested -- were
attempting a commentary on free speech."
Color me unsurprised. The truth is that Oberlin has been
a hotbed of dubious hate crime claims, dating back to the late 1980s and 1990s,
when I was a student on campus. In 1988, giant signs reading "White
Supremacy Rules (Kill All N*ggers)" and "White Supremacy Rules,
(F*uck (slashed out and replaced with 'Kill') All Minorities)" were hung
anonymously at the Student Union building. It has long been suspected that
minority students themselves were responsible.
In 1993, a memorial arch on campus dedicated to Oberlin
missionaries who died in the Boxer Rebellion was defaced with anti-Asian
graffiti. The venomous messages -- "Death to Ch*nks Memorial" and
"Dead ch*nks, good ch*nks" -- led to a paroxysm of protests,
administration self-flagellation and sanctimonious resolutions condemning
bigotry. But the hate crime was concocted by an Asian-American Oberlin student
engaged in the twisted pursuit of raising awareness about hate by faking it,
Tawana Brawley-style.
Segregated dorms, segregated graduations and segregated
academic departments foster paranoid and selective race-consciousness. While I
was on campus, one Asian-American student accused a library worker of racism
after the poor staffer asked the grievance-mongering student to lower the
blinds where she was studying. Call the Department of Justice!
A black student accused an ice cream shop owner of racism
after he told the student she was not allowed to sit at an outside table
because she hadn't purchased any items from his store. Alert the U.N.
Commission on Human Rights!
In 2006, I went back to Oberlin to confront the campus
with the hate crime hoax phenomenon. As I told students back then, liberals see
racism where it doesn't exist, fabricate it when they can't find it and ignore
it within their own ranks. I documented case after case of phony racism by
students and faculty, from Ole Miss to Arizona State to Claremont McKenna, and
contrasted it with the vitriolic prejudice that tolerant lefties have for
minorities who stray from the political plantation.
The response from "students of color"? They
took offense, of course, and characterized my speech as self-hating hate. Just
as their coddling faculty and college elders have taught them to do.
I repeat: Mix identity politics, multicultural studies,
cowardly administrators and biased media -- and you've got a toxic recipe for
opportunistic hate crime hoaxes. Welcome to high-priced, higher mis-education,
made and manufactured in the U.S.A.
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