Racism is apparently not ok to discuss anymore.

December 7, 2013 4:20 PM

Shannon Gibney, a black female professor at Minneapolis Community and Technical College, was reprimanded by school officials after three of her white male students were upset by a lesson she taught on structural racism.

Slate's coverage here.

posted by zardoz (12 comments total)

Really, if you are not ready to feel uncomfortable from time to time, you are not ready for college. You're there to be challenged.
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:25 PM on December 7, 2013 [8 favorites]

Based on this and other actions by the school administration, Gibney and six other professors are filing a federal class action lawsuit against the college alleging that it is a discriminatory workplace.

::high-five!::
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 4:26 PM on December 7, 2013 [1 favorite]

Back in January 2009, white students made charges of discrimination after Gibney suggested to them that fashioning a noose in the newsroom of the campus newspaper—as an editor had done the previous fall—might alienate students of color.

It appalls me that this needed to be told to anyone of college age.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 4:27 PM on December 7, 2013 [2 favorites]

I am so glad GenjiandProust got in with that first comment. It can't be overstated: if your college/university classes sometimes make you uncomfortable by questioning certain things you had taken as a given, or by exposing you to facts and perspectives you were previously unaware of, it means is the classes are functioning as they should.
posted by erlking at 4:29 PM on December 7, 2013 [1 favorite]

I was getting a good bit of rage going until I read "When the two students appeared to be dissatisfied with her responses (she explained she was talking about institutionalized racism, not individual attitudes), she says she invited them to file a racial harassment complaint."

Then I sort of shrugged and moved on.
posted by Shutter at 4:30 PM on December 7, 2013

Yep, the thing about COME AT ME BRO is that the bro might come at you.
posted by save alive nothing that breatheth at 4:31 PM on December 7, 2013

If your class is causing people to file complaints, I can see why an administrator would get irked. If the administration doesn't reprimand in response to charges of hostile learning environments, that's kind of a problem, no?
posted by Shutter at 4:34 PM on December 7, 2013

The problem is not that they filed the complaint but that the administration took it seriously and reprimanded her.

I see her "suggestion" to the student that he file a complaint as similar to Scopes and the ACLU goading the state of Tennessee to press charges for teaching evolution. In both cases, the fact that the higher power (the college or the state of Tennessee) went through shows some severe structural problems in the system.
posted by dhens at 4:35 PM on December 7, 2013 [1 favorite]

Gibney says that during the class, a white male student interrupted her lecture on structural racism asking, “Why do we have to talk about this in every class?”

I will be the bad guy here and say maybe talking about structural racism in multiple classes is not what most students signed up for at this public two-year technical and community college. That is not to discount the impact of racism, or the importance of pointing it out.
posted by 2bucksplus at 4:35 PM on December 7, 2013

What about the part where the students said she was "talking about it in every class"? That seems a bit odd in a class called Intro to Mass Communication. I'd be interested to know if this was a preoccupation that took up a lot of time in class.
posted by jayder at 4:38 PM on December 7, 2013

@2bucksplus: If not then, then where and when? Are not these students going to go on to perpetuate (and possibly alter?) those structures in their professional lives?
posted by erlking at 4:38 PM on December 7, 2013

If your class is causing people to file complaints, I can see why an administrator would get irked.
Now imagine it is James O'Keefe filing those complaints.

“Why do we have to talk about this in every class?”
I will be the bad guy here and say maybe talking about structural racism in multiple classes is not what most students signed up for at this public two-year technical and community college.
I read this -- and perhaps I am being uncharitable to the complainant -- as the instructor talking about it oh, say, 5 class periods out of 40, which is still outside of some students' "comfort zones."
posted by dhens at 4:39 PM on December 7, 2013