I don’t understand the point of digging this up and publishing it.
11
Unless you truly understand the context of why he did this I might be best to cut him some slack.
7
This article neglects to provide a context for the photo. Instead of being a travesty it's every bit as likely that it was created in the spirit of dark, irreverent humor of the Harvard Lampoon.
Crutcher didn't really need to make Mr Kizzie the center of attention but he chose to do so anyway. In this day and age when reputations are destroyed and careers damaged in a split second of Internet exposure I don't think Mr. Kizzie needed the attention. He doesn't owe me or anyone else reading this newspaper an explanation.
12
As a black kid who grew up in predominantly white, upper-middle class suburbs, I can tall you that we often feel pressure to go along with and become the butt of jokes in order to fit in. It's not easy being different. Much like the author of this piece, when I look back on my high school years I regret putting up with jokes and political views that were clearly racist and not standing up for myself more because I didn't want to sit along in the cafeteria. So, please don't look at this photo and assume that this guy was having a good time.
10
Ronald Crutcher has a doctorate from Yale and was referred to as Dr. Crutcher when I knew him in his former post at my alma mater, Wheaton College in Massachusetts. Might want to correct that byline.
5
What a waste of news print. Clearly a statement critical of the past, of the white participants forefathers - done in the form of a joke. There is so much to be written about concerning racism - and this is what they come up with....
4
Why are you giving Mr. Kizzie a break? He's just as mortifying as the students in hoods.
Oh look, the Times is reporting that some shocking cultural thing happened in the distant past, and must be relitigated in the politically correct culture of this moment.
8
When there is a perceived need to "excavate" a pic from an old yearbook, to support a "commission on history and identity", you know the diversity racket is in full force at Richmond. So students are incurring student loans they can never hope to repay to support the cushy jobs designed to tell everyone what they already know, i.e. there's racism. The contribution of this to actual scholarship is zero.
4
Nothing says I am a great guy, like Doxing an alumni for your own virtue signalling.
God help The Spiders if this man stays in charge.
5
As a hispanic guy I’ve often played into jokes that to an outsider, especially today, would be offensive towards other hispanics and other races.
The difference between my experience and the author here is I don’t let jokes and stereotypes have any control over my feelings. None of the stereotypes represent me and are a ridiculous over-generalization. None of these words will have any power if you don’t let it affect you.
Neither me nor my friends are hateful, but we also do not get easily outraged or upset. That our culture has moved from accepting Chapelle as a comedian to getting upset over the smallest thing says a lot about the world of censorship that we are headed towards.
Outrage over words and images just gives power to those that would actually use them with hateful intent. Being upset at a picture from a private party, drinks in hand, smiles all around, and where everyone went home in one piece is pointless. A little crude and edgy sure, but I’m not seeing any evidence of hate in that picture.
6
I notice that Mr. Kizzie is listed as a forward on the University of Richmond Spiders basketball team for the 1980-81 season, however, based on his low PPG average, I doubt that he was ever a star player.
Southern collegiate sports teams had begun to desegregate in the late 1960s beginning with SEC football, so integration was probably not new to Division 1 basketball by that time.
Albert Murray, the novelist and jazz scholar once made the wry observation that by the 1970s or '80s, watching Ole Miss play the University of Florida on New Year's day was a bit like watching Florida A & M vs. South Carolina State in the old days, obviously because of the number of black players on formerly all-white teams.
So I'm guessing that by 1980 a collegiate athlete might have been more accepted, albeit in a very demeaning way, than a black scholar or classical musician.
It is disturbing and it may be more scary to consider where they got that many robes.
1
And youth is cruel, and has no remorse
And smiles at situations which it cannot see.—T.S.Eliot
3
It would be interesting to hear what Mr Kizzie thinks about this.
Eventually, we have to all reach a state where skin colour is as irrelevant as eye or hair colour. I have seen groups of people where this is now the case. Can we then take such a photo with humour, poor humour maybe, but without looking back on it many years later as a travesty?
6
In a way it makes a point.... it's not over. Victimization. Maltreatment of the other-- face exposed by the anonymous (faces covered.
frankly there's a lot of victimization -- and many models. (To some degree I also blame "fashion" examples as continuing to sexualize women and young women.) (I bet at least some of the young women used by Epstein et al thought they were going somewhere!
A strong imge might even speak more volumes than a slogan -- the migrant father and daughter!
Sweeping the images under the rug does NOT solve anything at all. (Ditto taking down statues of Confederate generals while leaving up statues of Union generals. History has a peculiar way of justifying itself.)
Discuss.
When Michael Kizzee had the photo taken, he likely underestimated both the meaning to himself and his parents and the encouragement he gave to his classmates to minimize the significance. He likely wanted to belong. Very common among youth particularly away from home. It seems to me a lesson is if you know your history, culture, and religion well, you are more prepared better to stand up for your own identity as well as others. I wonder what the kids in the white robes are doing today as well as their friends and children and what beliefs they represent. Of course, we should understand him and we must learn that lies and hate spread more easily if it isn’t recognized and confronted.
4
I was a teacher in rural Oregon for awhile. I had an African-American student in class and a lot of the white students in class made "Fox and Friends" kinda comments, which shocked me at the time. The African-American student was affable and was well liked, and I'm sure he tried to blend in. I tried to give him support on racial issues and others, but to the class, I couldn't help but feel, he was 'half-black' and 'half-white' because these were his friends and environment -- and sadly, he felt comfortable with that. It was in stark contrast to when I taught at Jefferson High School in Portland, one of the few predominantly black high schools.
4
Hey, we've all done really stupid stuff at that age, particularly when drunk. And he probably thought he was being hilarious, lampooning the feckless KKK. Like I said, stupid stuff. Let it go.
8
Thank you for your honesty and placing this in a context which few will experience as times change. Thank you also for hosting the discussions on race and education. We all need to learn.
Young people are vulnerable to outside influences. They can be confused. They can be sucked into situations they do not understand and may have to live with the consequences.
It is the job of adults and educational institutions to guide such young people, to not tolerate negative environments that encourage racism or misogyny or other bigotry including against LGBTQ.
We will get better but need to have some understanding for the past mistakes that everyone commits at some time.
4
Mr. Crutcher it was refreshing to read this. We live in an era of victimization. So many play the victim and want to grind their ax. but instead you call for action, communication and leadership. This old white guy salutes you and your efforts. Through communication that may all make us squirm and by developing mutual respect America will get through this. We can no longer keep racism in the closet. We cannot ignore and "wink, wink" trump and his racial slurs no matter how overt or how subtle. He may literally have the "bully pulpit" but the rest of us have courage, fairness and decency on our side. We shall overcome.
21
Lenny Bruce, in his 1960 comedy album "I Am Not A Nut, Elect Me!" used a cover depicting black men wearing KKK robes.
https://www.discogs.com/Lenny-Bruce-I-Am-Not-A-Nut-Elect-Me/release/9680249
The KKK was a common visual theme back then, usually ridiculed in editorial cartoons.
Lennie Bruce, who (needless to say) was Jewish, literally started his career with Nazi jokes. His signature routine was "How Hitler Got Started." Why not? Jewish comedians told Nazi jokes as they were exterminated in Germany.
After WWII, Nazi jokes, and Jewish jokes, were more common in America than they are today.
Sure, it was transgressive and offensive to some -- that was the point. A comedian's purpose is to make people laugh, not avoid offense. His humor was directed at Jews, Catholics, organized religion, different races -- and he was regularly arrested as a result. The New York jazz club scene that he performed in was one of the most integrated environments in America. One of his routines was actually, "How to talk to negros at parties."
I think the KKK humor, and Nazi humor, helped integrate people. By confronting the unspoken taboo, and getting it out in the open, it helped us get along together.
In the same way, Robert Reich said that he defuses the discomfort by making jokes about his height ("They cut me off at the knees.")
So to those who are offended by this humor, I say -- good! That's what they were trying to do. Back then it made us laugh.
8
Racial humor is often hilarious.
Racist jokes are rarely funny.
If political correctness is going to destroy comedy it may be because racism has been hiding behind comedy for so long.
1
If you look at the College of the Holy Cross (Worcester, MA) yearbook for 1978 or 1979 you will see a photo from one of the men’s dorms with a large flag embellished with a swastika. The students provided the salutes. The faculty provided the approval.
1
I expect that no one who has ever tried to "push the envelope" is totally fault-free.
The real question is: Did you learn from your mistake?
Jesus says this to an adulteress: "Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more."
(John 8:11 KJV)
4
That is some photo. I would be interesting in hearing Mr Kizzie's take on the photo, why he posed as he did, did it mean anything to him at the time, and what his experiences were at a PWI.
What an asinine piece. It boggles the mind that someone who thinks like this is in charge of an institution of higher learning. Are we really going to apply today's norms to behavior from 40 years ago. Where does it stop? How far back do we go and why is so hard for people to realize that as a society we evolve and improve. Also kids in college do stupid things that they think are funny at the time. The purveyors of identity politics are in for another rude another rude surprise in 2020.
7
@David Sacco
Thank you for this insight into the Trumpish interpretation of the photo and article. The comment was well-developed in its characteristic opening insult; it was seasoned with just the right mix of righteous indignation, diversion to a peripheral issue ("kids in college do stupid things"), and crowing threat. This is the right wing response we can expect when we explore racism, and we should not be surprised at how deft Trumpers can be in warping the argument.
3
I'm pretty sure Americans are tired of the media's focus on race and instead want to hear conversations about economics, health or education. It is tiresome.
5
@Marie Condo. Make that suggestion to the person occupying the WH!! Duh!!
When a society says "This is no a subject one can joke about", no matter what the subject, it is on the road to intellectual censorship. I am Irish, and find a good Irish joke funny as all get out.
If you cannot laugh at the world, you have no choice but to cry over it.
5
I'm thankful that, as a college student, I never did anything stupid. I'm even more thankful that I had good friends who didn't rat me out. However, I'm most thankful that I didn't have Mr. Crutcher for a classmate.
5
I confess to being very disconcerted by the current racial climate. I believe that the racist trope of Donald Trump serves only to exacerbate the racial animus that still exists among some of our society. Trump deserves whatever ring Dante has reserved for him.
That said, for the life of me I cannot get my head around the emergence of African American grievances centered on events of 50 to 200 years ago, and worse, the hubris of those who insist on branding all whites as racist. Let me hasten to clarify that Mr Crutcher did not do this in this opinion piece, but the norm for the African American opinion writers contributing to the NYT is to do so.
At some point African Americans really have to do as much of a deep soul search as European Americans.
Those of European descent must acknowledge the nazi like crimes of slave holders and must acknowledge the despicable behavior of Jim Crow. To ignore that, or to allow such states as Texas to call slaves "field hands" is intellectual dishonesty and moral turpitude. All of us must hold our institutions and our neighbors accountable for the truth; otherwise we will get more Trumps, and as they morph into more nazi like creatures.
Those of African descent must get over slavery. Nothing will change the reality of slavery. Nothing will make small minded people accept them, let alone like them. The only thing that will matter in the lives of African Americans is how much positive control they take over their lives.
1
They were making a joke, it was a send-up. Comedy can be offensive, it doesn't make it less comedic.
25
@Barrie
You have no idea want their intent was but my guess is that Mr. Kizzie does.
4
@Barrie Where is the humor in that "joke"?
1
You think terroristic lynching is funny? I can hardly find words for how disgusting and offensive your comment is. And I am not joking.
6
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar . . .
2
The piece casts the incident as a failing by its victim to stand up for himself. There are two separate aspects here. First the casual sophomoric racism of the participants, young and probably drunk. However, it was planned (had to get the outfits and noose), which meant some thought was put into it. It is dispicable what those white "men" did, but that leads to the second and far more offensive and telling element. Someone took that horrifying photo and selected it for the yearbook. A committee reviewed that photo for the yearbook, including faculty and administration. That yearbook was received by most members of the class, reviewed by most of the faculty and undoubtedly the higher echelons of the university administration. This second aspect says far more about the racist attitudes of the university, faculty and students. I suggest an email to the alumni association for that year, and to faculty and administration. Let's see them squirm and see what they have to say for themselves. I can hear the dissembling already.
1
Very insightful and thoughtful column.
2
"But there's a black person!" isn't a defense against racism. Clarence Thomas is black, and he's a far, far bigger contributor to systemic racism than I could ever be, even if I spent the rest of my lifetime fronting a Neo group for the GOP.
3
I don't really know what the purpose of this picture was, but I certainly see no victim. Maybe there was some larger context for the picture?
Is the problem that the students seem to be having fun? If it was a re-enactment to show pain would it be better?
Maybe it is just a shocking picture? Nothing more.
3
A photo, an article, memories best left unsaid. I’m sure he is embarrassed and mortified. I feel badly for him twice.
7
@Ed Latimer I, too, feel the mortification he must feel. But if one's mistake can become a tool for education current black and white students, then the courage it takes for Mr. Kizzie to do that mitigates his youthful mistake.
2
@Ed Latimer Embarrassed and mortified? Please don’t be so quick to presume what other people think, or tell them what they should think, or should have been thinking in a different time and place and circumstance.
I would love to hear Mr Kizzie tell his story. Don’t try to tell it for him.
4
Not a joke nor satire this.
It's 1967, in the dining room of a prestigious D.C. government agency that shall remain nameless. A half dozen lawyers from the agency's Gen. Council's Office (me included) are having lunch. One of our number is African-American. Another, describing the focus of a particular difficult legal issue, refers to "it" as the "n_ _ _er in the woodpile". No one says a word -- not our black colleague; not me, although I was mortified. That was the last time I remained silent in the presence of offensive speech like that.
My point: although I believe the speaker was oblivious as to what he had said and our black colleague was clearly invisible to him, how is it that even now obliviousness and invisibility persists?
3
Yes, a black president, followed by the most virulently racist prez since Andrew Johnson. Progress?
3
I went to a college that had sponsored students from Africa, but was essentially closed to students from Pittsburgh, 40 miles away. The African students were given special consideration and the American black students swam upstream all year long.
1
Virginia seems to be trying to out-Florida Florida. On many fronts they are succeeding. TN is currently giving them a run for their money.
2
I understand that in today’s context this comes off as very offensive. However, I am a left of center progressive and I have to tell my fellow liberals to learn to take a joke.
This was 39 years ago. Let’s do an experiment: think back to 39 years before this photo was published. That brings us to 1941. This was a time that blacks and whites would NEVER associate with each other socially, let alone go to school together.
My point is that as time shifts contexts shift as well. In the concept of 1980 this clearly wasn’t considered so offensive as it was published in the college yearbook.
Humor is a way of dealing with sensitive issues, and race is a very sensitive issue. Do me a favor: check out Dave Chappelle’s comedy sketch where he plays a blind man who doesn’t know he is black, and thus is a raving racist. It’s offensive, but it is very astute in poking fun at race relations and stereotypes. And it isn’t so far away being from 2003.
7
@Chris
"That brings us to 1941. This was a time that blacks and whites would NEVER associate with each other socially..."
Malcolm X had a different opinion about 1940s Harlem in general and the Savoy Ballroom in particular.
The poor man made an unfortunate mistake that he certainly regrets. Instead of including his act in the "mass unearthing of past racism " you should reasonably assume that he has learned from his mistake and move on. The grievance industry has bigger things to tend to.
2
There have been times in my college years and post-college years where I've tried to fit in with my classmates or coworkers by not speaking up in response to insensitive racial commentary about African Amercians. It's already hard enough as it is to be the only "one" or one of the few in class or in professional settings. When I was younger, I didn't want to be perceived as the stereotypical angry black woman. I didn't know how to handle those situations when I was younger. I'm not sure I know how to properly handle them now. I've never gone as far as to pose with a noose around my neck but I can understand wanting to be accepted by your peers when you're young and inexperienced.
4
It seems that focusing on stuff like this, which can be interpreted in different ways, dilutes the topic of the evils that racism causes. If this can only be interpreted in one way, that would seem to be very narrow minded, and it doesn’t seem that promoting narrow minded thinking is conducive for eradicating racism.
2
Interesting all the hand-wringing and "shock" over drunken college photos presumed to be depicting disturbing racist acts, but no one is unearthing what I'm sure are plenty of yearbook photos with blatantly misogynistic images.
3
Certainly much of Mr. Crutcher's squeamishness over this matter derives from him knowing this is the most egregiously unjust example of "callout culture" imaginable. To thrust a private citizen into the global SHAME spotlight, over a clearly lighthearted moment of youthful interracial fellowship from FORTY years ago -- is itself a cruel, twisted, and utterly traumatizing *violence* he has inflicted upon Mr. Kizzie.
To Mr. Crutcher and the rest of the Ministry of Woke Truth, and in the timeless words of Joseph Welch to Senator Joe McCarthy, "Have you no sense of decency???"
10
So, the University of Richmond has an entire "Project" dedicated to hunting down racist images, words and deeds from its long-buried past so that today's students can be appalled and offended, and the university administration can "grapple" with them?
How weird.
It's one thing to deny or paper over the ugly realities that have occurred in an institution's past. But to obsess over these things and devote oneself to public self-flagellation over it is sick and self destructive.
8
In the past 50 years, being the son of bi-racial parents (Caribbean American father, German mother), I've had many instances were I was the only person of color in the classroom, in the locker room, and in the office. I've been to places in Northern Germany where I was the only person of color in town, and the only one for miles and miles in any direction. Most of those instances were enjoyable and, I hope, mutually beneficial. However, there have been instances when my race was directly pointed to as something that made me different from everyone else (even though I had the same upbringing and level of education as everyone else present). There have been instances where jokes were made about blacks in my presence and I felt pressured to just laugh along. While I sometimes regret that I condoned the jokes at the time, it is quite intimidating being the only black guy in a bar in the middle of nowhere and someone makes a racially insensitive joke. The point I'm making is, I can see how "Mike" may have felt pressured to go along with the lynching joke, just to fit in. Just so he wouldn't be pushed further to the edges of his peer group. Was he wrong for doing so? Maybe. But I think we have consider the whole picture to understand why Mike played along.
14
@Bob
What's different about you is what makes you you."
All are needed by each one; nothing is good or fair alone.
Vive la difference.
What all of us have done because of peer pressure!!! Yikes.
1
To add to the complexities Ronald Crutcher personally faced as a classical musician. (This is one of those 'if memory serves me correctly' things, and if any of you can add or correct detail, it would be welcome.)
Several decades ago there was a move in Detroit to establish an affirmative action program for the Detroit Symphony. The predominantly Black city with predominantly Black political leadership wanted its orchestra, which was mostly white, to be much more Black. The biggest pushback to the idea came not from whites but from the Black members of the orchestra who felt that if such a program were established, they would never again be looked at as the highly skilled and accomplished musicians they were but, rather, as also-rans who were there simply to fill a quota. I do not remember how it all played out, but it is worthy of noting to indicate almost every well-intentioned policy has unintended consequences as is far more complex than a bumpersticker.
Reading about Crutcher's European experience being noted as the "colored cellist", I can't help but think of orchestras I have seen in recent years where I and others have noted the "white cellist" or the "white violinist", as many orchestras' string sections are now largely composed of Asian-American (mostly Chinese-American) players. I have no idea what the Europeans Crutcher dealt with believed, felt, or were thinking, but to note a difference does not necessarily mean a judgment was involved.
6
Who is Mr. Crutcher to tell Mr. Kizzie, or any other adult, what to do or think?
I agree that the photo is in poor taste, even reprehensible, but you know what? This is America. Folks should have the freedom to do as they please, so long as they are not hurting anyone else, and either enjoy or suffer the consequences of their actions. They do not, I think, need a university president calling them decades after the fact to have "a conversation," any more than Ivy League students today need administrators giving them advice on Halloween costumes.
Fortunately, Mr. Kizzie, although we never hear from him here--and I wish that we had--appears not to have been offended by Mr. Crutcher's call and so all's well that ends well, at least in this instance. But I think I know what I would have done if the president of my alma mater called me more than a quarter-century after graduation to talk about a picture taken of me when he wasn't there. I'd tell him to mind his own business.
10
@August West
How was it wrong to make a call to say a picture had been unearthed that would lead to uncomfortable questions for an alum? Forewarned is forearmed.
7
@Lydia I don't think that's why he called.
2
@Lydia
Good point--I had overlooked, more than I should have, the part about journalists digging through old yearbooks and finding stuff like this. Again, though, I would rather have heard from Mr. Kizzie on this matter than Mr. Crutcher. It is, after all, Mr. Kizzie's story to tell, no one else's. Also, journalists who comb through old yearbooks and post photos like this that don't involve public figures ought to be ashamed of themselves. If it's the president or the governor or a senator, I care. If it's some guy who works in a factory or sells insurance, what purpose is served?
2
As a young woman in the 80's hard on the heels of the sexual revolution where woman wanted to prove they could be just as casual and adventurous about sex as men, I did some questionable things. It never occurred to me until #metoo started and I began to look back at those years framed in the context of today.
I finally decided that I could only frame those things within the time they occurred. Going back made very little sense. We are who we are today because of what we've learned and suffered in the past.
Too each his own but my past is past. Nothing criminal happened to me. I was not involved in anything that at the time would have looked bad. I wasn't involved in a Bret Kavanuagh situation where any actions were criminal even in those more lax times.
I live with my past and recognize it's part of who I am today.
13
To quote Leslie Hartley, "The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there." I don't understand why this is so hard for today's college students to understand - it is the beginning of all historical wisdom and contemporary humility. This is not to excuse the actions, just to explain them. But with explanation comes understanding, which I think today's "outraged" students are a little short on.
30
@Mark Kuperberg
This is true. Also, I recall my social circle in college in the early '90s -- mixed race, mixed gender, mixed religions, and mixed sexual preferences -- having extremely offensive dining hall conversations, each of us trying to out-offend the others. We'd laugh together for hours on various topics that today would have us expelled.
The simple fact is that, as long as no one's being physically harmed, what others choose to find humor in is nobody else's business.
As far as I can tell, the only people *actually* trying to lynch the young black man in this picture are the perpetually offended and morally superior Social Justice Warriors, for the unforgivable crime of having a sense of humor that doesn't match their own.
6
Good grief ... give the guy a break. I think even Orwell's novel " 1984 " had a few moments of humor despite efforts of the Thought Police to suppress all semblance of such.
15
This is a very thoughtful reflection. Thank you. Buried at the end of the piece is a link to the Legacy Museum in Montgomery, AL. It is a powerful place, and everyone should visit it to better understand what it has meant and what it continues to mean to be an African-American. Racism and exploitation are an ugly part of our past and present. We have a lot of history to understand and grapple with in order to keep it from being part of our future.
7
Humor helps people connect. Making something a joking matter can take its power to hurt. There is a long tradition of charged humor in this world and the assumption that it is always intended to hurt is simply wrong. When will the no fun twitterati get this? I guess we are reduced to telling children's jokes for now. The idea that twenty somethings would have been the perfect morality police they are now had they lived in the 1980's or the 1950's let alone the 1850's is absurd. I can understand why many Americans are repelled by the moral elites and will chooses Trump over the new moral guillotine mob. I won't, but I understand it.
16
@Sean - YES. And the frequency with which the word "joke" appears in *scare quotes* in this publication now is positively chilling. When the same jokes the Left used to make to shock and mock the Right's intolerance are now themselves being called evidence of bigotry -- the Left has absolutely gone off the cognitive rails...
3
I'm not sure what justifies digging up a past of someone who did not choose to be a public figure. With a governor, one can argue that such a photo is relevant to his present job, which involves power and trust. He knew that when he ran for governor. But proactively digging up random private people's past embarrassing moments? What is the justification for that?
33
More power to the student. Black kid making fun of KKK and killing its power with a joke. Love it. From not being allowed to go education to being in a prestigious
school and making fun of KKK with a glass of whiskey in your hand. The PC police is loosing its mind and whoever the guy who wrote this is, he is more dangerous than KKK ever was. The PC police accomplished something KKK never could. They killed and criminalized humor.
For myself, one of that best pieces of theatre I ever saw on Broadway was the iconic revival of Mel Brook’s The Producers. Just imagine, guy in a Nazi uniform
singing Springtime For Hitler in Germany.
35
@Pravda I think perhaps it will be best to hear from the student himself whether or not he felt empowered by this gesture. In any case I think hearing his talk will be an excellent history lesson for current students.
6
@Pravda Agreed, but even truer of "Blazing Saddles," which is hilarious but could never be made today.
Mel Brooks is a Jewish man who made Nazis into a farce with the power of his pen.
The man in that photo is ashamed of the role he played in it, and, as the author of this article points out, was probably motivated by fitting in with a still racist and mostly white friend group.
The KKK murdered people to stop them from voting or speaking out against absolute white authority and black disenfranchisement. I’m pretty sure that, in addition to ACTUAL MURDER, that “killed” any jokes that people might have made about their white terrorists.
Meanwhile, the PC police is an organization that doesn’t exist, has killed and terrorized exactly noone, and I’m pretty sure they haven’t tried to deny white people the vote.
So, no, that’s wrong. The KKK was, and remains, much worse than imaginary boogeymen stalking college campuses waiting to haul the next microagressor off to the gulag.
3
"When a Black Student Plays Along With the K.K.K. Joke, What’s a College to Do?"
Maybe just treat everybody like a human being regardless of skin color?
19
Kudos to the fun-loving black student ridiculing the KKK. If you can’t take a joke ... I must wonder if these rather strained efforts to excavate racism from 50 years ago helps to demonstrate how little racism is found today in a country that, of late, elected a black President.
21
What should colleges, high schools, and society do when black students use the "N-word"?
14
You should lighten up. This is clearly an image showing racial harmony with blacks and whites making fun of the Ku Klux Klan.
22
Back in the 60s on many military bases there were groups of white GIs on Halloween walking around in white sheets saying trick or treat to the black soldiers who did not get the joke It wasn't funny then and definitely not humorous now
2
@Geno. Yes. Especially when you are black in the military and trying to figure out who is going to have your back.
1
And then today:
Eric Garner’s Death Will Not Lead to Federal Charges for N.Y.P.D. Officer
35
This is an astonishing picture. I remember well turning down a lunch engagement with legal companions from Chicago at a New Orleans restaurant in the early 80s when I noticed an historical plaque at the establishment’s entrance noting that the building had once been the site of slave auction. Sudden loss of appetite for Cajon fare and good fellowship ensued. I ate at another restaurant. Two of our companions out of six laughed off our sensitivity and dined at the “auction house.” I write this not in criticism of my companions or as a personal boast but in recognition of the human fact that ever evolving expansion of moral sensitivities to the “love thy neighbor” maxim is long, slow and tortured. We don’t know who the boobs in the KKK sheets were in this picture. But we would hope that most people would exercise a mature understanding of the slow evolution of moral standards to spare the black student with the noose in this picture of acute present embarrassment. The present urge toward endless castigation of past historical acts leading to demands for punishment and/ “excommunication,” exhibits the same moral immaturity evidenced by the “college blokes” in this awful photo.
6
@Robert Clarke By your standards we should never visit the South at all. In fact, let's just let them be a separate country. Maybe all memorials aren't celebratory. Would you refuse a visit to Auswitz?
1
I would argue it wasn't a racist joke, but an anti-racist joke, albeit a politically incorrect one. It would be as if I, as a Jew, I dressed in Auschwitz fatigues and my German roommates dressed as Nazis. Yes, meant to shock. But is it meant to be pro Nazi? Actually it would be meant to be the opposite. To say, 'we are so ok with each other now, that we can mock the hateful past.' The butt of the joke are the Nazis or KKK. This is humor of the Mel Brooks, Blazing Saddles. I'm not arguing in support of the joke, just against the incorrect interpretation of it.
46
I think if possible it would be good to have those under the hoods to participate also.
10
With the racist trump in the Big House, now more than ever it is important to dredge the swamp of our racist past. Keep up the good work!
2
I will start off by saying I consider myself to be a left of center minority voter who has voted democratic in every election since 1988. The Mel brooks movie Blazing saddles came out in early 70’s and was edgy for how it dealt with racism in a comedic way. It featured the black protagonist in a KKK outfit. People should watch this because that was considered acceptable. They should watch bugs bunny cartoons from the same period. Many offensive caricatures were acceptable then. . Eddie Murphy used negative black racial stereotypes in the 1980s as a vehicle to get laughs...e.g. Mr Robinson’s Neighborhood. These people in this photo were being brilliantly funny in there own minds at the time..ironic, .absurdist humor. Does anybody complain about Dave Chappell’s fairly recent hilarious bit where he plays a blind bigoted racist who happens to be black but doesn’t know he is black? And the KKK love him for it because his racial hatred is so impressive, they are willing to accept that he is Black? People need to pick up on a joke when they see one and stop judging people out of context with the times or the surroundings. This particular photo is all about IRONY and the people in it would have been watching and imitating blazing saddles and Eddie Murphy and lots of other “stuff” that some folks wouldn’t find funny today. This rabid response to all things potentially offensive in the past is what many people can’t stand as political correctness run amok.
36
Part of being young is about pushing old folks buttons. And there is no hotter button than racism. Focus on the young black men who are actually being killed by police today or even the hundreds of real lynchings that happened decades ago not on a faux-lynching designed to garner faux-outrage.
12
He is making fun of the KKK and after the picture was taken the KKK figures threw themselves in the mud.
My point is, the analysis of the photo is in itself racist. It is just a photo and without context you have absolutely no business talking about it. You didn't even make an effort to find out about the context. Shame on you.
15
@Jo Jamabalaya It's interesting how two readers can end up with different impressions of the same article, which I read as being all about the author making an effort to find out about the context, and working with the person in the photo to make sure that context is shared and explored in order to learn from the past and strive for a better future.
"With all this in mind, I called Mike. Unlike the students hiding in KKK robes, he acknowledged responsibility and told me he agreed that we must use the resurfacing of that ugly moment he was involved in as a learning opportunity. And he graciously offered to come back to campus to participate in an oral history interview with our students this fall."
2
Your obsession with racism is tiring. It is obvious that 80 years ago the US was a deeply racist country by today standards. It makes no sense to dig up old yearbooks or documents. Now the pendulum has swung to the other side and we are condemning micro aggression and harmless jokes.
11
The 1980s were 30 (not 80) years ago, and racism is alive and well in America in 2019.
3
Notice the author complains about being labeled a black cellist when he just wanted to judged as a cellist. Now , we must label people by their race gender etc etc etc.
You want to deflect white bad behavior and what “we” teach nonwhite people (“go back to your own country”) to the Stockholm Syndrome behavior of a few nonwhite people?
Please.
3
Wouldn’t it be nice if those dressed in the KKK costumes would step forward and return as well for a discussion on race.
10
@cmiller. Unless, Mike has lost his memory he still remembers that this was in the SAE frat house. SAE along with the other frats were all white, and outside of Mike and perhaps a few black high school kids hanging with their white friends sneaking on campus, other black UR students did not hang around frat row. VCU had black frats and a black social life as the downtown school with a larger black student body. My late friend and former UR quarterback, Tim Venable and I went on frat row a few times, it was quite a cultural shock. Lastly, the black students sat together at one table in the dining facility in 1979, by senior year Richmond had built a modern facility that did more to advance the social scenery on campus than anything i can posulate in the previous 50 years. I've been receiving the Richmond magazine for the past few years and have been pkeasantly surprised at the positive direction of the Richmond social life, faculty and student body, I'm rather proud and I'm sure Timmy would be, too.
Having gone on a job interview on campus of George Washington University shortly after graduation, and while being escorted around my prospective new office and new co-workers, not a single person in that all- white office spoke, acknowledged my presence or even seemed to move--and when I look at that photo, I can see the pain and the pride to overcome our odds. But i see no comedy or reason to award any medals.
Good luck, Mike I'm sure you will represent well. 🕷 Spiders
1
This is ancient history. "Oh my god, something racist happened in 1980" is just silly... lots of racist stuff happened back then, we know. Let it go. Focus on today.
8
@Kevin Yes, it seems a long time ago, but where do you think the racists got trained and how might they have come to think their racism was just fine as it was? College pranks, perhaps?
The participation of people objectified and belittled by racism is puzzling and painful to me in the same way that it's hard to see women agree to male-dominant theologies or Handmaid's Tale dress-up parties. Why would you subject yourself, even abstractly, even in jest, even fictionally, to such horrifying constructs?
Of course many of us can see this was not okay. But we're the ones who self-selected to read this op-ed.
1
@Kevin" Focus on today."
The cops who killed Eric garner will not be tried. How's that for more current racism?
2
The point of the article is that we should learn from the past to build a better future...
Honestly, if somebody told me this photo came from my hometown in 2010, I wouldn’t be surprised. When I was growing up in the 00’s, the few nonwhite students at my high school were targeted with racist jokes that they tolerated, and even “went along with,” to fit in. They had to tolerate them to fit in, otherwise they would be stigmatized as overly sensitive, uncool, and too serious. They’d be ostracized, and the knowledge that they’d be ostracized can pressure students to go along with jokes, even racist ones, and ones they find unfunny. That’s the point.
We can learn about the pressures students face, and how to build inclusive environments, by revisiting these photos. It’s not just about airing dirty laundry and shaming the students of previous generations. It’s about facing the past, owning it, confronting it, and learning from it to improve the present, and the future.
15
I remember when my Rochester, New York high school newspaper ran a photo of a black male wrestler flexing his muscles with the caption, "Best Tan". I was angry with him for being "accommodating" then. (Such a genteel description!)I wonder if he thinks back on that photo...
13
@Molly Bloom And perhaps you should consider that your anger belongs to you. You weren't angry with him for "being accommodating."
Own your emotions. You were angry with him for not living up to your expectations.
3
@Molly Bloom
To be technical, you have made the choice to tell a person of color how they are supposed to behave because they are that color.
Where I come from, we call that racism.
3
I did stupid things I regret in the 60’s 70’s 80’s 90’s and probably will continue to do so in others eyes.
It’s a photo of a man trying to fit in with the crowd in the most obvious way.
It’s silly to put today’s morality on the pasts images. If you were there you would understand.
It wasn’t little house on the prairie. Or lake Wobegon.
4
This would have been difficult to write.
Especially when the protagonist was named “Kizzie” and the photo was taken 3 years after the release of the movie Roots.
2
Actually, I am quite surprised that in USA Today was able to find only “more than 200” (meaning less than 300) examples of racist or offensive material at US colleges. (“Racist” is pretty easy to understand, but it is not clear what USA Today meant by “offensive;” offensive to women, LGBTQ, Jews, Muslims, Catholics? One wonders how many of the 200 or so examples were actually racist.)
In any case, given that there are about 2,500 four-year colleges in the US, that means there was about 1 racist/offensive example per 8 colleges, or 12%.
I am absolutely certain that in the 1960s the number of such incidents was a very large multiple of what USA Today discovered. Obviously there is still room for improvement, but it is inappropriate for the NYT and other media to suggest that race relations have not improved significantly since the 1960s.
5
I'm worried that the problem is not in universities, but in primary education. If one thing has become apparent over the past decade or so, it's that many states are teaching a revisionist history where the Civil War had nothing to do with slavery.
Additionally, many people actually fail to understand or accept what constitutes racism. I worked with a young white man who regularly used the n-word and other slurs, but didn't believe he was racist because he wasn't out burning crosses on people's lawns, or stopping them from getting jobs. No, just making a hostile work environment that he excuses as a joking around, didn't mean anything by it, so why is anyone upset?
I accidentally met that guy's sister, who coincidentally lived across the hall, and after introductions her first words to me were about "those" people making all kinds of noise. Since the building was notoriously loud, I asked what people she was talking about, and she leaned in with a conspiratorial look and whispered, "You know, the blacks." Ugh. Needed a mental shower after that.
These are folk who are never going to college, so who's going to help them understand their own passive racism?
2
@rbyteme Yes, primary education is the problem. I had a 7th grade social studies teacher who told the same lie about the Civil War not being about slavery. I attended a northern, segregated school system. When pressed about why the war happened he responded that it was about state's rights. When asked which state rights, he changed the subject. Each time we came to that topic and he made the same statement, someone posed the same question and got the same result from him...each and every time. Seems because he wouldn't/couldn't answer that question for us-his students-(what it was in specific that caused southern states to rebel and make war against the U.S. government) he was tacitly admitting that slavery was/is the reason for the Civil War. If only he'd had the candor and scholarship to just say yes.
I don't suppose we can make stupidity, and cluelessness, a federal crime?
3
Mr. Kizzie has nothing to apologize for: he was the target of racism, not its perpetrator. The hedging tone of the op-ed— which names and focuses exclusively on him, instead of on the white students in Klan hoods— seems to imply some sort of moral equivalency between their actions. There is none. I understand the writer is trying to make a broader point about the indignities we can be forced into as part of our own subjugation. It’s a valid point — our coerced “participation” adds insult, and shame (however misplaced), to injury. But parts of this piece strike a note of victim-blaming which is wholly incorrect. It would be like faulting a lone woman, surrounded by drunken men, for laughing along with a sexist joke because she’s wary of the consequences if she doesn’t. The students in Klan suits should be shamed and ashamed. I hope some of them have the courage to come back and address the school, as Mr. Kizzie is. I doubt they will. It is, once again, left to minorities — both Mr. Kizzie and President Crutcher— to do the reparative labor.
9
It’s tempting, in the era of Trump, to draw hard lines around human foibles. This is because his narcissistic personality is not to be trusted to do anything but be self-serving.
Most of the rest of us, though, may deserve a little room to account for human folly. We do things that seem like a good idea at the time but turn out to be embarrassingly, gallingly, egregiously, perhaps even dangerously not a good idea. For most of us, this is a quintessential and helpful, though perhaps painful, learning experience.
It is in society’s best interest, however, not to trust some people. Like Trump, some folks don’t feel they owe anything to society. They believe that virtues like honesty and trustworthiness are for suckers.
Unfortunately, almost all of us are unable to personally acquaint ourselves with every person in every one of these “youthful mistakes” photo controversies. Sadly, our only choice is often to assume the worst. I guess it is true that one ends up owning one’s mistakes when what goes around, comes around.
4
He wanted to fit in. The role his white peers wrongly cast him in makes that simple human desire a little heartbreaking.
4
Looking at the photo, I don't get the "sick joke", as Crutcher describes it. Neither dressing up like Klansmen nor wearing a noose, with or without a drink in hand, lacks any sense of an intended joke. By 1980, a school that allowed this was out of touch with the world - it defies explanation.
1
The students in 1980 felt that dressing in KKK outfits and staging a mock lynching was transgressive because they were mocking an older generation, still very much alive, who had tolerated or encouraged lynching in the past. Transgressive always feels funny after a few beers. Yes, it's in very bad taste, but for young men drinking beer, that is a feature, not a bug.
We gain little through agonizing about snapshots from 40 years ago. Move on; look forwards not backwards. We will solve very little through the supposed virtue of earnestness.
20
This is a useful reflection and a needed window into University leadership.
One thing that really bothers me about our moment in time - the here and now of 2019 - is that, we are in such a hurry to disown the past (and in the case of this picture, for good reason!) that it leads to its own kind of ignorance.
As progressives, sometimes we make disinheriting each other into a competitive sport. I can't help but feel that most of the tension in this piece was about whether we were going to disinherit Mike. I'm glad he connected with the author and will speak to the younger generation for his experiences.
And yet, I'm really uncomfortable at the idea that he had anything to answer for.
90
@Anonymous Your comments so entirely encompass Faulkner's quote 'The past is never dead. It's not even past.' Thank you for what you stated, because it helps me understand more deeply what Faulkner meant.
4
@Anonymous I don't recall ever seeing a University representative at any of the parties I attended, nor would they have been welcomed. Universities used to be about taking people out of their comfort zone, exposing them to new and uncomfortable ideas and allowing them to make mistakes. I agree with most of what you say, I just don't see how university leadership could have helped prevent this photo,
4
Does a black student participating in a racist joke contain “a deeper lesson about the intensity of racism”? Or perhaps just a lesson about superficiality of sophomoric humor? I am deeply skeptical about our obsession with photos, symbols, words, statues & names, because, for one thing, there is no comparable commitment or attention to the actual injustices around us, deeply integrated into our lives & government & economy. Poverty, lack of access to education & healthcare, mass incarceration, data collection, political access & influence for sale, out-of-control militarization, etc etc. The fights we have about “tropes” and decades old drunken photographs have become predictable, and do nothing but reinforce the political paralysis of moralizing culture wars.
9
Isn't it the job of frat brothers to demean and haze new members? Some men will do anything to be able to join a fraternity. The photo of Mike was an instance of hazing, which everyone thought was all in good fun. It wasn't, but it is being taken out of context. What passed as a joke then should be taken more seriously now. It is hard to judge another time. Now that Trump is making racism and antisemitism more acceptable, I am sure such a scenario could happen now because there are fine people on both sides.
4
Thank you Mr. Crutcher, Mr, Kizzie, and the University of Richmond. Dealing with the complexities of our racial history and its continuing influence isn't easy. Your efforts go beyond what most of us can manage.
Note: as unfortunate as that picture is, I really admire the young Mr. Kizzie. His attitude, smile and raised drink, clearly set this as a joke. An outrageous joke, but just a joke. It's just undergrads overly enthusiastic (and perhaps stupidly enthusiastic) for their own sense of outrageousness. Without him, this picture would be frightening. With him, and the power of his evident good nature, it's almost harmless. He must be, and must always have been, a man of immense personal power and dignity.
8
What a thoughtful piece. Thanks for writing this.
1
I think it makes a lot of sense to take a student --who is probably already conflicted about this after being called by the University President, and who is already facing down career problems and backlash-- and to write a 1000 word article on one of the largest newspapers in the world and make absolutely sure you destroy any prospect of him ever getting a job. Your "struggle" pales in comparison to the struggles this young man is about to go through, due to your desire to write an article covering a well trod subject. Congrats.
4
@Andrew
He's not a young man. This was 39 years ago. He's probably in his early 60s.
I concur with your underlying point, though. Whatever the age, why embarrass him now?
1
@Andrew - Did yu miss the part about the being a 1980 photo? That "young man" was about 20 almost 40 years ago.
To read an opinion piece that I can not disagree with or challenge even one simple letter, is a sign of a piece so well written and so exposing of self as to be worthy of every pulpit in the US.
2
I can't believe I have to explain this. Clearly wokeness is some type of mental disorder: When we heal we make jokes about past painful episodes. The ability for aggressor and aggrieved to come together and appreciate the absurdity, and find the humor in past injustice, is a sign of health. I understand that this may seem foreign in today's victim culture, but mocking the past at times, doesn't lessen anyone's ability to be somber and appreciate the gravity of those same episodes at other times. Making 9/11, slavery or Holocaust jokes doesn't mean we don't "get" the horrors of the past. This used to be common sense. Now everyone is so infantilized it's unimaginable to the left. And this is why Trump will be reelected. Normal people have had enough of phony outrage, pearl clutching, and snowflakeism.
17
This statement "People naturally want to be validated, even by those who harbor biases against them." Is so apropos to the news of the past 24-48 hrs. The Orange Hooligan in the White House is susceptible to this sentiment. His actions and those being wrestled with in the examples from the yearbooks are all of a peice.
Racism is a Cancer on the body Politic.
Paradoxically as much I know we all need to summon as much energy as possible to stamp out the hate and division of racism, I also want to acknowledge that these stories are occurring in print, prestigious colleges, such as U of R and William and Mary are doing the hard work to make a difference. The museum of Legacy is hosted in Montgomery Alabama. These things too are of a piece, let's hope they signal Peace.
3
A very thoughtful an insightful piece. From where I sit as an older (baby boomer) white guy, it adds yet another element to "white privilege".
2
"This mass unearthing of past racism on campus is, in fact, essential."
But is it, really? The 1960s and 1970s were really a different time. The atmosphere was a lot freer -- and people generally weren't scared of offending others by asking what may have been stupid or insensitive questions, or really by speech in general. You can hear it in the music, as well.
Without that context, yes, the past looks offensive, but really, we're wasting time watching people who weren't even alive in 1970 talking about what was offensive then. We'd do better making the *future* a better place.
8
@PghMike4 How do you know what black people were or weren't offended by in the 1960s and 1970s? Black people have often, as the article shows, kept quiet about abuses and racist incidents in an attempt to fit in, get their educations, and make connections to help launch careers. Blackface didn't just become offensive in 2019. People are just more apt to speak out against racism now.
"A black student participating in a racist joke is on its surface a regrettable decision, but it also carries a deeper lesson about the intensity of racism on college campuses and how difficult it can be for black students to gain respect and recognition."
Anyone who read "National Lampoon" and/or watched the HBO stand-up series "On Location" back in the 70s could tell you that racist humor was the norm 40 years ago. Couple that with college kid humor, which was also very racy or certainly often risqué and you get yearbook pictures like the one in the article. It's isn't a matter of right or wrong, but what was normal for that time.
6
Mr. Kizzie has nothing to apologize for: he was the target of racism, not its perpetrator. The hedging tone of the op-ed— which names and focuses exclusively on him, instead of on the white students in Klan hoods— seems to imply some sort of moral equivalency between their actions. There is none. I understand the writer is trying to make a broader point about the indignities we can be forced into as part of our own subjugation. It’s a valid point — our coerced “participation” adds insult, and shame (however misplaced), to injury. But parts of this piece strike a note of victim-blaming which is wholly incorrect. It would be like faulting a lone woman, surrounded by drunken men, for laughing along with a sexist joke because she’s wary of the consequences if she doesn’t. The students in Klan suits should be shamed and ashamed. I hope some of them have the courage to come back and address the school, as Mr. Kizzie is.
2
Regarding the "colored cellist" remarks in Germany -- at that time, people of color were rare as hen's teeth and were usually seen only in towns that had a US Army base. I can remember being on a bus with an African American man and seeing a little boy lean over his seat to point and say, in astonishment, "Schau, Mama, ein Schwarzer man." Today's version of "colored cellist" is "insert gender here." I hope we'll move past the "gay cellist" or "bi-cellist" or "transgender cellist" or "female cellist" soon, when people's gender/sexuality stops being such an identifier.
3
I hope that when Mike returns to speak about his time in Richmond, they videotape it so it can be heard by a wider audience. My brother had a roommate who used to kick him in the morning and say to him, “Get up, Jew.” My brother endured this the entire year making a joke out of it. In light of this, I will revisit this experience with my brother to see if he still feels it was a joke.
3
The keyword, President Crutcher, is past. The past is past and as many of your students what say, "It is what it is." Focus on the "now."
The University of Richmond can't change the past, yet today you and your faculty and student body are spending an inordinate amount of time judging past actions by present standards.
Consider instead discussing what we now know and hope to make happen, instead of what we didn't know and can't change anyway. The can of beer in Mike's hand may have had a lot to do with it, as it did to the ruined white sheets.
Forgive, forget and move on. The events from 1960 are what they are. Should we all live another 50 years be prepared to defend the future madness of our 2019 event, judged as we will be and as we now judge those we followed.
Blame it on the beer or the pot. Move on wiser and eschew our judgments on those we think should have known better. Prithee, other may do the same for us.
3
"Applying a lens of 21st- century standards" to 1980 or any other prior decade is wrong. In 1980, Mike did not make a "mistake" and at the time he engaged in his actions they were "justified." Even if they weren't justified at the time, how dare you lecture Mike about something he did 39 years ago? We need to stop pandering to those among us today who cannot deal rationally or fairly with the fact that actions that we rightly call racist today were engaged in by many "decent" people without it ever crossing their minds that they might be racist.
9
If we were a moral, humane nation, we would not even be trying to put pieces of racism and solutions together today. It would have been done long, long ago.
Growing up, being a teenager in the 60’s I couldn’t figure out the hatred, yes, downright hatred toward people for the color of their skin.
Since then I became a nurse, and trust me, bodies are the same on the inside as they are on the outside - no matter skin color. I also have instructed many diversity classes, worked for the Fresh Air Fund at camp, with people from every corner of the world. I’ve been known as my husband’s wife, a man who spent his whole teaching career and still subbing on a Native American reservation. I have friends, close friends, many friends, of people with all the skin colors.
My heart is broken to think the president of our country spews racist cruelty. Please, please, please, because my skin color is the same as his, my mind and spirit are in a way, way, way different place from him.
I’m old now. I hate that I will go to my grave knowing individuals in this country will still judge people and will stereotype and will demean people based on the color of skin. And to think we have a country leader who gives approval and participates in this makes me feel even older and more hopeless - after all this time.
5
Does the Race and Racism project only focus on who they deem to be white people or does it apply to everyone? After reading this piece the Race and Project could be called the new Salem Witch Trial project. Remember President Obama was against gay marriage while he President. Attitudes can change in a hurry.
4
Why is the 1980 photo from a widely ditributed yearbook all of a sudden of immediate concern?
If these schmos wanted to ptint this and no one objected then, I don't see that today's students or admins have any say about it. This is like a 21st century population deciding to make comments and and try to censor pictures from before the civil war, claiming they are not fit for publication or distribution on the ground thatsome of them actually support and portaray the now illegal practice of race slavery.
We might as well condemn Revolutionary era soldiers for having the bad taste to wear tricorn hats.
3
When viewing these photographs, people have to understand that humor can be a strange thing. Sometimes we see something that is so grotesque that we react with laughter.
While I should not speak for Mr. Kizzie or the (presumably white) people in the ropes, I suspect they were considering at an unspeakable evil and reacting with laughter.
As someone with Jewish ancestry, I myself did that just days ago when I once again watched Borat “Cultural Learnings” and literally laughed out loud at “the running of the Jews“ and the throwing of money at cockroaches who were said to be Jews in disguise. Note that the writer and main actor in this movie is a Jew.
Not only is it sometimes a strange but natural reaction to laugh at in comprehensible evil, but at the same time, laughing Intentionally at evil, and indeed making a caricature of it, can help to illustrate how ridiculous the underlying premises of that evil are.
Let me go way out on a limb here, and quote Kellyanne Conway when she was defending something that Trump said: “don’t listen to his words, listen to his heart“. When you consider the actions of Mr.Kizzie, and, just as importantly his friends, please try to understand what was in their hearts. That is essential for societies that wish to heal.
34
@Doctor A. I imagine that what was in his mind, if not in his heart, was the terrible pressure to Go along to get along. I’m saddened that anyone has to experience this, but this is just an egregious example of a good person responding to social pressure.
BTW, I appreciate that you address “Mr. Kizzie”, where most commenters use only his first name. This is a lesson I learned long ago in Charleston, SC and have tried to live for almost 40 years of medical practice.
8
I’ll join the voices who find this kind of exercise extremely questionable: massive scrutiny of personal documents of living people, together with an anachronistic moral analysis of those documents, and finger-pointing disguised as dialogue with those people.
That exercise is much different than serious historical analysis, and seem to me ineffective to combat today’s prejudice (which keep occurring).
11
"left me wondering if I would ever be fully recognized solely as a professional musician"
Mr. Crutcher, your column appears the same day that the Times features two articles dedicated exclusively to black astronauts. And it comes during a week when certain members of Congress have placed great emphasis on their special station as "women of color".
So it's quite obvious that the far-left is all too eager to embrace racial qualifiers when it can exploit such demagoguery to perceived political advantage.
11
@Charles The context is very important. When Mr. Crutcher wished he had been identified simply as a cellist without a racial qualifier, that is a common PERSONAL sentiment among many, if not all, people of minority. It's a desire to be included in a group of musicians and be judged for your ability alone. However, celebrating black astronauts or congresswomen of color are not personal. They are historical achievements that will hopefully inspire others like them to aim high. So this is not a hypocrisy on the left or far-left. In an ideal world, we wouldn't have to qualify anyone with racial, gender, or sexual identity.
2
@Charles
I think you have this backward. Those members of Congress have not "placed great emphasis on their special station as 'women of color.'" that was done by Trump when he told them to go home, meaning to another country when three are natural born and one naturalized citizens. And Mr. Crutcher talks about his personal experience of being labelled a "black musician" and not just a musician in the classical realm. I haven't yet read the article about the black astronauts, but when it seems everyone has been writing and talking for weeks about Apollo 11, why should black astronauts candidates not be mentioned. After years and years of refusal in this country to fully recognize the contributions to science, culture etc by minorities maybe we need to have more articles about these contributors.
It could be said that the far right or even the ordinary conservative refuses to see that life is not all about glorifying white people by such actions as declaring a day to remember Nathan Bedford Forrest, Confederate General, slave owner and head of the Ku Klux Klan as the state of Tennessee did just last week.
4
It is simply wrong to force Michael Kizzie and others like him, regardless of their race, to endure a public discussion of their actions from decades ago--actions that are regrettable and embarrassing to be sure, but not criminal. This case perfectly illustrates why it is a bad idea for anti-racism activists to mine decades-old yearbooks for instances of racism.
If there is racism to be combated on your campus today, which I do not doubt, you should identify it and work to combat it. But if you're looking for it in old yearbooks, you won't find it. You have to find it in the present. Do your students today still pose in photos dressed as Klansmen? If not, then to be fair, you should acknowledge we've made actual progress on that score and look for racism elsewhere.
20
After the Virginia governor’s scandal came out it brought light to other scandals about race and equality. While reading this opinion piece I was able to see how someone not of the same race as me reacts to these stories. I admire how Mike knew that what he had done years ago was wrong and how he is willing to open up about it. It is awful how people feel the need to give into racism and peer pressure just to fit in. Obviously the image Mike took years ago were disgusting taken, but I do give him credit for owning up to his mistake.
3
We may never have a "perfect union," but the struggle to form a MORE perfect one is everything. Thank you for engaging in the struggle; your efforts cannot fail to bear fruit.
15
@Dawn Helene The fruit they will bear is 4 more years of Trump. If exposing this photo does anything it will point out that the "morality" police, the anti free speech crowd and those who are offended for others will ban adult level humor if they get the chance.
1
As a University of Richmond grad (1967) of the era before the picture was taken, I remember how isolated and remote the campus was from the rest of the world. While anti-Vietnam War protests, Civil Rights protests, and "hippies" were everywhere outside the campus, there were none of these things on campus. There were no students who were not white then, even on sports teams. I remember that a student who actually grew his hair long (hippie style) and was kidnapped one night and beaten by some of his fellow conservative students. I am ashamed that I was not more active in fighting against racism and the Vietnam War, but I was a working, off-campus student in a very conservative, Jim Crow area (Richmond). I applaud President Crutcher for reminding students, faculty and alumni of our complicity in a racist and oppressive system. We should all come to terms with our pasts.
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This piece is essential reading for all. Ronald Crutcher has managed to encapsulate the history of racism, his own experience of being one of a few black students at a white university, and how to begin to heal old (and new) wounds now. It should be anthologized in essay textbooks on persuasive writing.
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One error:
"As a nation, we have never emotionally dealt with the aftermath of slavery, segregation, lynching and more recent systemic disparities.
It's better than that. The battle was joined long ago, digging deeper all the time.
In the later sixties, our cities were on fire. The armed Black Panthers came to symbolize, crudely, what had been the sophisticated and evolving Black Nationalism of the slain Malcolm X.
The crisis of the Sixties fed a physical, intellectual, and emotional preoccupation with the aftermath of the centuries of abomination. For progressives and reactionaries both, the greatest social calamity since the Civil War bred confusion, anger, and epiphany in all regions, classes, and races.
That was the beginning.
The uprooting of the systemic crushing of the aspirations of Blacks starts with the big root and roots. In time, the ramified, detailed aspects, the capillaries of the subjugation, can join the agenda.
We fight over much smaller issues today, reasonably so, since the Sixties and later saw so much of the root oppression mortally wounded: voting wrongs, lynching, white impunity.
Sure, they continue.
But go back and look at the Fifties, or Birmingham 1963. Study. Talk with old people who lived and fought through it.
The battle goes on, from one generation to the next, shaking the world, and with its convulsive advance, brings confidence in victory.
The more confidence, the deeper the movement, and the sooner the victory.
16
I admire Mike’s courage in agreeing to speak to current students on campus about the historical and political context of a time when a person of color believed he had to denigrate himself to fit in. It does not matter that a conversation about race makes people uncomfortable. Racism and bigotry makes many more people uncomfortable.
I applaud the effort to uncover racist evidence from the past as a means of moving forward in the direction of equality and justice for all.
I can not imagine what prompted Mike all those years ago to put a noose around his neck surrounded by fellow students dressed as members of the KKK but I so admire his courage to return to campus to talk about it. I just hope no on tells him to go back to where he came from. The past is prologue.
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@Patricia Caiozzo
I think we're forgetting an important element when we look at photos from forty years ago- context.
You can view the photo as Mike "participating" in a racist joke. Or, you could see the photo as parody, as symbolizing a Black man "winning" over the KKK. Because that photo, taken in 1980, where a Black man is above the KKK members, laughing and drinking a beer, the only one in the crowd happily living his life, could not have existed twenty years earlier, or at any time prior to that in US history.
Were the Black characters who appeared on All My Family participating in racist jokes, or were they participating in a parody that was obvious to anyone watching the show with a modicum of intelligence?
9
An African American student at my college agreed to dress in a jockey costume and hold a lantern in front of his fraternity. I was so shocked to see this that the image is indelible. Reading this story provides better context to understand the struggles for African American students at that time struggling to fit into a predominantly white college. I am so sorry that our college provided such an unwelcome atmosphere - all of us lost opportunities. I am glad to see so many colleges embracing diversity today.
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What’s a college to do? Nothing.
The administration and students should stop trying to dig up the past. They have no idea about the context of the photo. They know anything about the people in it, why they did it or what it represents. It may have been a celebration party after an anti-Klan event or protest. Maybe it is something more sinister. Who knows. They view it through their myopic 2019 lens. They should stop trying to mimic the Chinese Cultural Revolution, when disconnected threads of a persons past was enough to get them executed, and spend more time making our current world a better place.
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@Padraig Lewis: It seems that Michael Kizzie is going to provide that context. Who knows? He does. I disagree that we should stop digging the past up. We must do precisely that, and talk about it, and try, with whatever means we can find in 2019, to understand it. Those who do not study the past may not repeat it exactly, but they are less likely to avoid its worst mistakes.
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@Thomas
Maybe he will, but none was forthcoming within Mr. Crutcher's article. I agree here with Padraig Lewis, in that censoring past photos, stripped of all context, against current ideological views is a useless task at best, and a harmful one at worst.
Maybe this was a malevolent and racist act of bulling. Maybe it was a satirical joke, similar to the ones featured in Blazing Saddles, which had premiered in theaters 6 years prior to this photo (specifically, this scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=493pL_Vbtnc ).
Neither of those two options would be particularly surprising... and I highly doubt that most people retweeting this care which it is. They only seek to provide further kindling to fuel the outrage machine that seems to burn hotter than ever, without ever accomplishing anything close to real, meaningful progress or change.
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@Padraig Lewis Actually, this photo is taken straight from a Richmond fraternity's yearbook page (the same fraternity, I might add, that was caught just 4 years ago chanting extremely racist remarks on a party bus at a different southern University). You can look for yourself at the University's Race and Racism website. The fraternity chose this picture to represent what was happening at their parties, immortalized in print forever. This photo literally takes place in Richmond's fraternity 'lodges' where the fraternity parties are still held today. Though the intent was not malicious in nature, the fraternity literally chose this picture as a representation of themselves, and that in itself is troubling.
1
What's a college to do about a photo from 1980? Nothing. But as long as people insist on correcting the past rather than trying to change to present - and the future - nothing of substance is likely to change. And if anyone is in doubt about what lies ahead, may I refer them to today's headlines? Every minute spent trying to correct the past is time lost in the fight against Trump, the Republican Party and the destruction of the American Dream.
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@GMG--But, can the present be changed without referring to what's come before? The present exists because the past was unchallenged and uncorrected. A lot of pain was caused by actions in the past, and that pain lingers into the present. That should be addressed and acknowledged. To say that what happened in 1980 means nothing just makes it more likely that what happens in 2019 will mean nothing, too. I don't think the past can be allowed to just sit there staring at us while we try to ignore it.
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@GMG Sorry, but my response to your post is no, no, no. I hope that you and the many other people who agree with your position will take the time to consider that your position is mistaken.
First, no one is trying to correct the past. That is literally impossible. But we need to understand the past -- the mistakes we made and the lies we told ourselves about those mistakes -- or nothing of substance will change.
There are many people who truly believe that there is no more problem with racism in this country. Many such people act in good faith. They are wrong because they don't understand what has gone before. They don't see the power structures in place since the dawn of the republic: the Slave Power ceded to the South in the Constitution; the use of terror and then Jim Crow to deny black folks the rights and opportunities of citizenship; the government policies that denied them economic advancement. And much more.
The first thing a mechanic does with a broken car is to pop the hood and diagnose what's broken. He's not living in the past. He's finding the problem so that he can fix it.
Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel said that one of the hallmarks of a moral society is that it has a memory. Understanding the history of racism and the way that it is still entwined in so many aspects of our society is necessary to the fight against Trump, the Republican party and the destruction of the American dream that we both so fervently wish for.
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@cds333
If the mechanic in your example discovers that something the driver is doing is causing the problem—riding the clutch, driving repeatedly in the wrong gear, not changing the oil, driving with the emergency break on, whatever—that's part of solving the problem too. Not just fixing what was broken but trying to make sure it doesn't happen again.
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"... just as necessary as they are difficult...". Couldn't agree more. Thanks for this piece.
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"...As I’ve hosted discussions on race and education, I’ve seen participants squirm a bit in their chairs..."
This piece is excellent, in part because Crutcher allows us to see him squirm, even as a leader. All of this is hard. Too much of the work falls to people of color.
Creating critical mass of Black people at selective colleges is really important. University of Richmond deserves credit for having 8% Black enrollment, which is higher than most of it's peers. (Washington & Lee has 2.7%, the worst in the nation among selective colleges).
Let's hope things will get better. Let's hope that good words and deeds follow all this conversation and discernment.
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@Cousy
Ironically, in the physics of light, white is the combination of all colors and black is the absence of color. Maybe the universe is trying to tell us something, Go figure.
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Undoubtedly the presumably white men under the white gowns will be identified and forced to leave their jobs and publicly embarassed as well? Or will we also be so reasonable as to acknowledge the unfortunate pressures of trying to fit in and alcohol in their role in fueling terrible and inexcusably hurtful ideas to give them the same pass as Mike?
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@Cousy - your comment about UofR deserving credit for its 8% black student enrollment caused me reflect on how much our perspectives are formed by the individual contexts we draw from.
My daughter spent her freshman year at Richmond before transferring to GW. She left in large part because of the white homogeneous environment she found herself in. It was a “bubble” that she did not want to be in as it did not reflect the reality she was accustomed to here in Northern VA. Joining her in the cafeteria on move in day, I found myself actually feeling nauseous and under nourished by the “sea of paste-y faces” that went on as far as the eye could see. Paste-y face was used as a racial slur against whites when I was growing up in the newly integrated south. Having grown up in Miami, FL’s diversity, the lack of color unsettled me; it was like the entire building was filled with mash potatoes. And I realized I must be seeing what the black students saw when attending a majority white school. They were spot on, that’ exactly what I was seeing.
Richmond was a great school save for its lack of diversity, but that was important enough to be a deal breaker. And so clearly, the wide ranging views on race can be attributed to the contexts of our individual experiences. If we could find a way to expand people’s racial experiences, more people would end up like me who find themselves unnerved by the blandness of homogeneous gatherings.