Making A Federal Case Of It

As discussed in the previous post about “playing the race card” in a conflict over slot machines at race tracks, one of the sad effects of our intense emphasis on race is that any dispute in which race may be factor seems, almost inexorably, to become a racial dispute.

A good example is a professor-student imbroglio at the University of Northern Colorado, reported in the Rocky Mountain News. (Link via reader Linda Seebach) A professor of finance wrote an OpEd supporting a measure that would have curtailed bilingual education. A student majoring in Spanish for Secondary Education then wrote an OpEd denouncing the measure and questioning the professor’s motives and qualifications. When they met to discuss the issue the student said the professor “was agitated and insulting, and she felt degraded and intimidated.”

The student filed a complaint alleging “racial and ethnic intimidation.” The university investigated and found “no ethnic or racial intimidation involved,” and the student has now filed a complaint with the Office of Civil Rights of the Department of Education.

I of course have no idea whether the professor engaged in “ethnic bullying,” or any other kind of bullying, and I am not saying the student’s complaint is baseless. Still, this does not seem to be the sort of conflict that should be elevated into a federal case. Just as everything looks like a nail if all you have is a hammer, it seems that these days every problem is a racial problem is race is anywhere in the vicinity.