The University of Virginia, still reeling from the alleged racist assault on Daisy Lundy (discussed in detail in eight posts here this month; still no arrest, by the way), now has a “hate bias” incident to deal with. “Hate bias,” for any of you who have not (yet) read Erin O’Connor’s discussion of it today, is practically any racially insensitive expression, or even thought. It appears to be even broader than the concept of “hate speech,” against which speech codes were erected and legally destroyed.
A front page article in the Cavalier Daily today reports the latest incident. Third-year student Jennifer Goldson and an unnamed Commerce School employee got into a dispute over a parking place. Ms. Goldson claims to have had her turn signal on, indicating she was about to pull in, when the employee parked there instead. They had an exchange of words.
All we know, from the article, of what Ms. Goldson said is that she “reportedly confronted the employee and told him that she felt his actions had been inconsiderate.” We do know, however, what she claims he said:
The other driver allegedly responded, “I’ll think about that and your people on Martin Luther King day.”
Ms. Goldson reported this incident to a campus policeman, who identified the culprit from his license plate, and her complaint quickly found its way to Commerce Dean Carl Zeithami, who predictably expressed outrage over what the Cavalier Daily calls “the alleged episode.”
Now, let’s take a breath and a step back. Let’s leave aside the question of the manner in which Ms. Goldson initially expressed her opinion that Mr. Employee was inconsiderate and assume that the incident was exactly as she described. In that scenario, Mr. Employee was indeed inconsiderate, and his comment was racially insensitive. It ought to be possible to argue about a parking place without references to “your people” and Martin Luther King. In the racially supercharged atmosphere of today’s diversity university, however, everyone seems to be walking around with a racial chip on his/her shoulder daring someone to knock it off. It thus becomes impossible to distinguish “insensitivity” from a verbal lynching, and university administrations, held hostage to this atmosphere, foster it by kowtowing to it.
So, predictably, good Dean Zeithaml not only expressed his outrage —
“I’m shocked and appalled that an incident like this would take place,” Zeithaml said. “Clearly, it was inappropriate to talk to someone in that way, and the fact that it was racially inappropriate made it much, much worse.”
— he set the disciplinary diversity machinery in motion.
Because the employee who allegedly made the comment is a classified staff member, disciplinary measures ultimately will be determined according to University Human Resources procedures, said Zeithaml, who emphasized the Commerce School’s commitment to diligently pursuing the matter.
“We’re in communication right now with human resources, discussing the situation with them,” he said. “We are treating this very seriously, but we have to operate within due process.”
[….]
“We’re very early in this process,” he said. “It just happened. It takes a little while to work through the system.”
Beyond managing the immediate incident, Zeithaml said he hoped University administrators would try to educate the community to prevent future displays of prejudice on Grounds.
To that end, Commerce administrators will meet next week to discuss how best to educate students and staff about the incident, Zeithaml said.
“I will do whatever I can to ensure that people learn from this and that it doesn’t happen again,” he said.
I don’t think people should make “racially inappropriate” remarks, but I’m not sure that making a federal — or even a state or local — case of every incident is the way to improve the current racial climate. What we have is not so much “a failure to communicate” (for those of you old enough to remember Hud Cool Hand Luke) but one of the downsides of diversity.
If all of the emotional and political energy of a university community is devoted to stressing and emphasizing and glorifying “difference,” to insisting that one’s identity is encompassed by one’s race, then it should not be surprising when some guy, probably feeling put upon because he is a member of a group that is disparaged because everyone in it is by implication the same, should respond to Ms. Goldson with a comment about “your people” rather than about her skills as a woman driver or whatever would have come to mind in pre-diversity days. If people are regarded as different long and loud enough, they will be viewed as different.
I find that even more offensive than Mr. Employee’s alleged statement.
“Failure to communicate.” Was that from “Hud” or “Cool Hand Luke”?
Oops. Cool Hand Luke. I’ll change it. I’m old enough to remember it but too old to remember…
As a Law School grad (“77) and interested observer, I am disappointed, but hardly surprised, that the entire campus lacks adult supervision or thought. Pity the Virginia taxpayer. This is early 21st century campus intellectualism– affirmative action, victimhood and other puerile stupidies tailormade for the mediorce and the lazy. Indispensible to faculty not used or amenable to hard work and students ill-prepared or ill-equipped by nature or experience for the rigors of mature, informed thought or reflection, or for that matter the straightforward demands of logic. Old TJ has to be spinning in his grave at roughly the rate of an F-18 jet engine on afterburner.
I’d like to know exactly what Ms. Goldson said to that employee. To jump from “you were inconiderate to take that place I wanted” (which is kind of silly and whiny, IMO, welcome to driving on planet Earth) to “MLK and you people” makes no rational sense. I wonder if she played the race card first, in which case I have no sympathy.
I am the person that Ms. Goldson spoke to.
Before I begin, I want to state I am very sorry over anything that was said. I do not consider myself a racist, and have spent many sleepness nights trying to figure out what in the world happened that day.
A few notes about what happened after the incident. I was “disciplined” by UVA. While they called it “probationary period”, it actually was “torment him until he quits”. I was suspended from my position, and moved to a spot in the basement. No one was allowed to speak to me directly, although no person in the school will admit to such orders. I was moved from room to room, one time twice in one day. Instead of working on IT issues, I was assigned duties of moving furniture, cleaning, etc. After such treatment, I was finally forced out of UVA after 14 years of service there (of which I had always received reviews of “outstanding contributor”. It is also interesting to note, that before the incident, the commerce did have any people of color working there. Since then, they have hired two people who are not white. Check the yearbooks, and you will see I am not making this up.
I would like to mention my side of the story. I was returning to the parking garage after running an errand. There was a lot of pressure on my position to not be absent from the school, so I was in a hurry to return. While there might have been a car waiting to pull into the parking spot, it must have been several spots ahead of the car, and I honestly didn’t see anyone waiting to take the spot.
When I was exciting the vehicle, I noticed a person waiting at the end of my vehicle, looking pretty angry. Since I was wedged between two vehicles, and she was blocking my exit, there was no place I could go, so a confrontation was unavoidable. The person at the end proceeded to tell me what a rude, inconsiderate person I was, and I could see was hurt and angry.
I’ve always wondered, if it is true that there were no other parking spaces, how did this person get back to my spot before I could get out of the car, but no matter, just an after thought.
Anyway, I was pretty scared, actually, with all the alledged racial incidents. I was also being confronted by someone 30 years younger than myself.
The rest is a blur. I am not going to deny what I said, as I was just trying to get past this person, and I made a very very sad, and pointless remark.
That’s the mistake I made and one I will wonder what in the world was I thinking? Was I that scared, confused, angry?
I think there were other issues going on at the Commerce School, and this issue was just used as an excuse to remove me. I think that if I was a “racist” there should have been some, I don’t know, mediation I could have gone to, ie, when I first started at UVA, apparently, gender bias was the issue, and all the staff and faculty had to attend gender training classes. To just give me the silent treatment, and demote me to cleaning person, until they can find a way to get rid of me, doesn’t seem like a way to teach me anything.
I have been banned for life from applying for any work at the university. The vice president, Sandridge told one of the HR people that I was a liability, and the University could be sued. ??
Thanks all for letting me respond to this after these years. My life was ruined by the incident. I do apologize by the statement, but am not sure if this is what everyone wanted.