Clemson Student Exposes Historic Racism At University With Provocative Video

[seasoned vet]

Clemson Student Exposes Historic Racism At University With Provocative Video

I go to school on a plantation. I wish this was a metaphor or some creative way of saying something that should be interpreted otherwise, but it’s not. It’s located in South Carolina, on property that was formerly owned by former U.S. Vice President and Secretary of State, John C. Calhoun. Calhoun’s plantation, named Fort Hill, was willed to the state of South Carolina in 1888 by his son-in-law, Thomas Green Clemson, to establish the institution that would become known as Clemson University. The main house at Fort Hill remains open today—a condition of Clemson’s will—and sits atop a hill that overlooks one of the university’s other main attractions: Memorial Stadium, which, if you’re in Clemson and know any better, you call “Death Valley.”

Football is religion in The South, I’ve come to understand, and in that regard, Clemson has not, as its founder wished, only become “a high seminary of learning,” but it’s a high seminary of college football, which is evidenced not only by the allegiance Clemson fans have to the team, but also the pandemonium that surrounds games in this college town. Fridays are “Solid Orange,” and if you aren’t wearing Clemson Orange, then you’re either new in town or not in the know, both of which will be quickly remedied if you’re around for any amount of time.

I didn’t know any of this information before I decided to move south. I knew Clemson to be a good school, and I knew I was admitted to a great program. It’s unlikely I would have declined, opting not to accept and attend Clemson knowing the history of the university and its ties to slavery. I would not have decided against attending simply because the land was a plantation and the man [as well as his family] whose legacy is honored by its centerpiece, Fort Hill, benefitted from slave labor here. I would have still attended if I’d known its Institute of Government and Public Affairs was named for an avowed segregationist who, as a U.S. Senator, changed his political party affiliation because of his opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and never renounced his stance on the issue, though the revelation came to light after his death that, at the age of 22, he fathered a child with his family’s 16-year-old black maid. I would not have been deterred by the fact that Clemson has an academic hall named for a white supremacist and murderer who so happened to become governor of the state during an era when killing black people was not only a crime not often not pursued or prosecuted, but it was a crime that helped him gain favor with the voting public and eventually win the election to the chief executive office of the state.

Atrocious as it may sound, these and stories just as sinister are common in American History. We know them to be true, to have happened, in some far-off, backward place we’d like to think doesn’t exist anymore, disconnected from us except to show us how far we’ve come from when we collectively knew no better so we just did what everybody else was doing because “it was the way things were.” Perplexed as I may be by some of those stories from History that surface and show me just how bad things were, especially in places like this, to people like me [historically, I mean], I’d like to think I would have considered it—talked with friends and family, explained that I knew where I was going and what I planned on doing here: getting a degree from a great program. Even knowing the legacy of slavery, sharecropping and convict labor, perpetuated by the slave owners, supremacists and segregationists who are honored with their names on the buildings, I would have thought hard about it, but I think I would have made the same decision. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to make that decision knowing this information.

Of course I knew about the football team and tradition, but only in the way that any casual fan of sports who watches ESPN knows of teams that are consistently successful. I had no idea the sprint down The Hill, which Brent Musburger famously referred to as “The most exciting 25 seconds in college football” has been, since the tradition started, the football program—the coaches, the staff, the athletes—running down a hill that has a plantation house standing at its summit. The “Most Exciting 25 Seconds In College Football” is literally the Clemson Football Program running downhill, away from the university’s slaveholding past and a relic standing as a symbol of it, onto the field that generates significant amounts of money for the school and a large part of it’s reputation. And, yes, to be clear, I am making a connection between the fields the slaves worked for Master Calhoun and the field on which student-athletes give their time, talent, blood, sweat and tears for The Program.

I go to school on a plantation. I wish this was a metaphor or some creative way of saying something that should be interpreted otherwise, but it’s not.

As with religion, in sports, anything that goes against the commonly told narrative borders on heresy. I’m not anti-Clemson Football. I just find the juxtaposition of the Clemson Tiger mascot and the widely embraced “Solid Orange” spirit ironic. We’ve chosen to ignore one of the major defining characteristics of our mascot. Similarly, we’ve embraced a narrative about our collective history that ignores [or barely mentions] major defining characteristics that contributed to what Clemson University is today. I’d just like for that history of the university—the things unseen or not spoken about and the markers that are physically present on campus—to be openly and honestly discussed as part of that grand narrative told to students that help us buy into the idea of being a “Solid Orange” Family. I’d like for students to feel included in “Family” discussions, and for those discussions to be representative of the diversity of the student body. I’d like for the differences that make us each unique to be celebrated as one of the reasons people choose this university, this Family, over others. Because we are The Tigers, I’d like for us to, along with the Orange we wear with such pride, think of The Stripes we so easily forget or neglect to acknowledge. The Tiger is an effective mascot for us for this reason, especially. We all possess some version or another of stripes as part of who we are, and we can all identify as the stripes in some way or another in the groups in which we find ourselves. We all have them; we all are them.

Until we each at least try to see all aspects of our collective past and our present reality, that dream of truly being a Family remains deferred, and is just another of the stories we will continue to tell ourselves on our way to a future no different from now, yesterday and the day before. You can paint a tiger solid orange, but that won’t remove its stripes. Besides, what reason does a tiger have to hide its stripes anyhow? Without fundamentally changing a tiger’s DNA its stripes will never disappear, just as American History won’t disappear, but it’s important to understand the stripes and the role they played and continue to play.

I guess I can’t say I’m really against any one thing the university is doing, actually. I’m simply for us opening our eyes, taking a long, hard look at ourselves, The Clemson Tiger we are, and making that acknowledgment: that we See The Stripes.

Football season begins August 30.

For more information about the campaign go to
http://SeeStripesCU.org

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/...c-Racism-At-University-With-Provocative-Video

 

[SC kid]

Stopped reading at Clemson.
F Clemson

Gamecocks >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

 

[letsgetit22]

Very well thought out video. I'll be interesting to learn how many universities are actually on a plantation.

 

[seasoned vet]

Clemson Student Starts Campaign for Racial Reconciliation; Clemson Professor Calls Him Fascist

Let me start here: David Woodard, Clemson professor of political science, should be fired tomorrow.

Clemson University, a place that honors segregationist Strom Thurmond, murderous lyncher Ben Tillman, and slavemaster John C. Calhoun in various ways around campus, has an ugly racial history that's largely whitewashed to make its mostly white student and alumni base feel better.

As a graduate of Clemson and a history degree holder from the university, I can attest that the university does more than just shy away from an actual discussion on the realities of its racial history. Instead, it goes so far as to dedicate buildings to Strom Thurmond, stating on its website that the building is designed to promote the "values" of Thurmond, one of the country's most vile racists through much of the 20th century.

This is the place where students threw a "Living the Dream" party in full blackface to mock the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on MLK weekend while I was in college. It's the place that's football crowd booed the very mention of the office of the presidency, a show of disrespect for Barack Obama, during the commissioning of new ROTC grads during Military Appreciation Day two seasons ago.

And as Clemson student A.D. Carson points out, it's a place that was literally built on the legacy of white oppression. John C. Calhoun, whose famed plantation "Fort Hill" is the site of Clemson's campus, owned his share of slaves. And when the school was built in the late 1800s, it relied on the forced labor of black convicts, many of whom served sentences unjustly applied to consign them to bondage in the wake of emancipation.

Carson's new campaign, "See the Stripes," which he wrote about here a few days ago, seeks to promote a conversation about the legacy that Clemson likes to sweep under the rug. Carson's built a coalition of people interested in this kind of reconciliation, not because the Clemson of today is a racist, murderous institution, but because it's good and fair and noble to acknowledge the wounds of the past.

In seeking to promote this conversation, Carson's seized on the concept of stripes. As the video he skillfully produced makes clear, this was not an arbitrary choice. Slaves and forced convict laborers suffered through the stripes that came from lashes out of angry racist whips. Those lashes are wounds, and Carson believes Clemson would rather pretend the wounds do not exist.

He's also seized on the concept of "solid orange," Clemson's less-than-creative marketing campaign that asks fans to wear orange on Fridays and to all Clemson events. In symbolic fashion, Carson asks what a Tiger would be if he was really solid orange. Would a tiger be a tiger without its stripes? It's his way of asking, "Would Clemson be Clemson without the pain upon which it was built."

Let's be clear - there's nothing particularly menacing about Carson's campaign. It's certainly an uncomfortable topic for racists in the upstate of South Carolina, who will undoubtedly be angry at that uppity boy trying to make Clemson look bad. But in general, Carson's received strong support from the black community at Clemson and some of the more evolved members of the white community. His campaign seeks a difficult goal in places like Clemson - to unite all thinking people for a real conversation about the white-washing of history the people of Clemson feel is necessary for preserving Clemson's legacy.


View media item 1153533
You would think that a student taking the initiative to produce some excellent content and stir a thoughtful conversation about race would be well-received by the faculty of a university with the stated goal of landing itself in the country's top 20. You would think that Clemson, which apparently dedicates itself to racial understanding, would employ professors who foster the kind of creativity and moxie exhibited by Carson.

You'd be wrong.

Right-wing nutjob David Woodard just called Carson a fascist.

In an interview with Campus Reform, Woodard said:

“It’s fascism. It’s looking at things only through racial lenses and not seeing anything else when in fact there is no racism associated with this,”

I'd like a more detailed explanation from Woodard, who apparently is entrusted with teaching people about political science, how an inclusive campaign to ask questions about the white-washing of Clemson's racial reality remotely relates to the 20th century authoritarian regimes of Italy and Germany.

Woodard should issue an immediate apology to Carson and to all students, faculty, and alumni who support the See Your Stripes campaign and who support general calls for Clemson to own the horrid nature of its past.

Woodard, of course, is unlikely to do such a thing. After all, he's the "Thurmond" - yes, that Thurmond - Professor of Political Science. In his book, The New Southern Politics, Woodard is like a child gushing with love and adoration for the "culture" of the South, which he sees as most distinctive in comparison to the country at large. Not surprisingly, he also wrote a biography of Ronald Reagan, and has consulted for such venerable voices on the issue of race as: Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC), Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Former Congressman Gresham Barrett (R-SC), Congressman Trey Gowdy (R-SC), and Congressman Jeff Duncan (R-SC).

Want an easy way of knowing that the "stripes" of history still aren't history? It's when your university employs a professor who attempts to stomp out a conversation on race by comparing the black student who started that conversation to murderous political regimes of the 20th century.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/...ilitation-Clemson-Professor-Calls-Him-Fascist

 

[airedweezy]

He still would of gone knowing the facts smh well that was all for nothing. Hope he transfers out.

 

[dipsetgeneral]

Well done, sir.

 

[rook]

but, if you a black football player at clemson, your a gawd.

 

[jaysrcrak]

but, if you a black football player at clemson, your a gawd.

Quoted for truth. My brother in law played for them and they treated him like a gawd.
He still goes there every once in a while and everyone knows him and treats him like a hometown hero.

 

[Sir San Diego]

Very well written and thought out. Glad this brother spoke out about it and I hope it sparks some change, if not in the University, in the minds of those considering enrolling as students and working as professors or staff there.

This racism ******** needs continued exposure. I've had enough of racists hiding behind their tired excuses and diversion tactics.

 

[gotjz]

*Sigh* I wish black people could just band together and form our own laws, businesses, schools, policies, etc. Then we won't have to be asking for anything. We have the money as a collective unit to do all this in relatively short time too.

 

[decemberlove]

*Sigh* I wish black people could just band together and form our own laws, businesses, schools, policies, etc. Then we won't have to be asking for anything. We have the money as a collective unit to do all this in relatively short time too.

So...another Africa?

 

[gotjz]

So...another Africa?

Whatever you want to call it. Just living under laws that serve and protect. Being self-determinant and self-reliant. Much better alternative than being governed (actually oppressed) by a group of people who have your absolute worst intent at heart. Doesn't make sense to subject to this type of living.

 

[gotjz]

And for the record, unfortunately Africa doesn't even have that. And Africa is a group of countries, not a country itself.

 

[demarco]

So...another Africa?

jews do it throughout america, especially nyc. exclusive schooling, medical care, housing, etc.

 

[mr marcus]

Very well written and thought out. Glad this brother spoke out about it and I hope it sparks some change, if not in the University, in the minds of those considering enrolling as students and working as professors or staff there.

This racism ******** needs continued exposure. I've had enough of racists hiding behind their tired excuses and diversion tactics.

 

[mr marcus]

*Sigh* I wish black people could just band together and form our own laws, businesses, schools, policies, etc. Then we won't have to be asking for anything. We have the money as a collective unit to do all this in relatively short time too.

Last time blacks did that the government ended segregation and eventually shoved crack in our communities

As far as practicing group economics

 

[zapatohead408]

pretty cool video. but why did he go to that school?

 

[jaysfiend23]

We'll done poem yea why would he go to this school but it's probably every university in the south not just his was made off a plantation. In all reality the school "whitewashes" their history cuz yea they are ashamed of what there forefathers did, so when the student pushed to have certain answers the school didn't want to explain shesh all the guy had to do was look it up, but I see where he came from with that and like others posts said there will be no way shape or form to form your own community like the Jews did it all honesty

 

[g14]

should of went to Bethune-Cookman  

 

[seasoned vet]

pretty cool video. but why did he go to that school?

i believe he was offered some type of scholarship? to pursue his Doctorate

and i may be using scholarship wrong, but i do know that they contacted him about attending there and im sure some of it if not all was paid for.

 

[seasoned vet]

 

[panaricanretro]

I thought they were going to uncover some sort of discrimination or something. This is kinda just stating the obvious. I'm sure this is far from the only standing school or institution that is on plantation land with former plantation structures and buildings around. We basically just read a well written school paper.