Thesohoforum. Org. This is an oxford style debate whether they vote for, against of the resolution and then again after the debate is over. Todays resolution is as follows americas colleges, that makes them a hostile space for africanamerican students. Defending the resolution to my right we have lawrence ross, author of blackballed the black and white politics of race on americas campuses. Lawrence will be doing book igning and sales of his book blackballed after the debate. Youll find lawrence over at that tible signing books and response to any questions you put to him after the debate. Arguing for the negative we have kmele foster, a telecommunications entrepreneur and a host and cohost of the libertarian podcast, the fifth column. [applause] fifth column fans. Commoip oh. Gene dominating. Dominating. So now well close the initial voting and the debate can begin. Lawrence ross, you have 15 minutes to defend the proposition americas colleges have fostered a racist environment that makes them a hostile space for africanamerican students. Take it away, lawrence. Awrence there will never be a nigger s. A. E. How many have you heard that song before . How many have you thought lost my minds . That song was sung by the chapter of the university of oklahoma and was taught by members in the midwest. Everyone was shobblingd when they saw this video and it went on and went viral. Even fox news fox news thought to them self, yeah, this might be a little racist. Because we americans thinks racism is an extraordinarily long series of unfortunate events that are isolated, what we did not know this was not the first time a White Fraternity has sung about murdering africanamericans. No one had really connected the dots and thats kind of like why im here. N 1963, one in long beach sang a song similar. It said bye, bye, black boy. You ought to be cool or we will bomb your school. They were talking about the bombing in birmingham, alabama, where four little black girls died. Is this a coincidence . No, this is not a coincidence. This is the type of racism you see on a regular basis you see on average campuses. The research was between 350 to 500 racist incidents on College Campuses that were reported. This is just the reported. Now, what type of campus racism incidents are we talking about . What are the ones we normally see . Well, do you want a white students and white fraternities and sororities dressing up in black faces on Martin Luther king day . All the time. Every particular year you want to have people dressed up in bloods and crips trying to mimic quoteunquote africanamericans . Happens all the time. You want to see white students dress eating watermelon and Fried Chicken and declaring theyre celebrating black heritage . Happens every single year. And do you want to see the word nigger sprayed every year . Eastern michigan. It happened to Suny Brockport a couple months ago. Bananas to black students . American university, it happened twice one year. Happened a couple months ago. A white guy put a gorilla mask n his face and gave bananas to members of black lives matter. I forgot about the confederate flags and nooses. Associated with fraternities like kappa sigma, kappa alpha, almost always happen on a regular basis. Sometimes its part of organized chapter events and we see this in social media but it goes back to the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s. Get it out of your head that campus racism is a new event. I saw in terms of my research, i saw campus racism issues in newspapers, in archives and yearbooks, every particular place you can pretty much find it but one of the problems is that when we talk about campus racism and what we tend to do we want to say racism on College Campuses wherever the other is. If we want to talk about, well, campus racism is only in the south because university of alabama in particular, which does have its own racism issues, that is an easy place to stick it. It happens in yale, berkeley, whether its a Small College or private college or state college, it happens in every particular place. Heres the problem. I am not going to get into listing every single racist event that occurs during this 15 minutes. The one problem that black people have in terms of trying to talk about racism is that quantifying racism by just simply doing numbers will never work because im pretty sure some of you if i said 100 different incidents, somebody in the audience will say its not 150 and i need 105 to be sure racism occurred on these campuses. Thats a game whack a mole that i dont want to play. What i do want to talk about specifically is what are students specifically trying to do when they come on those campuses and what happens to them . These College Students are coming these black students are coming on these campuses specifically to get an education and what is happening is the university itself and the we talk about in terms of College Universities is creating a hostile environment which gets us to the resolution. Now, i want to reread the resolution because i want to do a little breakdown. America has fostered a racist environment. I do have a quibble with the resolution, gene. You helped me abroff it. We use racist as an adjective for the noun environment. As though the environment is neutral, as though its racist free, does not contain racism. These are people on the outside creating a racist environment. I will argue for the affirmative but i dont believe that. The environment is as part of america as any other place so therefore we should not make the assumption that the environment itself is nonracist. We just shouldnt. America does not have any sense of a history that tells us we have nonracist or racialized environments. But, you know, this kind of goes back to one of the earliest studies done by africanamerican sociologist w. B. Dubois who recognized an issue with colleges being part of america and he did a 1909 study asked a Racial Climate study. What is the Racial Climate on your College Campus . Some, they were restricted, because africanamericans are not allowed on their campuses, there was no survey there. There were ones who said we treat the africanamerican students exactly like the white students and others were like never bring them on our campus because we cant actually deal with their safety. But its easy for us when we talk about, you know, College Campuses. College campuses is what i call educational disney land. We think of them being utopia places. Free speech land over there, Critical Thinking land over there, drunk land over there but nobody remembers it. We even talk about being ivory towers. Its a state of privilege seclusion, separation from the facts and practicalities of the world. College campuses are not separate from the real world and not separate from the American Society. And how do we define colleges and universities . A lot of times when i have these discussions we talk about colleges being some kind of awful over here, institutional or the administration. College universities are composed of a number of elements. The students, faculty, administration, yes. Fraternities, sororities, buildings. All of those work together. The problem is if you have a racist virme requirement you by nature have a hostile space. I have yet to go on a College Campus where people say the environment is racist but its also warm and inviting. It doesnt happen like that. Its not like that. Also you have to also remember the hostility is not really just a quantifyable fact. The quantifiable fact is we have these racist incidents. Its without dispute. Its also a qual football, a qualifyable fact in terms of how black students feel when they get on campus. Do they feel welcomed when they get on a campus . And thats not something that other people say they must feel welcome or they need to overcome some racist hurdle to say i feel welcomed on this campus. Its the responsibility of the campus to provide them with an atmosphere that allows them to get an education without the hurdle of racism. But one of the things we also want to talk about is we cant talk about racism without getting specifically to the root of it which, of course, is White Supremacy. I saw some faces scruverages up and thats my bad scrunches up and thats my bad. I was going to give you a igger warning and before i say white supremie. Forget the david dukes of the world. I am not talking about the cliche. I am talking about whiteness being the whiteness being the default normal and blackness being the other. Whiteness being the fully human and blackness being not human. Thats where you get the denegation of black students as looking at black students not being fully human. Lets take some of the lowhanging fruits even if you dont believe that look at what africanamerican students have to deal with when they walk on campuses. Georgetown just had to apologized after sold 222 enslaved africanamericans. Harvard law had the royal family, a Slave Holding Family who burned alive 100 africans in order to put down a slave rebellion. Clemson, which i do love these people. Its located on the j. C. Calhoun plantation that is which was one of the leading slave riyadh vow indicates which also hosts the tillman hall who advocated for the lynching of thousands of africanamericans. Which is about 500 yards from the Strom Thurman building which is the anticivil rights senator who was one of the longest senators in the Senate Senate history. I joke to them the only thing they did not have was the k. K. K. Quad. Two weeks ago they actually did have the k. K. K. To come distribute fliers. Thats the atmospheres you have on multiple campuses around the country. Thats some of the history you have in terms of how africanamericans see themselves on these campuses. A lot of times these arent historical relics for africanamerican students. These are realities and we always talk about the fact that no one would ask africanamerican students to go over this if they looked at themselves looked at them as being fully human. But why specifically College Campuses . It doesnt really happened. I studied it. It doesnt happen on high school or elementary campuses. The reason why africanamerican students are particularly attacked is colleges are transformational and its a battlefield of whether or not you are going to uphold white supremie or whether youll transform it in society. Therefore the presence of africanamerican students on College Campuses are a direct threat and thats when people decide to attack that threat. One of the other reasons is they come on College Campuses completely segregated. Africanamerican students and white students do not go to the same schools and do not live in the same neighborhoods. 74 of africanamericans go to a segregated school but 32 go to a segregated k12 school before they go to college and 80 or so for white students coming to college. In spite of all that, 2016 baylor study said in terms of how white students looked at africanamerican students, they said they did not try hard enough on College Campuses despite the despite how hard it was to get to campus. One of the problems if you do not see an africanamerican student as a fully human person you find that person easy to denigrate or you will not see that person as a college student. At l. S. U. They had an epidemic of so many bhithe white students calling the l. S. U. Police department and saying they had an africanamerican male that they needed to investigate, that the police have to call excuse me had to do an open letter and tell the student body to stop sending the police talking to africanamerican men who were just simply coming from the library. At col gait a woman was talking about the fact she walked around with a white woman just white student walked around with a metal sword and talked about the fact a year before no one stopped her and a young africanamerican black student walked around with a glue gun for his art for his art project and the police shut down the whole campus. Because of how people thought one being a student and one not being a student. Am i saying all the white students and the white faculty and white administrators are all raging White Supremacists . Of course not. My friend commem may say different. I will say that faculty are coming to campuses with various aspects. What theyre doing you have some who are antiracist, who are looking at racism saying i will help deconstruct this racist society, i will deconstruct it on this College Campus. You have some who are genuinely racist saying i cant wait for me to get here because this will be a space for me to be racist. Most people are not. Most white students and administrators and faculty typically are not racist. Nonracist looks different. Its the idea, well, you know something, i believe in a colorblind society. I voted for obama so how can i be racist . They put a moral justification of racism versus i can do something. As long as its over there i dont have to do something. Its somebody elses issue. Inside Higher Education did a study with 700 White College president s and said, what is the Racial Climate on your campus . They said the Racial Climate on our College Campus is absolutely fine, good or excellent. There were 250 different campus protests. They did it again in 2016 which would you think it would go down because obviously things are not really good. It went up. They were 90 but the number of College President s who said excellent went up. So what happens there is a cognitive disdense. There is a young woman named paige schumaker who painted her face black and threw up a gang sign and said, finally good to be a nigger. They said, why would you do this . She said, i am the least racist person i know. Gene you have 30 seconds. Lawrence i know my friend will say, look, racism, he doesnt like racism like anybody else. Who likes racism. I love cancer, no one likes that. But what he will is what institutions will do is three is equals a miss. He will individualize, trivialize and dismiss it. He will also look in terms of minimizing. Maybe black students are being hypersensitive to all these things and hell trivialize it by picking out incidents that didnt turn out the way we thought they were. But a lot of times thats what makes africanamerican students mad because theyre dismissed. I always want to go back to what this one student said. She said i didnt come to the university of oklahoma for campus racism and protests. I came to be an engineer. When the paradoxes of education was precisely at this point, when you begin to develop a conscious you must be a war within your society. You must change society if you think yourself as an educated person. Gene thank you, lawrence. [applause] 15 minutes to speak against the resolution. Take it away, kmele. Kmele i will only need three of those since lawrence explained the tactic that i will use except hes wrong. First, thanks so much to you, gene, naomi and the soho forum and thank you for being here. Lawrence, thank you for coming and taking on whats a very difficult and challenging task, rying to prove this really assertive claim about College Universities being hostile environments. Most of the people in this room who take an interest in this are probably university educated. I imagine that wasnt their experience. I am not imagining that because im just going to why not contrive something. I will study like you did except its not one that is well over 100 years old. Its one from about a year ago. I will consult two of them and both of those studies we saw the students overwhelmingly say that they thought the racial Race Relations on their campus were good or excellent. Not only im sorry about that. You know, this is gene i am at a severe disadvantage here in i do not like monologues. Kmele the notion of talking for 15 minutes is not exciting. But i will try to keep it going for all of you guys. Lawrence has been studying this stuff a heck of a lot longer than i have but i am going to try to make an impurecal case. Its not a matter of citing numbers. Its a matter of making some claims. If there are claims then what do we expect to see and i certainly dont think we would expect to see 75 of students on campus saying theyre pleased to be there, that theyre happy, that they think the Race Relations on their campus are fine and good. In fact, even black students say that. But it is certainly true that black students say that to a lesser degree. Whats even more interesting from my standpoint is that these hostile racist environments when i decided to take a look at this a little bit more closely i went and took a look at the top 10 and top 25 universities. Top 10 private universities. Top 25 public universities. On every single one of those campuses, every single one of them they have a chancellor of diversity of some sort. In fact, oftentimes there are multiple people who hold that title. They rule over the entire campus adjudicating various wrongs and making students feel one hopes safer. Not only that, every single one of these campuses have an Africanamerican Studies Program and an accredited one where you can get a degree, you can spend your entire time studying that. Many have diversity credits you earn for taking classes on campus. That didnt exist when i was in school. But suffice it to say, there are significant investments being made in pursuit of this goal, and its no surprise then this goal of creating diversity on campus. Its no surprise then since i believe the late 1970s, up until about 2015, the rate of not the rate sorry the share of 18 to 25yearold africanamericans in Postsecondary Education has increased by almost 100 . Twice the rate of white students. Why are they why are they rushing to go to these hostile, racist environments and why when