Well, that didn’t take long.
When the Kansas Legislature passed the so-called KIRK Act to prevent colleges and universities from regulating political activism on campus, I warned that lawmakers were rolling out a welcome mat for unsavory characters with even more unsavory messages, causing problems where problems didn’t exist.
So here we are, not even two weeks later, and it’s already started.
The Kansas State University Collegian is now reporting that an apparently white man in full-body black makeup showed up at the Pat Bosco Plaza in front of the Student Union, with a lawn chair and a sign reading: “Say N—– Win Candy.”
For the purposes of this column, I blanked the N-word. But the guy with the sign spelled it out.
The Collegian also quoted from a letter from the local chapter of the NAACP to the university president.
“We have received several reports of this white student in blackface holding up this racist sign on Kansas State University main campus,” the letter read.
“Campus police responded and did not remove the individual. We are respectfully asking that the university take immediate action to terminate this inappropriate and egregious behavior.”
The college paper ran a photograph from the incident and posted (and later removed) a video of a physical confrontation prompted by the display.
Meredith McCalmon, editor-in-chief of the paper, told me the video starts with a white student holding what was apparently the candy he got for saying the N-word.
Another white student approached and challenged the candy holder to say it again.
Words were exchanged and the student who had intervened slapped the other student across the face before they both walked away.
I can’t help thinking that when my son went to K-State 10 years ago, this kind of racist street theater wouldn’t have been tolerated.
Campus police would have told this guy to take his sign and lawn chair and get off campus.
The administration wouldn’t have issued a weak-sauce statement saying “The individual was in a public place exercising their First Amendment right.”
What changed?
