KKK skit shocks Wheaton College campus

[n2doc]

An incident involving Wheaton College football players who dressed up in Ku Klux Klan robes as part of a parody of the Will Smith film "Bad Boys II" has rocked the college's campus, which already has been reeling from two other recent high-profile incidents.

The skit, which took place Feb. 28 in a campus gym during the football team's annual offseason team-building activity, involved groups of teammates performing skits. One group of 20 teammates, including some who are black, chose to parody several movies, including "Bad Boys II," a 2003 Martin Lawrence and Will Smith comedy and drama that pokes fun at the KKK. During the skit at Wheaton, the group wore Klan-style white hoods and robes and carried Confederate flags.

While those who organized the skit said it was intended to be satirical, it has outraged some on campus and provoked letters to the campus community from the evangelical Christian college's president, Philip Ryken, organizers of the skit and two assistant football coaches who were present. The controversy comes after two other high-profile incidents at Wheaton that have drawn headlines: the arrest of a student accused of video-recording a woman showering in a college-owned apartment and a student throwing fruit at another student who questioned Ryken at a campus event about lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.

"Wheaton College is far from perfect," Ryken said in a statement to the Tribune. "I was shocked when I first heard that symbols with a history of racist violence had been used on our campus. Although I was somewhat relieved to learn — almost immediately — that the skit was intended to subvert racism, not promote it, I also knew that when students heard what had happened, it would understandably cause a lot of distress. Recent incidents have shown us how issues of prejudice and sexual misconduct damage trust and disturb the peace. Sadly, this is a campus where we have sins to confess and people to forgive every day."

more

http://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/wheaton/news/ct-wheaton-college-kkk-skit-met-0307-20150306-story.html

[Wella]

1. It sounds like a misunderstanding to me. Many anti-racist art pieces ARE misunderstood

FIRE has some good examples of these:

A janitor reading an anti-Klan book on a college campus was accused of "racial harassment" because the book, Notre Dame Vs. the Klan had a picture of a Klan rally on its cover. The book was about a Catholic university's response to the KKK's anti-Catholicism. (Many people forget that one of the "K"s stands for "Katholics.&quot

A recent anti-racism piece at University of Iowa was taken down (censored) because some students felt "terrorized and fearful for their safety." The piece contained "newspaper clippings reporting on racial violence printed onto a Ku Klux Klan robe and hood."

I think it's quite possible that the college students at Wheaton were doing an edgy anti-racism piece that has been misunderstood.