Oracle Online

Our fellow college newspaper The Mac Weekly reported on a party that happened Jan. 16, shortly after Martin Luther King Jr. Day, which was called the “politically incorrect party.” As you may have heard from local media outlets, several party attendees were dressed as Ku Klux Klan members and others were dressed in blackface. The party was publicized on Facebook, and wasn’t brought to campus-wide attention until the last week of January or so.

But before you start wondering if we are about attack Macalester, please know that we at the Oracle knows that this kind of sickness is present at Hamline, and across our country-anywhere racism is present. This is not an attack on Macalester.

That said, we have to let out another sigh, and exclaim, “Come on, are you kidding?” How does any liberal arts college student think that dressing up in blackface or in a Klan costume is in any remote way OK? Especially at Macalester, a college known unofficially as one of the most liberal schools in the area. We’re not suggesting that you necessarily have to be a liberal to be a champion of human rights, decency or social justice, but liberal institutions are not usually synonymous with overt racism.

It needs to be said that there is no excuse for what these students did; the party was wrong. Period. But there is a possible explanation for the motivation behind the party. We, along with our Generation X elders, are a generation of cynics and our humor is about as sardonic as you can get. With comics like Dave Chappelle, and Sacha Baron Cohen making light of race and ethnic relations, some in our age group feel like they can jump on stage and create their own offensive “art.” But more often than not, they don’t realize that, being white and usually middle class, they lack a certain authority when it comes racial or ethnic satire.

In fact, all of this talk of satire is sort of beside the point. There was no stage or camera at this partyčnot that one would have made any of this permissiblečbut rather without a camera or stage, none of what happened could even be considered satire. What these misguided students took part in that night was not part of a message. It did not shine a light on the dark underbelly of racism in America, and it did not serve as a catalyst for race conversation in any positive way.

The actions of these students were pointless, regardless of how clever they believed they were being. What’s worse, they are textbook case of white privilege. The fact that these students had no idea that what they were doing could be hurtful or racist is perhaps the perfect example of just how hurtful and racist they were being.