"Black Bitches"

Yesterday in the Cornell Daily Sun there was an article about a Cornell professor in Africana Studies calling two black female students "Black bitches". Well he didn't call them that directly he was making a joke about what he thought when they showed up to the conference late. According to the Sun: Farred then lowered his voice and said, “When you both walked in, I thought, ‘Who are these black bitches?’”.  I get it, he was trying to be funny. Poor word choice though.

 I'm not gonna pretend like I never refer to women as bitches or hoes. It's not right, I know it. But you'll be hard pressed to find a woman that can say that I called them a bitch or a hoe. So i'm not necessarily mad at Professor Farred for using the words black and bitch. I do find what he did to be in incredibly poor taste.  I don't know the nature of his relationship with the women, maybe he thought they were cool like that, but some words are just too risky to use in jest. I had a professor at Duke that used to say "Jeremy stop acting like a little negro child" or "Jeremy why must you be such a negro child". She was just joking with me. I never felt offended by her words cuz we were cool like that. But that's me.  Negro child and black bitches are two different kinda words. Considering Farred was the director of graduate studies in Africana his words carried more gravity. The DGS is pretty powerful in grad school he/she could be the difference between you graduating on time or spending another semester in school.  And that is why I find issue with how the situation was handled. If the young ladies were so offended by what Farred said that they took it to the department head, Salah Hassan, Hassan should've acted quickly and quietly to discipline Farred and possibly asking for him to step down from his position as DGS. But Hassan didn't and the situation got bigger and bigger. 

It's been my experience that students at Cornell are always looking for something to fight. They pounce on even the smallest things and try to make a huge deal out of it. I'm def against injustice but I also know how to pick my battles. Most folks around here don't. So when Hassan failed to take action the fire got fuel. 2 months later it's on the verge of being a negro bonfire (no KKK). Some alumni of africana wrote a letter to the president of Cornell addressing their concerns and now there's a forum tomorrow on the issue. Now I'm not saying Farred's actions weren't wrong or in poor taste, I am however, saying that all of this isn't necessary.  I find forums to be mostly useless. A lot of talk and very little action. Sitting in a room and blasting Farred isn't going to change the attitudes of men towards women.  That's not to say that these forums hold no value at all, I just think that at this point the issue will be directed at what Farred said and not that he thought such hurtful words could be used in jest, especially in front of the women he was referencing.

Now to the victims of Farred. He's already apologized to them for what he said. That's who he owes. But because this issues has gotten so big, I can't help but think it makes their experiences in Africana slightly uncomfortable. It'd be hard to imagine the faculty not taking sides, I just hope it doesn't adversely affect these young ladies graduate careers in the long run. I'd be curious to know if the victims ever thought/wanted the situation to get this big. It reminds me of one time a teacher said something foul to me in class. I told the person who was taking care of me at the time. She came to school and cussed the teacher flat out. Talk about embarrassing. As a result i ended up being the teacher's pet thus further alienating me from my classmates. All I really wanted was a "awww that's messed up. She shouldn't have said that" or maybe a letter sent with me to school to give the teacher. But having to watch someone get cussed out on your behalf when i really wasn't THAT big of a deal to me def sucked. I just hope that after all of this has happened it was that big of a deal to the victims, otherwise the rest of us have effed it up for everybody involved.