UC San Diego Students Condemned for Party Mocking Black History Month

The chancellor at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) quickly condemned an off-campus party held by fraternity members that makes fun of black history month. The party was themed as a "Compton Cookout," where attendees were encouraged to wear T-shirts, rapper-style clothing and gold chains. The women were encouraged to attend the party as "ghetto chicks," described as having gold teeth, cheap clothes and "short, nappy hair."

"We reject acts of discrimination ... and we will confront and appropriately respond to such acts," Chancellor Marye Anne Fox said.

The invitation on Facebook also stated that the party would serve watermelon, chicken, malt liquor, cheap beer and a purple sugar-water concoction called "dat Purple Drank." The UC San Diego campus doesn't contain a very strong African American presence, with black students comprising less than 2 percent of the undergraduate class.

"These are the people I go to school with, and knowing that they're mocking my culture and the history of black people is really offensive," sophomore Elize Diop said.

The party was organized by members of several fraternities. It is unlikely that the students will be disciplined, since the party was off campus and not sanctioned by the university. Pi Kappa Alpha was the only fraternity identified in an e-mail from Gary Ratliff, the assitant vice chancellor for student life.

Okay, I've been teaching on college campuses for a while, so let me take a stab at how we might put this in perspective. There's no point in wanting to slap someone silly without at least trying to make it into a teachable moment. The students have obviously done something incredibly embarrassing to themselves, their families and their university, but there might be a few things to learn from all this:

1) UCSD's lack of commitment to diversity is reflected in this incident: When the institution itself is not committed to diversity (with only 2 percent of the student body being African American), are you really surprised when the 19- and- 20-year-olds you're teaching do something that is culturally ignorant? Before condemning the students, UCSD leadership needs to consider condemning itself for creating the kind of environment that allows this kind of thing to happen. It's very easy to shake a stick at those who offend our racial sensitivities, but it is much more difficult to make meaningful changes to our social and institutional infrastructure that lead to a more inclusive environment.

2) Are students being educated beyond chicken and watermelon? I'd love to get a sense of the standard curriculum for UCSD students. I am willing to bet that students are not required to take any courses on African-American history and are not even given the tools to overcome the disease of racism in America. Therefore, most of their racial education comes from BET and hip-hop videos; hence, you have "ghetto parties" for black history month, since their definition of blackness consists of rappers, watermelon and gold teeth.

3) The UCSD problem is not isolated: Racist incidents, such as the one on the UC San Diego campus, occur all over the nation. It is not because students are deliberately trying to be racist or terrible people. It usually happens because our nation has not committed itself to having productive conversations on race (I've laid this point out several times on MSNBC - perhaps one day President Barack Obama will confront racial issues). Therefore, the racial ignorance factor in America remains quite high. It's time to start teaching our students to see the world differently. Perhaps UCSD will take this incident as an opportunity to reconsider its curriculum and how it addresses race on its campus. The campus can start by creating a more diverse student body and requiring its students to obtain a more adequate cross-cultural education. It is only by being courageous that we can seriously confront the race problem in America.