"He instinctively can find the shining greatness of our American culture and does a good job of highlighting it (although he also does have those rare lapses when he writes about hockey, but that is something caused by impurities in the Eastern waters or something)." Erik Keilholtz
Under the patronage of St. Tammany
Mark C. N. Sullivan is an editor at a Massachusetts university. He is married and the father of three children. Email
In Wellesley, Mass., where sensitivities to perceived racial bias are high after a couple of high-profile incidents of alleged discrimination against African-Americans, racist graffiti in a high-school bathroom is found to have been penned by a black pupil. Globe columnist Eileen McNamara, a Wellesley resident awash in white liberal guilt and the therapeutic culture, falls all over herself trying to find a reason for behavior that departs so drastically from the approved script.
If she could look away from the Teaching Tolerance talking points she might note that faked hate crimes are a growth industry on campus. This is not because colleges – or the Wellesley schools, for that matter – are in fact populated by cells of Klansmen or otherwise unreconstructed white racists, despite what racial-sensitivity trainers and flailers of "white privilege" would have you believe.
The college campuses and public school systems of today are filled with students who have been versed in multicultural diversity from Pre-K on. A campus is a rarified place, far removed from the real hatreds that scar so much of the world, yet you still have, at oases like Brown, hyper-sensitive students whose identity politics lead them to find hatred behind every leafy elm on the Green.
Where tolerance has been raised to the highest virtue, all it takes is a case of intolerance, real or perceived or staged, for the wagons to be circled, hands to be held, teach-ins to be launched, vigil candles to be lit, and minds to be got right.
Proponents of all-racial-consciousness-all-the-time and its attendant allotments of victimization and guilt prescribe more emphasis on race as a cure to problems caused by their own harping on race. Perhaps a little benign neglect would work better?
Erin O'Connor at Critical Mass writes of a rash of faked hate crimes on college campuses in recent years:
Hate crimes on campus--whether real or faked--are wonderful boons. They facilitate an agenda. They prove that racism, sexism, and homophobia really are the defining issues of our moment. They justify throwing money at campus advocacy groups, hiring minority faculty, establishing ethnic studies departments and creating diversity course requirements.
![[SMMMHDH]](http://www.mgilleland.com/music/smmmhdh.png){kind=small}
