I’m a black Yale grad, and its racial firestorm doesn’t surprise me: Now it’s time for the administration to act by Courtney Mckinney- Salon.com

I’m a black Yale grad, and its racial firestorm doesn’t surprise me: Now it’s time for the administration to act - Salon.com: "The University of Missouri is not the only campus currently embroiled in a controversy over race. At my alma mater, Yale University, there is a tense debate about racism on campus that has garnered national attention. Most reports focus on a campus-wide email sent by the university’s Intercultural Affairs Council suggesting students avoid culturally insensitive costumes. There was a counter-email sent by a professor and wife of a college “master,” saying the initial email teetered on free speech suppression. At the same time, members of a popular Yale fraternity were accused of turning away black women at a party in favor of “white girls only.” These reports provide only a sneak peek into a much larger picture. To understand what is happening at Yale you need 300 years of context, but I will start with the last eight. When I left Texas for Yale in 2007, what I knew was that it was one of the best institutions of higher learning in the world. What I did not know is that in the years to come I would see the words “nigger school” spray painted on the wall of a residential hall, I would encounter almost exclusively black and brown faces serving students in campus dining halls, I would learn of a courtyard in another residential hall playfully referred to as “slave quarters,” I would hear debates about why Calhoun College still bears the name of one of history’s most vigorous proponents of slavery, I would watch the school hemorrhage talent from its faculty, and I (a woman of color) would call live-in professors “masters,” without irony. These are only a few examples of how racism, both historical and contemporary, institutional and individual, create an atmosphere at Yale that is hard to articulate and even harder to ignore. Since moving to the northeast from Texas I continue to be struck by the degree to which Northerners are willing to condescendingly point fingers south to say how backward “they” are, while failing to acknowledge how Northern institutions uphold racist structures that harm minorities in systemic ways. When we got to New Haven, my mom remarked that it was the most segregated city she had ever seen —  it certainly was for me. There we were, two Southern women marveling at a city stuck in a structure we thought the civil rights era had ended. Yale views itself as a thought leader — a place where the brightest minds come to learn how to think about the world’s biggest problems. One of America’s biggest problems is its often unacknowledged history of institutionalized racism and oppression. If Yale feels so committed to its own “tradition” that it cannot rename a building, or respond beyond lip service to blatantly racist behaviors, why expect more from other parts of the country? There are currently no established efforts to teach students where Yale has been, what it is guilty of, or what it must continue to work every day to correct. Universities like Yale cannot continue to inject high-achieving minorities into schools and expect them to navigate systems that simultaneously oppress and educate them – that is the job of an administration, not a student. "



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