BuzzFeedNews: A Group Of Students Burned A Latina Author's Book Because They Felt Attacked For Being White

[Cooked Crack]

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A group of students at a predominantly white public university in Georgia burned the book of a Latina author who had delivered a lecture on campus after some attendees accused her of "dissing white people."

 

Jennine Capó Crucet, a New York Times contributor and associate professor at the University of Nebraska, spoke about her novel Make Your Home Among Strangers at Georgia Southern University on Wednesday night. The award-winning book, published in 2015, tells the story of a Cuban American girl from Miami who gets accepted to a prestigious college in New York and struggles to fit into the privileged, predominantly white environment.

 

The book was required reading for some of Georgia Southern's First-Year Experience classes, according to the university.

 

On Wednesday evening, the school hosted Crucet, who spoke to the entire first-year class at the performing arts center. When she opened the floor to the audience for questions, some attendees peppered her for criticizing white people, according to the George-Anne, the university's newspaper.

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BuzzFeed News spoke with six first-year students, five women and one man, who attended the lecture, all of whom asked not to be named. The students were required to attend the lecture, along with hundreds of their classmates, and said that Crucet attacked white people "for an hour" and assumed that the entire audience was privileged.

 

"She came to our school and, the audience was predominantly white, and she came in and was attacking white people for an hour, putting all these stereotypes and generalizations on us," said one 18-year-old attendee. "Like all white people are privileged and racist."

 

Another student said the audience reacted when the author stated that most white people "needed to be removed from authority positions because two-thirds of people in high positions should not be white."

 

"She wanted everyone to be equal and says she is against racism but she was ****ting on white people the whole time," the 18-year-old male student said. "I can understand the message she was trying to get out but I don't know what reaction she was expecting when she comes to a school that's 75% white. I agree there is such a thing as white privilege but the way she was saying it was not OK to our student body."

 

All of the students who spoke with BuzzFeed News were born and raised in Georgia. One of the students said she is half-Dominican; the rest are white.

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Later that night, a group of students gathered on campus and burned her book, according to statements from the university and videos posted on Twitter. Some even gathered outside her hotel, the school's department of Writing and Linguistics said on Facebook, writing that it is "dismayed and disappointed by the uproar against" the author.

 

"Last night’s discussion with the author devolved into accusations of her demonstrating racism against white people," Dr. Russell Willerton, the department chair, said in a statement. "Some students burned copies of Crucet’s book and even gathered outside her hotel. We assert that destructive and threatening acts do not reflect the values of Georgia Southern University."

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When asked about the book burning, the group of first-year students who asked to remain anonymous told BuzzFeed News that about 20 to 30 of their classmates had gathered to burn the novel in a fire pit.

 

In a statement provided to BuzzFeed News, Crucet said that after the event her campus hosts had moved her from her original lodging accommodations to another hotel in a different town.

 

It was only when she read the statement from the department chair that she learned students had gathered outside the hotel she had previously planned to stay at.

 

"During the event, and afterward during the book signing, many students remarked on how much the story of the novel’s protagonist mirrored their own,and expressed gratitude for the book—both to me for writing it, and to GSU for selecting it as their FYE read," Crucet said. "To think of those students watching as a group of their peers burned that story— effectively erasing them on the campus they are expected to think of as a safe space—feels devastating."Crucet tweeted several times about the experience, writing, "This is where we are, America."

More at article

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/briannasacks/georgia-southern-burned-latina-authors-book

[NoCalMike]

If they felt compelled to burn a book due to a lecture, imagine what actual marginalized groups feel like doing?

[tshile]

Dear Fellow White People

 

Burning books is not a good way to respond to anything. It's a bad look. Go read a ****ing history book. Figure something else out.

 

[No Excuses]

The “white people cause problems” piling on can get tiresome sometimes and is now too often low-grade point scoring but imagine being in college and thinking book burning is a good look.

[Commander -JB-]