1. That student who went on the hunger strike started the hunger strike after the calls to action were already being made by groups on campus so I don't believe you are getting your timeline right.
2. It doesn't do because he isn't talking about the student's political positions he is talking about the Professors'. In either case race here isn't being used to shut down opposition it is being used to address the opposition there is a difference. The student groups were saying that the administration was racists and therefore should be fired, rather their position was the administration doesn't do enough to address racism and therefore should be fired. In the first example racism is being used as a collateral attack against a position, in the second example a reference to racism is being used as the basis of a position.
1. No, my timeline is correct, and yours is wrong. Jonathan Butler (the one who went on the hunger strike) started protesting because he lost his insurance. That was the genesis of his beef. The ConcernedStudent1950 group has been around and has a general aim which has been around for sometime. What happened was that both sides got wind of each others' beefs, and it turned into a general protest.
2. Yes, race is being used to shut down opposition. Notice that the football players who disagreed with the boycott had to speak anonymously. They couldn't go on the record, because they would get tarred and feathered.
Regarding the president, race was used as a weapon by the protestors. Just because they claim the president didn't do enough to address racial issues doesn't mean it is so. That's what you don't get. Those students are not the arbiters of what is the correct reaction to racial issues. They can have their opinion, but their opinion is no more valid that anyone else's. They certainly are not the ones to judge in a case where people are being forced from their jobs.
As I said, the protestors used race as a weapon. They know that most people are deathly afraid of being labeled "racist," and will bend over backwards to avoid such label. That's why the president was pressured into resigning. He didn't do anything wrong, but was forced to leave anyway.
Again, how are you in a position to make that claim? Why are the examples provided the only way suffering/persecution exist in the world?
How are you in a position to make the opposite claim? You aren't there either. You don't know if the claims of the students are true. You just blindly accept the claims of the students without question. I don't. I don't give them a free pass because they are minorities. I judge each situation individually, based on the evidence. I don't go in with a bias for or against, as you do. I have looked at the reported evidence, and I see no evidence of "suffering" or "persecution" in this situation. I have seen evidence of a couple of random incidents that were properly dealt with by the university. I see some students who are politically motivated and are pushing for an agenda that has nothing to do with anything that can be deemed "suffering" or "persecution."
Because suffering and persecution are serious words. You don't use the words flippantly with spoiled college kids trying to buck authority. I'll give you one example of the so-called "suffering." One girl claimed that she was discriminated against because another student switched seat in class. He was sitting next to her, and he switched seats to the other side of the room. She said she "just knew" it was because of her skin color. Right. Because it couldn't have been anything else. It couldn't have been that the guy wanted to go sit next to his friends, or he wanted a better view of the blackboard, or the desk was uncomfortable. It "had" to be because he was this frothing racist who was so incensed at a girl's skin color that he just had to move away from her. Yeah, that was it. What's her remedy to this? Is she suggesting that the university call security and physically force the kid to sit beside her? How is this hurting her anyway? The kid didn't do anything to her. He didn't say anything to her. He didn't take anything from her. He didn't touch her. He sat at another desk. This is "suffering" and "persecution" now?
That's my problem here. It's gotten to the point that simply doing anything a minority person doesn't like is now "racist," and it's deemed "persecution." Sorry, no, it doesn't work that way.
