Bangert: Yeah, but there's no racism at Purdue

I’ll admit, I don’t totally get it, either.

My inbox this week — a week featuring students’ race- and bias-related demands leading to the resignation of the University of Missouri president — has been full of challenges as similar questions started to swell: Could Mizzou be a warning for Purdue University?

Show me the racism. Document it. Prove it, if it’s going to lead to the dismissal of a president of a major Midwestern university and drag the good name of institutions, including Purdue, through the mud. If you can’t, quit talking about it.

Based on my experience, and working from that sort of inbox-logic, there really is no racism on campus. It hasn’t happened to me. Must not be there.

So how much stock can you really put in a guy like Daronn Maul, a junior in mechanical engineering, who was checking his phone a couple hundred people deep in the crowd of a Friday afternoon rally called by the Purdue Social Justice Coalition and others?

“Damn, a banana suit,” Maul said to a friend.

He was looking at Yik Yak, a social media app geared for university campuses that gives the freedom of posting anonymously. Yik Yak was fairly active during the rally outside the Class of 1950 Lecture Hall. Here’s the one that stopped Maul.

“I think it’s about time to throw on the banana costume and head for the protest.”

“Shaking my head, shaking my head,” Maul said. “Black people. You know, look like monkeys. Must want a banana. Get it.”

Yeah, but … there’s no racism. Show me.

“All the time like this,” Maul said. “That’s not right at all.”

What happened Friday under the branches of what’s called the Diversity Tree — a gathering spot typically painted by Greek or other organizations — wasn’t quite a revolt at Purdue. Not even close.

Sure, the leaders made demands about the diversity of the faculty and attention to racial detail from the administration — “so we’re not just a percentage here,” said junior Terrence Jackson.

And sure, they chanted, “Where’s Mitch? Where’s Mitch?” knowing full well President Mitch Daniels wasn’t going to be there, presumably so he could take stock of the rally and whether the general tone of grievances had shifted or grown since similar rallies in April 2013 and December 2014. Instead, members of Provost Deba Dutta’s diversity team were there to watch and listen.

But mainly the rally in support of students at the University of Missouri was about campus culture that wasn’t unique to Purdue — a campus culture that wasn’t absent at Purdue, either.

There were no huge hate crimes reported or claimed. Just the suffering of so many smaller cuts.

Or, in Yik Yak terms, death by a thousand banana costumes.

Is it different at Purdue than anywhere else?

“I’m not sure you can say that,” said Guillermo Caballero, a member of the Purdue Social Justice Coalition. “But we really didn’t expect this many people to come out. … You saw what happened here. … It’s alluding to the frustration in everything people face on a daily basis. Not big things, maybe. But things that just keep adding up. We’re proud of this school. We want to keep it that way. But students can’t do it all on their own.”

The talk at the rally, where men and women in “Black Purdue” shirts handed out hot chocolate to take the edge off heavy winds, was about momentum started at Mizzou. That, students were convinced, could be used to start dealing with the often subtle and sometimes oblivious implications from fellow students and faculty about how minority students didn’t belong — about how they were seen as strange visitors and novelties there because of some sort of reverse discrimination.

(Yes, Yik Yak wasn’t the only social media going to town on those topics.)

“It’s not going to happen overnight, we know how it is,” said Adam Williams, a junior studying chemical engineering. “It has to be done slowly. I mean, two generations ago, my grandfather didn’t even think about coming to a place like Purdue. We can get there, though. We just have to have strength in numbers, to tell that story.”

Venetria K. Patton, provost fellow on diversity at Purdue, watched the rally from the fringes, before milling with organizers at the end.

“Changing Yik Yak, I’m not sure that’s something anyone can do,” Patton said. “We need to equip our students for the world, because there’s Yik Yak and other things out there, too.”

She noted that Purdue wasn’t alone in the questions students were raising. (“My sense is that Purdue is typical,” she said.) And she said whether Purdue got credit for it, the university wasn’t turning a blind eye.

“But changing the environment,” Patton said, “that’s something we can do and we’re in the process of doing.”

A.J. Lucky, a sophomore studying English and a member of the Social Justice Coalition, said the difference was endurance this time. (“We’re going to hold people accountable,” Lucky said.) The anonymous Yik Yak and face-to-face slights, be damned.

“It’s reality,” Lucky said. “And it’s reality that’s going to change.”

About that time, social media was still ringing with notes about whiners, fabricators and opportunists, punctuated by this small thing, posted on Twitter:“Hopefully Mitch is making the call to break out the water cannons and send the crybabies home.”

But, come on, that wasn’t racist. Quit complaining, a lot of my best friends are … well, you know how that story goes.

Bangert is a columnist with the Journal & Courier. Contact him atdbangert@jconline.com.