Accused of racism at CSU East Bay

Colleges and Universities A-Z California State University - GENERAL
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I was a master student at a certain department at CSU East Bay. I have an interesting experience to share here. My last class was with the head of the department, and problem occurred with my last book review assignment. This was a book written by an African American professor and, strangely, the book was full of typos and spelling errors and syntactic mistakes. Since we were supposed to make critical comments about the author’s writing style, I said the writing was definitely “sloppy”. This of course gravely offended my professor because it was perversely racist. She therefore set out to destroy my academic career behind my back by pointing out to my future professors how racist I was toward black people, thus destroying any hope I might have in continuing my academic career. (I have had to find this out with my own investigation since of course my future professors were instructed to keep the reason for my rejection a secret from me.)

I don’t really object to expelling students from academia for racist comments; what I do object to is not posing the guideline beforehand. When professors ask students to be critical of the book at hand, they never mention that, when you are Asian (which I am), you are not supposed to be critical of the author if she or he is black, but are supposed to criticize the book only if the author is white or Asian. I thus feel like I have fallen into a trap. Somehow, you are supposed to learn the (non-spoken) rule by your own effort.

The story is probably more complex than this. For I have been on Homeland Security’s watchlist for 13 years, and many of the people I know have been recruited as informants on me for the Department. The Department’s warning about me says that, among other grotesque characteristics, I’m also a white supremacist and misogynist, and it seems (although I’m not allowed to know this) that some of the informants have shared with my professor the Homeland Security warning about me, causing her to understand my racist comment in a larger context. Since white supremacists and misogynists clearly don’t belong in academia, she therefore decided to pull strings behind my back to ruin my future chances in graduate schools.

This I can also perfectly understand and agree with. And I do feel really good about it because nothing gives greater pleasure in life than seeing people duping themselves into harming themselves and their country like dumb xxxxxx-xxxxxxx.

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Seems like you need to move on. I don’t think that the comment about errors in a text is the source of your problems. BTW, unless a book was self edited, grammar problems are the editor’s responsibility.

2 Likes
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My sense is that they probably followed the proper procedures but. if you think you were unfairly dismissed, you should appeal.

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Why would you think that a professor would take the time and effort to “destroy your academic career”. Master’s students do not figure very largely in the list of things on which faculty spend their time. They need to teach, do research, advise students, teach courses, apply for grants, and engage in at least two or three committees.

A professor who thought that you wrote something racist would either ignore it, write something on your paper and reduce your credit, or fail you and refer you for disciplinary procedures.

A few issues:

First, in your entire story, most of your accusations are of things that either happened “behind your back”, or otherwise occurred when you were not present. So it is unclear how this came to your knowledge. Do you know what the professor did, who she spoke to, etc? Do you know as a fact that Homeland Security contacted her?

Second, have you been suspended or dismissed? If so, what is the official reason that was given?

Finally, what is your age range (20s, 30s, etc), if you don’t mind sharing it with us?