When asked whether she agreed with the insinuation leveled by Oberlin police lieutenant Mike McCloskey yesterday that her report of a person wearing KKK garb early Monday morning near Oberlin College’s Afrikan Heritage House was a “mistake”, Sunceray Tabler told GLP via email, “I do not I agree with that statement.”
Tabler, who majors in both Music and Native American Studies implied that racially hostile incidents continued even after she spotted the suspected Klanperson at around 1:30 a.m. “There have been 4 instances of students being chased down by various vehicles last night alone.”
As of this writing, school officials and Oberlin police, including McCloskey, have not responded to questions about students being chased by cars. Tabler has also not responded via email to follow-up questions.
The internet was besieged yesterday with reports of Oberlin suspending classes for the day in order to hold a campus-wide discussion on race and racism at the College and throughout society. The decision seems to have been made based upon Tabler’s reported sighting of a person in KKK attire. Police uncovered a witness who says they saw a woman walking in the vicinity while wearing a blanket.
The first shred of doubt was cast by Gawker’s Max Read who reported that unofficial statements had been made which implicated members of the school’s Multiculutral Resource Center. The Guardian reported Lt. McCloskey’s statement which implied that Tabler’s account was not entirely correct, though he didn’t say anything about her being involved in the perpetuation of a hoax. Michelle Malkin, one of the most famous Oberlin alums, along with Girls creator Lena Dunham who also weighed in, relayed her experience with hate crime hoaxes during and after her time at the College. These hoaxes included one that occurred in the early 1990s involving an Asian-American student who scrawled anti-Asian markings on a monument celebrating the Boxer Rebellion. According to Malkin, the frenzy surrounding those events are similar to the ones currently infecting the campus.
Corrective reports filtered into the news stream today with New York Magazine, Reason, and Slate carrying the new twist of doubt. Gawker’s Read also carried a further update but with a headline that fingered racist elements on campus for scrawling bigoted statements throughout the past month. Read wrote:
“My understanding is that the individuals are college students and they have been identified. They are no longer on campus,” Lt. Mike McCloskey told The Guardian. “The college is dealing with it internally, and we have been working in co-operation with the college.”
We reported yesterday on rumors that faculty and administration members had been informed that the person responsible was associated with the Multicultural Resource Center and would be “disciplined internally.” A student source tells us that all MRC staff and student staff are still on campus, which, if the police are correct, exonerates them.
According to the Guardian, there are two students responsible, “but it is unclear if they were motivated by racial hatred, or—as has been suggested—were attempting a commentary on free speech.”
The article headline carried copy which read “Racist Vandals ‘Being Dealt With’” though no reports have confirmed that any of the previous incidents – which included anti-black, anti-gay, and anti-Semitic markings throughout the campus – were perpetuated by racists.
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“Tabler, who majors in both Music and Native American Studies…” Fuck me.
Here’s a picture of her:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ptcentrum/3836903441/
She definitely doesn’t look like the type that would make up something like this, so it must be true.
Tabler- I am currently working on a Project in conjunction with two non-profit organizations that will rebuild the educational, cultural, economic and housing systems in an area of Southern Ohio. Goals: Housing Projects/Reform, Green energy Projects, Community Development, Increased Standard of Living, and Cultural Awareness Hoax.
Better grab a bunch of rednecks from the area, dunk them in water, and see if they float! Hurry!!
I would love to hear some explanation as to why someone would be sneaking around campus in a KKK outfit. After all the whole point of the get-up is to intimidate people without being identified, right? What’s the point of wearing it if you’re not going to be seen, or be seen by only one person?
Also, “I do not I agree with that statement” or presumably intended to mean “I do not agree with that statement” sounds suspiciously like weasel-ese. It’s the kind of think you expect to hear from a lawyer or a PR flack, not from someone who is being completely open and honest. It’s also the kind of thing that you often hear from Ethnic Studies types who are trying to play word games or to disguise a subpar intellect or understanding. Still, good work going to the source on this one. We’ll see how it shakes out.
who is Obsidian and how is it he dominates the conversation
it aint the quality of his questions
hmm, hmm, hmm
spare us
Good reporting Chuck but my God who gives a F. They lie all the time. That’s all they do is lie.
sorry for mentioning his name, my badz
but wtf
who is this guy, and how he is entertained: omg, us poor niggerz be fuckin some white chix thereby we be real
If they actually had credible white male suspects, there would be some very clear and public naming and shaming going on.
Since they are trying to cloud the issue and hide behind bureaucrat-speak, we know that either nothing happened at all, or it was a nonwhite doing a hoax/prank.
Tom,
Frankly, I give an “F” which is all that matters as it pertains to the contents published here. Would you rather just go on assuming, as the Oberlin students and alum do, that your side’s case is automatically correct, or would you rather have someone tease out the many different angles to the story and document all of the various threads to the story? I don’t know about you, but relying on “they lie all the time” doesn’t satisfy me because, for one, they don’t lie all the time. And if you just sit there and assume that they’re lying but without proving it, then you’ve not done anything to prevent them from lying in the future.
Remember the CNN/RNC “peanuts” incident from last year? The perpetrators should have been a cinch to identify – they were accosting someone with a camera – yet never were. And MSM seemed very uninterested in finding them.
Since we know that even non-famous thoughtcrimers can now be Emmanuel Goldsteined on the national news, the most likely explanation is – false flag. Served its purpose.
who is this guy, and how he is entertained: omg, us poor niggerz be fuckin some white chix thereby we be real
Way to confirm the anti-racist stereotype of whites, numb nuts. Guys like Obsidian should be welcomed with open arms; the fact that he’s willing to converse with us in such a white part of the blogosphere shows he’s an open-minded guy, even if we disagree with what he says. So act straight and debate the man instead of slobbering all over yourself.
Would you rather just go on assuming, as the Oberlin students and alum do, that your side’s case is automatically correct,
Given that in 100% of past cases my side’s case has been correct, yes, I would.
Obsidian is only here to mock us and say that we are not “alpha” like him and every other black man (in his mind, anyway). He is basically just here to imply that women want black dicks and don’t want yours.
They know they have as much chance of seeing a klansman at Oberlin as I do seeing bigfoot at the neighborhood pool. I’m sure this hoax will stir lots of serious discussions on campus about how much more work needs to be done to fully diversify America. Since the goal of diversity is zero white people, they have much revolutionary work left to do. The white genocide bubble just keeps on blowing.
Chuck,
Good points. Consider me chastened. Keep up the good work.
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What’s worst about this kind of crap is that it makes you realize that, holy shit, there really are no grownups in charge.
If there were grownups in charge, then when an obvious oppression diva like Sunceray Tabler came forward with some preposterous charge, they’d nod and say they’ll look into it, then turn right around and find the jackass who let the oppression diva into their school and fire them. Since there are no adults around, they all look sidelong at each other to double-check that nobody’s making any obvious signals that Sunceray Tabler is an obvious nut (which they all plainly perceive but can’t admit) and then ramp up to full-on crisis mode,
I wish Oberlin the worst. I hope they, along with Reed, Smith and Vassar, are the first casualties of the student loan bubble. But I’m not holding my breath.
Tom,
Thanks. I didn’t mean to chasten, just to let you know what motivates me.
I went to Oberlin (Malkin lived down the hall from me at one point), and also grew up in another college town in Ohio, Oxford which is home to Miami University. Oxford is just across the border from a part of Indiana that was a center of a modern resurgence of the KKK in the early 1900s and every few years some kid from the rural part of the district would dress up in his grandfather’s robes and act out his family legacy with complete sincerety in some act of hate directed at some subset of our more diverse population of college town brats – with quick punishment from school officials usually following.
Oberlin is much further from the Indiana border and doesn’t have that kind of history of local KKK strength anywhere very nearby. In that part of the state, ethnic bigotry was directed as Germans and riled up by World War II. Ethnic Germans in the area effectively extinguished all traces of their cultural distinctiveness at that time in hopes (mostly successful) of escaping community mistreatment. The region is culturally far more Yankee that rural areas in Southern Ohio and it isn’t uncommon to see Amish buggies on the long rural drive to Oberlin from other parts of the state.
Oberlin students, however, come from far and wide and have at many times been intensely engaged in identity politics. I could imagine someone who came to college instead to pursue sciences or music (which it is as famous for as its liberal politics) who was frustrated by that lashing out and engaging in a sincere KKK act. I can also imagine a variety of other ways that something could have happened such as a misunderstanding of some contemplated historical drama rehersal or just person walking around in a white sheet for totally non-KKK related reasons that is intensely seered in the memory of the person who saw it happen by the mindset of the person seeing it at the time. It could also be a genuine hoax aimed at stirring up awareness, which would not be unprecedented either.
I wouldn’t prejudge the veracity of the statements of anyone involved without knowing more of the facts.
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