City College Air: Discrimination on Campus
November 6, 2013
By Beck Kilkenny
English faculty Shannon Gibney received a letter of reprimand last weekend after a debate about structural racism in her Intro to Mass Communications class became too heated. This is the latest development in a string of incidences on campus regarding race, education and community effecting the student body. We talked with Gibney about the incident, and spoke with the new Executive Director of Diversity, Dr. Whitney Harris on his perception of MCTC’s cultural climate.
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Yamil A. Rodriguez • Jun 2, 2014 at 2:57 pm
She is no racist! Some people just have issues with a ever-changing America.
Matt Lewis • May 28, 2014 at 11:57 am
This Gibney chick, holy shit! That is one racist bitch. I love diversity lets teach that, not that the reason why your life sucks is because some white guy has it better than you. All that does is foster hate and resentment. We will never become “one” as a society as long as we have teachers feeding peoples minds with this garbage. Why not discuss the fact that blacks sold blacks to whites or that the first slave owner in America was black. Kinda pisses on the whole white people are to blame shit doesn’t it.
Anonymous • May 28, 2014 at 6:27 am
For some reason, my post went way down in the order. I’m not cut and pasting it here, as it’s still posted below, but the net summary is: Racism is a 2 way street. I lived in Nigeria for 6-1/2 years and traveled all over Africa. Most African blacks both freely admit that blacks are usually more racist than non-blacks AND look down their noses at most American blacks, whom they consider to be spoiled, pampered, coddled, and naive. (Their words, not mine.)
FYI: Most Africans (be they black or white or in between) would NOT consider Dr. Gibney to be black herself. I’m not saying she can’t make that claim (she can call herself whatever she likes) I’m saying they wouldn’t consider her to be.
PS: I myself have been labeled as “SEVERELY non PC or conforming” and, in that light, would like to offer her the following hard-learned advice: “Calling the management where you are working vindictive and dysfunctional” and adding “…something needs to be done” could very well become a self-fulfilling prophecy, but not in the way she hopes. (I lost a job that way.)
Anonymous • May 27, 2014 at 9:42 am
I forgot to mention below: Dr. Gibney, I’m more than willing to have an open debate with you on this issue, if you wish to do so.
Anonymous • May 27, 2014 at 8:57 am
I have a bit of a different viewpoint on this because I’m a 46 year old white male who’s spent quite a bit of the last 29 years living and working overseas. Six and a half years of that time was spent living and working in Nigeria. The average Nigerian laughs at the ignorance, arrogance, and naivete of many American “blacks” from whom Dr. Gibney could be considered a poster-child. (And who, FYI, most black Africans do NOT consider to actually be black, but “mixed”.) Most black Africans will freely admit that blacks are not only CAPABLE of being racists, but are – on average – far MORE racist than most whites. They will also admit that, on average, blacks (both in Africa and US/Canada/UK) treat each other FAR worse than whites treat them. My friend Kuda from Zimbabwe (whom I went to college with in Texas and who was so dark Texas blacks called him “The Tar Baby”) says neither he nor his friends hesitated to work in S.Africa under Apartheid because the white S.Africans treated them better than the black people in power in Zimbabwe did. (As an aside, my Nisea friend (Issea actually, as he was actually born in Japan and came to the US at about 8) will tell you, many Japanese are actually FAR more racist than any American can imagine, they e even consider him to be “fully human” because he was raised outside of Japan.)
Net result 1) those who are calling her a spoiled, arrogant, brat who is – whether she thinks of herself that way or not – in her own way every bit as racist as David Duke are correct. (She and he are, in fact, flip sides of the same coin. Think about it a minute.)
2) Those who are saying that the constant racist theme has no place in a an English (or Mass Communications) class are equally correct.
Hunter James • May 26, 2014 at 5:27 am
Scum cunt!!!
Dwane Tansy • May 25, 2014 at 1:12 pm
“Have you ever seen or heard anybody babbling about privilege that has any kind of track record of success? I didn’t become a partner in a law firm because my great-great-great grandfather came over from Bavaria, okay? I started out mopping-out stalls at McDonalds. On the military side, I didn’t become a full-Colonel because somebody liked my skin tone. I started out as a Private 27 years ago this Tuesday.
All of us have worked; all of us have achieved something and that’s how we measure character; that’s how we measure what the value of a person is. Not some arbitrary category imposed by some ponytailed grad students who’ve taken too many gender studies seminars.”
~ Army Colonel Kurt Schlichter ~
Dwane Tansy • May 25, 2014 at 1:12 pm
“Have you ever seen or heard anybody babbling about privilege that has any kind of track record of success? I didn’t become a partner in a law firm because my great-great-great grandfather came over from Bavaria, okay? I started out mopping-out stalls at McDonalds. On the military side, I didn’t become a full-Colonel because somebody liked my skin tone. I started out as a Private 27 years ago this Tuesday.
All of us have worked; all of us have achieved something and that’s how we measure character; that’s how we measure what the value of a person is. Not some arbitrary category imposed by some ponytailed grad students who’ve taken too many gender studies seminars.”
~ Army Colonel Kurt Schlichter ~
Alex Gianola • Dec 11, 2013 at 11:57 am
I moved to Minneapolis from Chicago about 2 years ago. I was taking classes in Chicago, but found the community college environment to not be enriching and the students were not united. I love walking through the doors of MCTC and being part of a cultural melting pot. What a rare opportunity to collaborate with people from all over the globe.
It saddens me that one person who decided to bring her personal matters to a Mass Communication class has created this public persona. I have my BA is Mass Communication and our curriculum did not include institutional racism. Maybe it’s different at MCTC but I doubt it.
For those of you reading this story not a part of the MCTC community, this is NOT A REPRESENTATION OF THIS INSTITUTION.
Thank you for reading this and good luck with finals!
William G. Abraham • Dec 10, 2013 at 7:27 am
What a hideous individual this woman is.
Mark Bennington • Dec 9, 2013 at 12:42 pm
Boo Hoo, the poor black oppressed college professor. She is a free person, unfortunately for her, her mind is a prisoner of her own perception of bias. She was born about 180 years too late.
Debbie Jay • Dec 6, 2013 at 5:27 pm
Love her SOLID Irish name :Shannon Gibney
Shaun Behrens • Dec 6, 2013 at 12:05 pm
OFCOURSE IT WAS DEFENSIVE!! We should first cover the fact that a teacher should be able to handle being put on the spot and still being able to answer questions. We should continue by covering the fact that she is doing this in a class that has NOTHING to do with what she is discussing. These students are there to learn about specific things. You can’t change the class. They signed up for one set of classes and for this dumb bitch to teach something that is not a part of that class is ridiculous.
Ginny Soules • Dec 5, 2013 at 3:12 pm
Basically this class is to teach students how to communicate by writing and advertising. By using the internet and as a prerequisite for working in the field of newspaper reporting and magazines. What the hell does her view on racism have to do with this class? If someone can logically explain that to me I’d appreciate it. Right now all I see is a woman who is so hung up on race that she’s not teaching her class properly.
Ginny Soules • Dec 5, 2013 at 3:12 pm
Basically this class is to teach students how to communicate by writing and advertising. By using the internet and as a prerequisite for working in the field of newspaper reporting and magazines. What the hell does her view on racism have to do with this class? If someone can logically explain that to me I’d appreciate it. Right now all I see is a woman who is so hung up on race that she’s not teaching her class properly.
Matthew Baker • Dec 5, 2013 at 8:12 am
She’s an arrogant, ignorant spoiled brat that is taking her position to be an activist. If she wants to be an activist, leave the teaching profession and get a job with the Obama administration. I’m proud of the students that filed against her.
Arcangelo 'Cisco' Cocco • Dec 4, 2013 at 10:58 pm
Only whites are racist. this professor proves otherwise. She is Blatantly racist. It’s a shame she indoctrinates, er, “teaches” our children.
Donald A. Mc Farland • Dec 4, 2013 at 10:42 pm
I’m sick of these Commieprog affirmative action liberals playing the race card everytime someone kicks their racebaiting/poverty pimp crap in the gutter.
Brian Anthis • Dec 3, 2013 at 10:42 pm
A must watch world class documentary on race… http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/divided/etc/view.html
Mark TenPas • Dec 3, 2013 at 10:42 pm
If a white professor spent every class in Introduction to Communication talking about the negative impacts of say, illegal immigration, Israel, the Bush administration, abortion, or some other subject, and did that all of the time (allegedly), and made students uncomfortable, what should happen?
Let’s take the race part out of this for a second. In a politics or racial studies class, this subject absolutely belongs in there all the time. In an introductory communications class, structured racism seems like a very specific issue to be spending multiple classes on, and it’s making at least some students uncomfortable that so much emphasis would be placed on it.
Vadge Sinclair • Dec 3, 2013 at 5:57 pm
I wish teachers would stop trying to be celebrities and instead put the children first. From what I’ve read racism is not in the course outline in this case. And if it were there is a way to teach racism without making students feel defensive or making them combative. We need to keep all students, black, white, male and female in class so they get a decent education, and teachers like the one mentioned here are doing her students a serious disservice.
Ewa Kucharska • Dec 3, 2013 at 2:57 pm
hopefully one day Shannon Gibney will go with her racism too far and will lose her job.
Mary Francis Galloway • Dec 2, 2013 at 8:42 pm
it is too bad students in college have to act like they did as kids in high school. I hope this doesn’t stop Prof Gibney from teaching structure racism. What Carol Logie wrote I totally agree with. I work at a Fortune 500 company that is run and managed by 80% white men. I see people of color and women passed over year after year for promotion, and others are blind to seeing it or acknowledging it. I wish my co-workers had a class in structure racism and maybe they would see what I see every day. I see coworkers having to be 2x as good, or work 2x has hard to get kudos for their work. It is too bad that these males students didn’t try to see what they would learn from her class instead of getting uncomfortable and crying to mama.
Minneapolis Community and Technical College • Nov 25, 2013 at 6:12 pm
Thank you all for your truly thoughtful input and conversations following this story. MCTC has composed a response which can be read at http://www.minneapolis.edu/response.
Carol Logie • Nov 11, 2013 at 10:27 am
Dr. Harris seems to be saying that discrimination is just a collection of individual experiences that have little connection to the broader oppression of people based on their cultural characteristics. I have to be honest: if this is our new director of diversity, I don’t see the ball moving very far on this. I personally witnessed a teacher (white male) in one of my classes berate a Native American fellow student who was having trouble with a complicated lesson by saying “It’s right there in plain english.” I was shocked and I should have said something. But instructors have all the power, it’s hard to speak up.
I’m an older student at MCTC, and my age is remarked upon in class by instructors more than I would like. But I don’t file a grievance because my feelings are hurt. I sometimes have a hard time feeling like I fit in, and I’m on the extremely privileged end of the scale. I can only imagine what students and faculty of color experience here.
A Mass Communication class can and should touch on racism and white privilege. I would expect nothing less at the college level, and if young white men are feeling uncomfortable, then maybe they are getting the point (finally). It’s all around us. We live in an age where Home Depot thinks it’s ok to post a racist photo on Twitter (look it up). Extremely disappointed in Bollman’s reprimand of a faculty member for sticking to what should be a core principle in any college level class: to stretch understanding, and yes, make people think about their place in this society. Who benefits, and who does not?
Kywul • Nov 7, 2013 at 2:43 pm
“The sign of a truly totalitarian culture is that important truths simply lack cognitive meaning and are interpretable only at the level of “Fuck You”, so they can then elicit a perfectly predictable torrent of abuse in response. We’ve long ago reached that level.” — Noam Chomsky
Jea • Nov 7, 2013 at 1:50 pm
This is totally unacceptable that MCTC would reprimand a professor for teaching about racism! Students of color feel isolated most of the time due to structural racism. This situation gives light to the racial climate of this academic institution. Race matters and we need to teach about this.
CSB • Nov 7, 2013 at 9:34 am
This is just bad journalism, folks.
Any kernel of truth in Gibney’s words is negated by how completely one-sided this is.