Santa Clara University is on a crash course into the national spotlight this week as a viral tweetstorm laid bare pent-up frustration over on-campus racism and policing.
The private university has now launched an investigation into Black Assistant Professor Danielle Fuentes Morgan’s 22-part social media thread that accuses a campus security guard of racially profiling and harassing her family over the weekend.
Santa Clara University security just harassed me and my brother and forced me (a faculty member) to show my campus ID to prove I live in the house WHERE I OPENED THE DOOR. A thread. (1/n)
— Danielle Fuentes Morgan (@mos_daf) August 22, 2020
Her story has since been retweeted nearly 43,000 times while racking up 118,000 likes.
SCU President Kevin O’Brien promised an independent inquiry by Los Angeles–based Public Interest Investigations Inc., a new civilian police auditor on campus, and said that the security guards involved were on administrative leave.
“I offer my unflagging determination to lead Santa Clara to be a transformatively better community, dedicated to the struggle against racism,” he said. “Only then can we realize the beloved community to which we all aspire.”
The ordeal unfolded when Fuentes Morgan’s brother, who came for a visit in her university-owned home, took a work call outside. Before long, Fuentes Morgan says, campus security told him to “move along.”
“He’s been Black his whole life, so he said OK,” she tweeted. “They followed him.”
Four security cars showed up at Fuentes Morgan’s house with her apologetic brother and a demand to see her faculty ID to prove she lived in the home she’d just walked out of.
“I am concerned now to go back to campus AND to live in this house,” Fuentes Morgan tweeted in summation. “I am so angry. Academia proves over and over that it doesn’t love me. I don’t think I love it back anymore.”
What this is about is best explained at the end of the article not at the beginning. This is about the culture of academic life. The root cause is that professors at San Jose State using KKK dragons on their letterhead (1982], and people associated with the colleges both SCU and SJSU holding tasteless social gatherings fostering racism
More on that later, lots of treasure in revealing that trash.
> SCU President Kevin O’Brien promised an independent inquiry by Los Angeles–based Public Interest Investigations Inc., a new civilian police auditor on campus, and said that the security guards involved were on administrative leave.
Ridiculous and absurd.
The university cannot delegate it’s ethics and morality to some third party “ethics and morality” investigator.
SCU is a Catholic university.
Why are Catholics delegating judgements about THEIR ethics and morality to some bozos in Los Angeles?
Maybe they could ask the Pope. The Pope might have an opinion.
SCU needs Danielle Fuentes Morgan far more than Danielle Fuentes Morgan needs SCU.
Bubble gets a star. SCU needs a 3rd party investigation for what purpose?
Why is the investigation limited to just security guards?
I’m not surprised an expensive private, Jesuit University, racially profiled someone. I’m sad to say it – but unfortunately it’s just the truth. I am sorry that Danielle had to go through this, and I hope it leads to change at SCU.
I personally don’t think the security guards should automatically be fired – but there must be some course of action.
There are plenty of examples of people affiliated with scu engaged in racist behavior.
One example. Soon
> There are plenty of examples of people affiliated with scu engaged in racist behavior.
Looking forward to your expose.
But, while we are all waiting expectantly, could you please explain: who ISN’T “engaged in racist behavior”?
Everyone has a race. Or, can you name someone who DOESN’T have a race?
And, if EVERYONE has a race, isn’t everyone capable of engaging in “racist behavior”?
I’m beginning to lose the thread here. Remind me, why are we talking about who does and who doesn’t engage in racist behavior? Who decides? What are we trying to prove?
Everyone has a race but not everyone displays oppressive behaviors and able to hurt or limit certain groups of people. Want to guess which race has been able to systemically oppress in America? I’m going to help you by providing a definition.
When racist became common parlance, rapidly replacing prejudiced starting around 1970, it was understood mainly in its dictionary-style definition: “Prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one’s own race is superior.” What sat in the memory is “It’s wrong to think people are inferior because of something like their skin color, or to be mean to them because of that.”
Blackface is not something that should be condoned
Ms Morgan
You may have gotten many things right, but you definitely have gotten one thing right.
Academia does not love, nor do progressive intellectuals. You see they know much of this intersectionality is hogwas, but they use Associate Professors of Color to go out and make ridiculous statements like “#cancelwhitepeople or #dismantlethenuclearfamily as a way to signal their virtue and have people look past their multibillion endowments, anti-meritocractic legacy policies, and $50000 tuitions.
Whatever they are paying you to teach people how singularly evil and contemptible white people are is paid back tenfold for the cover you give them. They do need you more than you need them.
I am a proud graduate of SCU and the proud father of a SCU graduate. It hurt me to the core to read about this incident. It plunged me into dark memories of my immigrant grandfather and my immigrant father having to encounter discriminatory situations in our great country, both of whom always said to me, “mijo, get an education so things can be different for you.”
I have faith that SCU President O’Brien will properly review this situation and will take decisive action.
> Want to guess which race has been able to systemically oppress in America?
No. I don’t want to guess. What if I guess wrong and trigger a woke snowflake or flunk out of SCU?
Why don’t you just say what you mean?
Mr..Herrera, as a community leader would you support a Full Review by the President of all SCU staff, faculty, and contracted consultants representing SCU before local and state government agencies with respect of past racist activities?
> Mr..Herrera, as a community leader would you support a Full Review by the President of all SCU staff, faculty, and contracted consultants representing SCU before local and state government agencies with respect of past racist activities?
According the the very trendy “Critical Race Theory” now sweeping through colleges and universities everywhere (probably even SCU), EVERY human interaction has a racial dimension.
So, any “Full Review” is probably pointless because CRT already declares that there have been past racist activities. It’s impossible for there NOT to have been.
I am mindful of the past, and have encountered my share (or more) of “past racist activities.” But I am focused on today, and tomorrow. Today and tomorrow we can change by taking action now. We are in this together.
I agree with you, today and tomorrow are more important, but these security officers did not become racist overnight. They acted in that manner because they knew they could. If a university has representatives who.are racist, their staff gets the message it is ok.
Promise, how does that saying go “You don’t have to teach your children to be racists; society will do it for you”? SCU could be more racist than any other institution, but it is not necessary for SCU to be more racist than others in order for it to host racist incidents.
Yes, we have today to change society, but that would involve examining the benefits a racial caste system offers some at the expense/exploitation of many others.
SCU has its culpability, and let’s hope it uses this moment make meaningful change, such as committing to recruit and retain more Black and Indigenous students, faculty, and staff, so Black Person on Campus is normalized, not a red flag for imagined criminal behavior.
Scu reps should not parade in blackface anytime anywhere for any reason. It lampoons black people for being black.
A fiery, but mostly peaceful blog posting:
> “I am so angry. Academia proves over and over that it doesn’t love me. I don’t think I love it back anymore.”
I feel the same way. Especially about Stanford University’s Fake Law School.
But, I don’t think SCU loves me very much either.
> Scu reps should not parade in blackface anytime anywhere for any reason. It lampoons black people for being black.
I think this issue has been settled.
It’s OK to parade in blackface.
It’s OK for Jesse Jackson.
It’s OK for Al Sharpton.
It’s OK for Democrat Virginia governors. It’s OK for Canadian Prime Ministers.
It’s OK for SCU reps.
It’s OK.
Jesse Jackson is not offended. That’s all that matters.
> so Black Person on Campus is normalized, not a red flag for imagined criminal behavior.
Black Lives Matter, the NAACP, the Southern Poverty Law Center, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Maxine Waters and etc. are NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER EVER . . .
going to allow a “Black Person on Campus” to be “normalized”.
That would mean the end of the “race hustling industry”.
NEVER GOING TO HAPPEN.
SJOUTSIDETHEBUBBLE, I was agreeing with you about half way your post until you left out at least three more “NEVER, NEVER, NEVERs”
First of all, if SCU was actually racist, why do they have ANY Black professors working there?
Secondly, and more importantly, this was not a case of so-called “racial profiling”. This was a case of “community policing”, the kind people supposedly want. The security officer obviously knew his beat. He recognized an unfamiliar (just visiting) person, a male adult (race irrelevant) standing in front of a house on campus, a house he knew was occupied by a female professor or other female school employee. The adult male was talking on the phone.Sounds innocuous but it is a very common tactic for purse snatchers to pretend to be talking on the phone especially on a front porch or yard, (it’s less alarming looking than simply standing around doing nothing), then wait until a female passes by, then run up from behind, grab the purse and run off. It was proper for the security officer to approach and check into the situation.It would have been lazy and possibly dereliction of duty not to do so. It’s difficult to explain to someone who hasn’t seen how some purse snatchers operate. Behavior, not race, and familiarity with the area, and situational context, not race, is what drove this contact.
It’s also not unusual for a security officer to ask someone for ID. The person might be a witness or just a simple bystander and I could provide probably half a page of valid, necessary and legal reasons that a security officer might ask someone for their name or ID, none of these would have anything to do with someone having to “prove they lived there”, but I doubt professor Morgan would accept any explanation; Her mind is obviously already made up.She’s a professor after all, and that makes her smarter than any racist cop (the latter two words obviously inseparable in her mind)
The only racist in this situation is professor Morgan. I can all but guarantee that she would not have complained if the security officer was “of color” and not white. She’s the bigot, but she’s insulated from that accusation by political correctness. She knows it, and more than that, she knows she can capitalize on it.
Before issuing a ruling from the bench the judge told the story of being stopped by a policeman at three in the morning as he was out walking his neighborhood during another bout of insomnia. “Imagine,” he said indignantly, “stopped and questioned in my own neighborhood!” The defense attorney nodded enthusiastically, anticipating a favorable outcome to her race-based, poison fruit motion, until the judge’s tone changed while wondering aloud about the officer’s motivations. Rather than an insulting and unnecessary exercise of his police authority, as he’d first suspected, the judge told of coming to the realization that the officer had acted in the best interests of him and his neighbors, all of whom desire safety and security as they sleep in their beds. He closed his reminiscence by saying how appreciative he was for the officer’s personal courage and attention to duty.
By this time the defense attorney’s nodding head had stilled and buried itself into her slumping shoulders. She knew what was coming and braced herself, but perhaps insufficiently, for the judge directed at her a booming, court-shaking reprimand: “Not only was your client lurking behind a business where he looked out of place and did not belong, but he HAD A GUN! AND IT WAS LOADED!”
Needless to say, the motion to suppress the search and seizure was overruled for its lack of substance, just as should Ms. Morgan’s prickly and politically-inspired allegation.
I saw nothing in the article to justify the issue of black face being inserted into the comments.
I saw nothing in the article about the skin color of the security guards. How can someone educated enough to be a university professor believe that the fact that she was coming out of the house proves it was her house?
The security officers did their job and asked for ID. So, is the overwrought professor claiming that asking a black person for ID is inherently racist? Her brother didn’t pull the race card. It seems he’s the rational one in the family.
JMO, your rational thoughts are outrageous! The professor’s brother probably cooperated, explained what he was doing and was then let alone to go about his business. Hopefully the officers explained the situation sufficiently that he understood it was not a “racial” stop, and it sounds, since he was the one who was stopped and not the one who complained, that such was the case and he then also applied some common sense to the situation.
The professor saw a reason to be offended and seized it. It’s odd that a complainant can be more offended than the supposed victim of the supposed offense, but here we are. However, this does give the professor something novel to talk about and grants her a sort of celebrity status at all the university soirees and academic conferences attended by other Ivory Tower intellectuals, those who can’t change a tire but look down on the tow driver while he is doing it