Dear Editor,
As I read the article regarding students’ use of blackface at a fraternity party, my opinion whipsawed back and forth. At first I thought it was horrible, then I thought if they were dressed as famous rappers it’s halfway OK, then I thought that, no, it’s just inappropriate. But no more inappropriate than something I saw a few months ago.
I was approaching the cafeteria in the Culp Center when a student wearing a red plaid shirt waved to me. I noticed a mounted deer head at his feet. He and his friends looked as if they’d raided my younger brother’s closet.
When I entered the cafeteria, somewhere between 30 percent and 40 percent of the students were dressed, well, Jed Clampett-style. Torn clothes wrapped with duct tape, worn-out boots, gloves without fingers and so on. It was, I learned, “Redneck Day.” I couldn’t believe a college in Tennessee was doing such a thing; it was a real Twilight Zone moment.
Now, I’ve lived in poor, white rural trailer parks and I’ve lived in 95 percent black, urban areas, so I don’t see much difference between blackface and Redneck Day. Both have poverty, undereducation and lack of real power in common.
If the university is going to criticize a frat and require sensitivity training for blackface, then the university should force itself to undergo administration-wide sensitivity training for Redneck Day. Finding one an insult to cultural heritage and the other harmless fun seems like a case of political-correctness schizophrenia.
-Bob Dietz

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