Here's Just Some Of The Racism That's Directed At Harvard Students Without Kyle Kashuv's Help

Since apparently some of you all don't know what it's like to Harvard while black.

Kyle Kashuv (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

Today’s made-up example of white victimhood involves Kyle Kashuv, a Parkland shooting survivor who had his offer to Harvard University rescinded after his racist and anti-Semitic comments went public. According to white people on the right, who like nothing more than to feel that their inability to own other humans and talk to them however they wish is the greatest tragedy of our time, Kashuv is being unfairly persecuted for racist comments he made when he was “just a kid.” Some might say he’s merely being held accountable for his racist comments, and that if more people had held him accountable earlier in his life he might be going to Harvard in the fall, but that’s largely a conversation for white parents as they decide whether or not to encourage the use of racial slurs in their households.

For black people, the conversation is different. I know that the David Brooks’s of the world will be SHOCKED to hear this, but the decision on whether or not to admit Kashuv is less about the privilege and sympathy every white person thinks they’re owed, and more about the respect and dignity black students at Harvard certainly deserve.

I went to Harvard while black. Twice. And let me tell you, Harvard admits more than enough racist white people to fulfill my lifetime quotient of “learning to deal with racist assholes.” Racism is, comparatively speaking, easy to deal with when it comes from a toothless yokel who thinks you’re dumb even though his Confederate Flag backpack is empty because he only reads books with pictures in them. Harvard taught me how to deal with racism when it comes wearing a suit and driving an Audi and speaking in the erudite language of “mismatch theory” and “originalism.”

For black students, Harvard is a crash course in racism as practiced by the intellectual elites, and the university is able to let more than enough of those people in, without having to scrape the bottom of the barrel and admit students who don’t even have the good sense and decorum to avoid repeating the N-word 11 times in a shared Google doc. If I wanted more of that kind of low-hanging racism, I would have gone to the University of Chicago.

But, it occurs to me, that most (white) people don’t even know the casual, background racism experienced by nonwhite Harvard students on the reg. By way of just one small example, two black Harvard Law School students sent me some racist emails they received, back in April. The emails were sent to their student email accounts, provided by the school. The students believe the emails were sent by one of their section-mates. In light of the Kashuv controversy, they seem relevant now, given that HLS arguably had no “prior warning” about this asshole like they have with Kashuv.

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Now, full disclosure, when I received these screenshots back in April, I didn’t write about them. Part of that was because the Mueller report dropped a few days after I got them and I was distracted. But part of it was because… this kind of crap happens SO OFTEN to damn near everybody black that it’s not really “news.” The COST of going to school while black is that you are going to get something like this. There’s always some racist white classmate who’s going to send you an email or a text or make a comment or generally regard you like you are a subhuman entity who doesn’t deserve to sit in class with him.

Clarence Thomas’s solution to this is to not let black people in school. He didn’t have the strength to deal with this without it corrupting his soul. My solution, and the solution of the vast majority of black students, is just to suffer and deal with these fools.

The students who received these attacks are two black people, and my impression is that they are strong enough to not let this anonymous jerkface knock them off their paths. But I want you to know just how much time black people have to WASTE trying to get some simple answers about whether their educators are going to actually do anything about the racism they face. From one of the students:

We’ve approached the Dean of Students and the Harvard Police several times over the last three months about what how to handle the situation but have been mostly ignored. At this point, we’re feeling nervous for our safety and disillusioned with a learning environment that is doing nothing to help.

We feel like the school is trying to save face and will not respond without outside (media) pressure – my first thought was of you and Above the Law.

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They went to a dean, they went to the police, they went to the media. That’s time they didn’t spend studying or decompressing with friends. All in pursuit of getting somebody to care that they’re being accosted over email by a random white classmate.

It is in THAT context that some of you conservative white people are arguing that Kyle Kashuv should be admitted despite his racist rants. You want to unleash him into that community, to potentially attack these people, when y’all know full well that if he does it again you’ll be NOWHERE TO BE FOUND to provide help and support to the people who have to deal with his racist insults.

Everybody wants to talk about how rescinding admission to Kyle Kashuv affects Kyle Kashuv. Nobody is talking about how admitting such a person affects all the nonwhite people at Harvard University.

And that’s because the white conservatives defending Kashuv do not CARE how he might affect the nonwhite students at Harvard University. The safety and mental hygiene of nonwhite students, at Harvard or anywhere else, is never a concern for these people. Their empathy for “kids” doesn’t penetrate past the color of a person’s skin.

If you want to know if Kyle Kasuv should go to Harvard, maybe you should talk to somebody who will have to bear the brunt of his racism. Black Harvard students have more experience dealing with the Kyle Kashuvs of the world than you do.

Parkland activist says Harvard revoked his offer of admission [Washington Post]


Elie Mystal is the Executive Editor of Above the Law and a contributor at The Nation. He can be reached @ElieNYC on Twitter, or at elie@abovethelaw.com. He will resist.