You may have even pieced together, due our interest in Macalester College Athletics, that some of us attended that particular school. Some of us even earned a degree!
So it pains me to say to the underclassmen of my alma mater, You Are Taking Irony Way Too Far.
A particular costume choice by two students caught the attention of Paul Maitland-McKinley ’09, president of the student organization Black Liberation Affairs Committee (BLAC). Maitland-McKinley learned of the party last Friday, Jan. 26, from an anonymous student who was present at the party. The costume involved one student dressing as a Ku Klux Klan member, with a second student wearing face paint to appear dark skinned. The costume also included a simulated noose, one end in the hand of the Klan-costumed member, the other end around the student with the blackface’s neck.
2 comments:
It is January in MN, and had any of us thought of it, we probably would have done it.
I think this is better described as satire.
Irony is strictly a rhetorical form wherein the meaning of one's statement is the absolute opposite of the literal statement.
For example: "Wearing black face was a liberal arts student attempt to understand the oppressed peoples he was learning about in his American Voices class."
Cloaking obscenity, racism etc in irony gets tricky because it is a subtle differentiation. Satire is ridicule of bullshit.
I think the students were trying to be clever, satirizing racist tropes. Ironic racism is too easy. You fucking cheap Scotsmen.
Post a Comment