Scott Jaschik: (h/t Say Uncle for title)
A quick exchange on a university’s faculty discussion board has led experts in Appalachian studies to consider again whether bias in academe (and society) is too accepted when it is about the people of the region they study.
On the faculty discussion board, a staff member posted a complaint about a student walking around barefoot in a building. A response is what set off the larger discussion:
One professor wrote: “My approach would be to assure this student that going barefoot is not against the rules because the assumption is that by the time they reach college, students are expected to understand why wearing shoes is expected on campus. If s/he disrespects his or her peers and the college community enough to (un)dress like a hillbilly here, I would say, then s/he should be prepared to be dismissed as one, in whatever pursuits s/he favors, in the preference of someone more attuned to proper decorum and respectful behavior.”
A professor who was troubled by that response forwarded the comment to the Appalachian studies email list with the question: “Colleagues, if you read the following on your institutional discussion board in reference to a complaint about a barefoot student, how would you respond to the professor?” The responses came quickly. Many were furious that a faculty member would feel free to to talk about “hillbilly” behavior in this way.
One suggested response was: “Spit on their car.”
But many other responses noted that such comments are common at various campuses, and that faculty members who would carefully consider whether their comments might offend members of many groups do not feel the same need to be sensitive to those from poor, largely white, rural communities in Appalachia. People from Appalachia wrote of being asked at colleges and universities such things as when they started to wear shoes.
The exchange reached a larger audience when it was reprinted on Academe, the blog of the American Association of University Professors.
Of course, if the students had only been wearing shoes and were using American flags as torches, they would be perfectly acceptable as a free thinkers practicing their 1st Amendment rights.
Every Progressive academic, like Bill Ayers – confessed terrorist, knows that wearing shoes is essential when stomping the American flag into the dirt so they don’t catch Patriotism or American Exceptionalism from it.
So, what if they had been wearing flip-flops or sandals? Would that have been acceptable? How about Birkenstocks?
Obviously, they were white, or else it would have been improper to have even commented (and, as everyone knows, poor white people don’t deserve the opportunity to start from scratch and improve their lot in life).
When reading about someone walking about a college campus shoeless, I did not think first of a hillbilly, reneck or cracker; I thought “hippie”, which was what my college experience presented me (70’s).
MAYBE, when the student apply for that UNIVERSITY,
he was told to dress as he see fit,
HE WAS NOT GIVEN THE RULES OF THE PLACE PROPERLY,
by his upbringing, bare foot is not bad,
just politely tell him he should wear shoes to enter THIS PLACE,
DON’T MAKE A BIG SHIT ABOUT IT,
THE TEACHER REMIND ME OF HARRY REID, FOR SOME REASON,
I admire the high knowledge on herbs and plant , and tree ecetera,
which the APPALACHIANS have been given by their ancestors,
they can put any UNIVERSITY to shame with that gift,