Tension at Smith College

I don't know if anyone saw this on the news in Springfield, but there was an incident on Friday night of someone showing up to a party on campus wearing blackface as part of her costume. The party was themed "celebrity rehab" and she and her boyfriend went as "Bobby and Whitney" with brown paint on their skin to make them look black. They did not know the historical context of blackface and did not mean anything malicious by it, but this caused a lot of tension at the party and has been a huge ordeal the past few days. There have been lots of discussions online on the daily jolt and on facebook (for those of you who know what both of those are) and some has been very inappropriate on both sides while some has been very educational and constructive. There was also a protest yesterday morning where the Black Students Alliance went into an emergency faculty meeting to make sure they were going to do something about this incident. Overall, campus has been a very intense environment the past few days and a little overwhelming. I also just did a presentation on Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech in class today, so I was researching the civil rights movement all weekend on top of all this. So basically I have been overwhelmed with racism issues and activism, which I feel passionately about anyway, but I am now looking forward to Thanksgiving break, where I can get away from it all for a few days.