Tuesday, July 01, 2008

"Teacher Claims Racism, Discrimination At St. Philip's"

This is odd.

From KSAT-12:

SAN ANTONIO -- An instructor at St. Philip's College is making claims of racism and discrimination after he said he was called offensive names and campus administrators have failed to act.

Rayford Richardson said when he was approached to teach one of the automotive classes at the college, he was happy to accept since he runs his own auto repair business and restores old vehicles as a hobby.

Richardson said the racist remarks from fellow instructors came quickly and often, including a remark made to him by another instructor in front of Richardson's students.

"I've had one of the directors of the Diesel department say I will never fit in because of the "good old boys" system at the main campus," he said.


This is strange because the man is black, St. Philip's College is a historically black college, and the campus is on the East Side of San Antonio, which is known for its African-American heritage.

I think there's a lot more to this story.

3 comments:

Kels said...

Odd. Well, I can believe that the campus director or president of the colleges wouldn't do anything. I remember when I was at UTSA there was a professor known to discriminate against Christians. In fact, my friend unknowingly signed up for a course with her and the professor wrote on the chalk board in HUGE letters "F*** GOD" and then turned around and announced to the class that if you had a problem with her views you should drop the course. My friend promptly reported the incident along with several other students and that professor was still there the next semester with the same course! SO... I guess if you have tenure they don't touch you... but I would be interested to delve into the details of the St. Philip's incident a little more as it could very much be more than just pure racism.

Albatross said...

Yeah, I think there is more to this, and the racism, if it exists here, is just a convenient way to draw attention to another problem. Should be interesting to see if it plays out.

Anonymous said...

Tenure doesn't really matter. Tenure may have meant something at some historical point in academia. Professors who speak up can be pushed out; with a little more effort but it can and has been done. Other instructors without tenure can get away with so much because of who they know.
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