#CHILD IN HER LAP AND CUTLASS IN HER HAND

I have a Yahoo email. It's the only email I've ever had. It mostly works and I get all my crap news when I chk. my email. This is a blessing and a curse. Mostly it's about the latest "famous" lion being killed in Africa and kids with no limbs "doing amazing things!" I know when the "most famous lion" dies there's always another in the wings and kids with or without limbs will always surprise you, but I'm still a sucker for the Yahoo feed. Today was a doozy. Binghamton University is offering incoming RA (resident alien?) training on how to deal with unruly, ill informed, aggressive, self-righteous "white people" in the dorm environment. This is the most straight forward, call a cracker a cracker, truth in advertisement approach to higher education I've ever seen or heard of. In fact the tag line began: Not Onion-#stopwhitepeople2k16.
 
   Misguided and hilariously inappropriate, it's like refusing to serve watermelon to your black friends, on a hot summer day, for fear of being somehow misread. I wholehearted agree with the sentiment of this introductory course offered to those in charge, by those in charge. White people should've been stopped eons ago, but that course was never available. The fact that BU put this in print, shows on the one hand extreme courage, and on the other complete, bone-headed ignorance. I love it! This is what you look for, and so rarely receive, from academia. The backlash will be extreme and all too predictable. "What if they said #stopblackpeople"?" they scream. Dude, that class has been popular since 1636- the year Harvard was founded. It's an easy B.
   In my humble opinion "White" connotes so much evil, misery, thievery, and oppression, it should be actively "stopped" at every corner. You can't help your color. But you can recognize the burden that goes along with the hue. Whites, in general, and American whites in particular, have such a false sense of their kin's role in oppression that we find ourselves in a world where we see such a hashtag.
We conveniently forget history, or make up our own. Here's an excerpt from a little of my personal history: "The negro sprang upon and seized her, when she screamed and a large dog she had rushed in at the door and seizing the negro by the throat, there was a severe struggle between them. She then fastened the door and taking my father, then an infant, in her arms, went to the second floor, drew up the ladder, and with child in her lap and cutlass in her hand, kept watch all night at the window"- an account of what was done and suffered by the women of our American Revolution"- Rev. Charles Rockwell THE CATSKILLS AND THE REGION AROUND 1867 Chapt. 7 The Osterhout Narrative.