black…MYstory

At Tarleton State University in Texas, a group of students decided that the best thing to do on Martin Luther King Day was to throw a party in which attendees were encouraged to dress in stereotypical garb attributed to black people. One student, as you see on the right, decided to come as Aunt Jemima.

This was discovered by a Tarleton student, who happens to head the school’s NAACP chapter, while browsing Facebook.com. The student, Donald Ray Elder, found this on a page in a folder marked ‘MLK’.

This is an excerpt of the piece at Thesmokinggun.com:

When he discovered the images, Donald Ray Elder told TSG, he sent an e-mail to Tarleton student Jeremy Pelz, on whose Facebook page the photos were placed in a folder titled “MLK.” In a reply e-mail, Pelz (seen in the picture at right) told Elder that he would rename the folder in which the photos were placed “so it does not bring any disrespect to Mr. King.” Pelz noted that the party was started a few years earlier “because one of best friends is black or African American, whichever you deem politically correct, to be his day not to dishonor him.” He added, “So I do apologize if you felt any disrespect because none was intended.” School officials have launched an investigation into the party and the university’s president, Dennis P. McCabe, has denounced the photos as despicable. In a subsequent post, Pelz–who has yanked the party photos from his Facebook page–stated that the party was not meant to be “racist or discriminating.”

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