I'll withhold my own personal opinion on this, and point out that this wasn't just something that happened in a vacuum. http://thedmonline.com/greek-life-retreat-ends-abruptly-bias-concerns/
Not really related because it's a different school. Bottom line, someone threw a banana peel into a tree, and the black population panics.
Okay, maybe if there was a watermelon in a tree panic would be justified - if that fell out it could injure somebody. DUDE! What if one of those 1,000 pound contest winning pumpkins fell out of a tree? That would crush a brother!
Ok, I am going to explain this because the problem is overlooked and there is a bad thing being done which may not actually be malicious. This might be long because I am going to try to explain it for people who do not get it, and it is not your fault you don't get why this blew up because the article misses it also. If you read through the events you see that the people at this conference were brought into a meeting that was supposed to be about getting honest racial feelings out into the open so they can be confronted and addressed. This is where they problem happened. I know that sort of thing sounds innocent, but when you bring the black students in and then ask everyone to share the racial things they have heard it heaps all of the insults onto the black people again. The intent may not be to do so, but when you hear the insults even if they are just being relayed you get insulted. So basically the black kids were brought into a meeting where they spent the whole thing hearing all the horrible things people say about them, and then when they left they were really sensitive because they were hurt. So even if the banana peel was just there because kids doing random things, which may actually be the case, the black students were already hammered by insults and then they saw this. It may seem like a thing that will help to allow honest communication but you have to recognize we are not without emotions and just hearing the insults makes us angry so you cannot put black students into the position to hear that crap. If you have to address the misconceptions or racial attitudes of white people you do not let them unload it onto a black person. You hear it in private and correct them away from the people who may feel bad due to the words. You certainly do not send unprepared kids into such a situation and expect them to not be effected by the event. In this case the banana peel may be as simple as someone just putting it in a tree because that was just a place to put it. However they made the kids hyper sensitive before hand and that is why there was a reaction that people might legitimately think is over the top. I am not saying anything is right or wrong, but rather you are going to cause these feelings when you do that so you have to be aware of that reality.
The banana thing is stupid but it is not reactionary. A reactionary is someone who wants to move backwards to a previous social order. Everyone else (from conservative to centrist/moderate to liberal to far left) all want to move forward with reforms and just disagee about the pace and extent of reforms. Reactionaries want to roll the clock back to a previous social order so the term does not fit in this case.
