Three White Students Charged With Hate Crimes at San Jose State University
Filed in Campus Racial Incidents on November 22, 2013
Three White students at San Jose State University in California were charged with hate crime violations for actions that they allegedly directed at their Black roommate. The students lived in a pod-like arrangement where they had their own room and a common living area. The White students are accused of barricading the Black student in his room, displaying a Confederate flag, writing the word “nigger” on a white board in a common area, and attaching a metal bicycle lock around his neck.
The Black student claims that his roommates called him “Three-fifths,” referring to the terminology in the original U.S. Constitution that designated slaves as three-fifths of a person in the count to apportion congressional seats. When the Black student objected to this name calling, he alleges that his roommates then called him “Fraction.”
I wrote a letter to the college president and shared that this is a hate crime! It was my understanding the staff reassigned the young men to a new dorm. That was later changed to them being asked to leave the school. Hate is present in this country.