Is this where we pretend that there&#x27;s no history of racial grievances at Yale (or Mizzou), and that history started afresh the minute before this confrontation?  An honest accounting of what happened starts with the fact that there is a long history that had people simmering.  Free speech is a wonderful principle, but it conflicts with making students, particularly minority students, not feel alienated.<p>This started when someone at Yale sent a relatively anodyne email suggesting (but not ordering!) students be reasonably racially conscious in their costume choices (ie no blackface) [0], and someone who is &quot;charged with setting the &#x27;intellectual, social, and ethical tone of the College&#x27;&quot; [1] decided to salt the wound and mocked the idea that students may be legitimately offended by cultural appropriation [2].<p>As mostly male white people, it&#x27;s easy to defend free speech when it isn&#x27;t your people or culture being treated as a costume.<p>If you&#x27;re curious about Yale, imagine, for starters, how living in, say, Calhoun hall would feel if you&#x27;re black [3].<p><pre><code>   Calhoun College, one of the 12 residential colleges at the heart of the 
   university’s undergraduate life. It is named for John C. Calhoun, a Yale 
   valedictorian-turned-politician from South Carolina and one of the 19th 
   century’s foremost white supremacists, who promoted slavery as &quot;a positive 
   good.&quot;

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[1] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;pastebin.com&#x2F;TLGSdaTg" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;pastebin.com&#x2F;TLGSdaTg</a><p>[1] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;silliman.yalecollege.yale.edu&#x2F;people&#x2F;masters-office" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;silliman.yalecollege.yale.edu&#x2F;people&#x2F;masters-office</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.thefire.org&#x2F;email-from-erika-christakis-dressing-yourselves-email-to-silliman-college-yale-students-on-halloween-costumes&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.thefire.org&#x2F;email-from-erika-christakis-dressing...</a><p>[3] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;2015&#x2F;09&#x2F;12&#x2F;nyregion&#x2F;yale-in-debate-over-calhoun-college-grapples-with-ties-to-slavery.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;2015&#x2F;09&#x2F;12&#x2F;nyregion&#x2F;yale-in-debate-ov...</a>