Students at a Georgia university burned copies of a book on racism and white privilege by Latina author Jennine Capó Crucet following a lecture by the writer at the school.
Crucet, author of the new essay collection My Time Among the Whites: Notes from an Unfinished Education, spoke at Georgia Southern University in Statesboro on Wednesday in a lecture that was followed by a contentious QA session.
“I noticed that you made a lot of generalizations about the majority of white people being privileged,” one audience member asked Crucet, according to the university’s student newspaper, the George-Anne. “What makes you believe that it’s okay to come to a college campus, like this, when we are supposed to be promoting diversity on this campus, which is what we’re taught. I don’t understand what the purpose of this was.”
Crucet responded: “I came here because I was invited and I talked about white privilege because it’s a real thing that you are actually benefiting from right now in even asking this question.”
Afterwards, a university student posted a video on Twitter that showed several young white people laughing as they burned Crucet’s book on a grill.
so after our FYE book’s author came to my school to talk about it... these people decide to burn her book because “it’s bad and that race is bad to talk about”. white people need to realize that they are the problem and that their privilege is toxic. author is a woman of color. pic.twitter.com/HiX4lGT7Ci
— elaina⭐️ (@elainaaan) October 10, 2019
Crucet said on Twitter that she also met some “very amazing, brilliant students” at the lecture, saying she was “happy to know them and also legit worried for their safety.”
She added that another planned appearance at the school had been called off.
“Today’s event was canceled because the administration said they could not guarantee my safety or the safety of its students on campus because of open carry laws,” she wrote.
Michael Schaub is an Austin, Texas-based journalist and regular contributor to NPR.
