Black students at the University of South Carolina received a warm welcome on the first day of classes when students discovered racist signs posted on a campus bulletin board.
According to the Post and Courier, senior journalism student Leland Williams Jr. said that a group of minority students found out about the signs around 9 a.m. via group text and he posted an image on his Instagram account before they were removed from the bulletin board. The signs were taped over a display of prominent black figures from South Carolina outside the university’s African American Studies office and referred to Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump.
“All this bullshit about a ‘King’ when you [unclear] simpletons can’t even pick a candidate properly,” one of the signs reads. “YOU STUPID MONKEYS handed Trump the White House the minute you handed Hillary the nomination!”
The other sign seems to take issue with black voters voting for Clinton instead of Sanders: “We’ve endured a year of Blumpf instead of enjoying one of Bernie because your DUMB BLACK ASSES just pull the lever for whomever the party machine says to.”
The university administration issued a statement saying—wait, before I read it, let me use The Root’s WhiteTalk 3000 proprietary software to generate a statement and see how close it will come to the university’s press release. Here’s what we came up with:
“The [name of institution] in no way endorses the hateful messages found in [location]. We are conducting a thorough investigation and will get to the bottom of this. We believe in inclusivity and respect for all our [employees/students/members].”
OK, let’s see how close we came to the actual statement from the University of South Carolina:
This morning, flyers bearing racist language were discovered in several buildings on campus. This is unacceptable and inconsistent with our institutional values. At UofSC, we strive to create a campus built on the tenets of the Carolinian Creed, inclusivity and respect for all. These racist messages run contrary to who we are as Gamecocks and have no place at Carolina. University officials are continuing to investigate the matter.
Campus police officers later said that eyewitnesses saw a male in his mid-40s in the area at the time the flyers were discovered. The University of South Carolina Police Department confirmed that video surveillance reflects the same description.
According to the WhiteTalk 3000 analysis of the police statement, this means that the person they are looking for is more than likely white because “male” means white and “mid-40s” describes a white male between the ages of 23 and 48. Not to mention that the person seems to be a fan of Bernie Sanders—so unless it was Killer Mike, the person of interest is probably a Caucasian.
Had it been a black man, our computer modeling shows that law enforcement officers would have explicitly used the word “black,” “African-American” or the more generally accepted term, “suspect.” Because of the use of the phrase “stupid monkeys,” the WhiteTalk algorithm suggests that investigators begin their search at the nearest H&M.
Hey, that’s not my opinion. Blame science.
Read more at the Post and Courier.