Blackballed: The Black and White Politics of Race on America's Campuses

The zeitgeist nature of Ross's (The Divine Nine) work lends credibility to his thesis that American university campuses are extensions of our racist society at large and have therefore become unsafe and hostile environments for black students. One needs to look no further than disturbingly frequent headlines to see the evidence—the day this reviewer received Ross's book, the president of the University of Missouri had resigned over race issues on that campus. The author's assertion that campuses are hotbeds of racial friction is illuminated through myriad examples of the ways in which campus race relations are allowed to maintain white supremacy. Campus hate crimes leaked to the press are rationalized routinely by skittish administrators. As Ross proves, these crimes (often, "jokes") are not outlier actions undertaken mindlessly by tolerant and kind, if privileged and drunk, white students. Further, the university, through excusing generations of behavior, becomes complicit in these expressions, effectively robbing black students of a place on campus. Ross ends the book with a call to arms that asks universities to "move campus racism from the backwaters of their administrations to the forefront," equalizing enrollments through affirmative action and standing up to the strongholds of campus racism, fraternities and sororities, despite their creation of an alumni donor class.