Posted on 07/14/2016 11:28:17 AM PDT by massmike
A Yale University employee is out of a job, and the school is out a window, after he used a broomstick to smash a stained-glass window he complained was racist.
Until recently, Thomas Menafee worked as a dishwasher for Yale. But he says he grew enraged that, while working at Yale’s Calhoun College, he had to see a stained glass window which shows black laborers harvesting cotton. The window, he said, was an offensive portrayal of slavery, and so on June 13 he impulsively decided to eliminate it by force.
“I took a broomstick, and it was kind of high, and I climbed up and reached up and broke it,” he told the New Haven Independent. “It’s 2016, I shouldn’t have to come to work and see things like that.”
Menafee’s stunt was quickly discovered, and he responded by resigning his post with the college. In return, the college is not seeking compensation for the destruction and has requested that Menafee not be prosecuted.
Nevertheless, Menafee appeared in court Tuesday on a felony charge of criminal mischief along with a misdemeanor charge of reckless endangerment, stemming from the fact that the window nearly injured a passing pedestrian when it came tumbling out
Menafee’s destructive act is the latest incident in the saga over Calhoun College, one of Yale’s residential colleges. The college is named for John C. Calhoun, an alumnus and South Carolina senator who was a major slavery advocate in the decades before the Civil War. Recently, activists have pushed for Yale to rename the college, while others have said renaming the college would be rewriting history for political reasons.
In April, the school announced Calhoun’s name would stay, but that it would attempt to censor any images of Calhoun so that they will not be triggering to black students. Notably, several stained glass windows portraying Calhoun himself are scheduled to be removed before the fall semester.
Because Menafee says his destruction was motivated by anti-racism, he has won the support of New Haven racial activists.
“What is more valuable to Yale: a stained-glass window of enslaved people picking cotton, or the humanity of the African-American people who work at Yale?” said John Jairo Lugo of the group Unidad Latina en Accion.
Looter guy!
” When you care enough to steal the best, steal Heinekin. The choice of natural disaster looters everywhere.”
Good choice. I’ll call the people @ Tiffany’s and alert them to the changes.
CC
The left has already made him a martyr. He gets rehired and becomes another Rosa Parks.
The truth is offensive to him?
When they rehire him (and you know they will), assign him as janitor of the safe space room.
If the stained glass window was based on a photo, as it probably was, it could be one from 30 or 40 years after the war ended. There is no way to tell from the depiction whether the workers are slaves, freedmen, or blacks born after the abolition of slavery.
Not just the dishes. Think about his access to food.
More and more I am deciding to eat at home these days. The level of anger is so high I’m getting to wonder what is being served in restaurants these days.
Monkey See, monkey do.
Depictions of negroes engaged in productive labor and contributing to the economy of the time-—racist.
Depictions of negroes with gold teeth, holding wads of cash while pointing a gun sideways and making weird hand gestures—that’s relevant black culture. Because -—it’s 2016.
Prepping = collecting books.
“BTW I can find nothing on the history of these windows. Can some black craftsman have made them?”
Think of the plantation homes and pretty much everything in them. Take a stroll thru the French quarter and look at all those cast iron balconies and beautiful millwork and unique doorways. The gorgeous statuary of angels and saints in the cemeteries. All this is the artisanry of black men, both slave and free.
The writer Anne Rice, best known for her vampire books, has searched extensive archives about these artisans, and has written about them.
It was quite common for slave owners to grant freedom to the more talented and ambitious of the slaves—even before the Civil War— precisely because these could set up shop and earn their own way.
These freedmen were celebrated and were far more prosperous than the white common laborers.
Me too, always with the thought that there are forces afoot who want to destroy all this, all knowledge of the past.
I don’t blame you one bit, ladyjane.
Well, to paraphrase Oscar Madison, ‘Now those stained windows are garbage.”
Remember when Toyota had an ad showing someone having a gold Toyota symbol on his tooth? Even though you couldn’t really see anything beyond the teeth, Jesse Jackson denounced Toyota for racism and Toyota paid out a huge amount of money for his to shut up and leave them alone...probably figured a protracted controversy would cost them even more. Classic Jesse shakedown. I promised myself I would never buy a new Toyota after that because I didn’t want some of the money to end up in Jesse’s wallet.
Yeah, kid, Mao Tse-tung did the same thing, just a bit earlier.
They called it the Cultural Revolution.
Go for it, you effing Idiot.
Ignorant scumbag.
A punk worth less than cannon fodder
http://www.nhregister.com/general-news/20160719/yale-offers-ex-worker-who-broke-racist-image-window-a-new-job-menafees-lawyer-says-hes-delighted-to-accept
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