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.
it’s 2016 ... slavery still exists around the world. Real live slavery ... but I doubt the worst of it is in New Haven.
Isn’t hiring a black man to be a janitor kind of racist too? s/
Wow, open season on destroying university property without penalty!!
Oh wait, only if one is of the SJW snowflake variety.
Like most grandmothers, yours was a very wise woman. I’d love to hear some more of that kind of wisdom these days. Unfortunately, all we get today is mostly bloviation, a la Obama.
Not toomention a trip to the white house to meet the black mussolini.
So quit.
The window was a piece of art. But because this man’s fragile little mind was upset he felt it his right to destroy the window. This man was never a slave, has likely never known or even met a slave.
Given the man’s age he has never even experienced Jim Crowe segregation so what does he have to be upset about?
The man should be held responsible for his actions. Anything else is the soft bigotry of low expectations.
...because it didn’t fit HIS agenda.....to be famous ( in his eyes)
Every day more and more folks are coming to this realization, but on a mass scale.
A stained glass window didn't burgle my neighbor's house. A stained glass window did not attempt to carjack another neighbor in his driveway.
If it was Yale then he was a tenured dishwasher.
Probably with back pay, a raise and a settlement for the emotional trauma he was forced to suffer.
YEP...I buy old history and school books.
Was JohnC Calhoun a Democrat?
The soft bigotry of low expectations. If I were the recipient I would find it the most offensive and demeaning thing I could imagine. Now it's ok because free stuff comes with it.
He should do serious jail time for this.
Instead of working within the system and getting a sign put up which puts the window in context, he destroyed property b\c he didn’t want to see it.
There’s lots of things i don’t want to see yet am forced to.
So his right to destroy is sacrosanct because he’s in a protected class? SMH
I’m sure the KKK wants all portrayals of slavery to be eradicated.
Well done, punk. You are doing the freaking KKKs job for them!
haha... you’re right!
Are you even on the same planet?!!!?
Just because it is a stained glass window in a bldg does NOT equal celebration of slavery!
Only if the person who vandalizes also owns the object he's going to vandalize.
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Black privilege.
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