Rochester police have charged two men with criminal mischief for allegedly damaging a statue of Frederick Douglass early Sunday morning.
The 6-foot, 7-inch statue, which was at the corner of Alexander and Tracy Streets, is one of 13 statues of Douglass that have been placed around the city during the celebration of the 200th anniversary of Douglass’s birth. All of the statues were created by Rochester artist Olivia Kim. It was apparently severely damaged, and police took it away.
Shortly after midnight, police responded to a report of men trying to steal a statue and arrested 20-year-old John Boedicker of Endicott and 21-year-old Charles Milks of Kenmore. Both are students at St. John Fisher College.
Early reports about the damage said a witness heard men using racial epithets as they attacked the statue. Boedicker told WXXI that the attack wasn’t racially motivated.
“Me and my friend were extremely drunk,” he said, “and for some reason thought it was a good idea to try and take a statue. It had nothing to do with the identity of the statue whatsoever like everyone thinks.”
“Me and my friend did a terrible thing, and I will not deny that,” he said, “but the motivation to it was 100 percent alcohol related. Nothing else contributed. I apologize to anyone and everyone whom we hurt by destroying that statue and we actually already apologized to the sculptor as well. We just want to make this right.”
The vandalism brought an impassioned statement from leaders of the Re-energizing the Legacy of Frederick Douglass commemorative project, Carvin Eison, Bleu Cease, and Chris Christopher. They and others were devastated to hear about the damage and attempted theft and to learn that a witness heard the men using racial epithets, they said. The three also urged the community to “rise above the anger and disappointment” and turn it into “a teachable moment, as Douglass would have wanted us to do.”
The group said the statue at the corner of Alexander and Tracy Streets will be replaced as quickly as possible.
St. John Fisher President Gerard Rooney released a statement on Sunday night saying that the alleged behavior “goes against who we are and who we strive to be.” The college shares the community’s outrage, he said, and said the college will see that “those who engage in behavior that may violate the values articulated in the college’s mission statement are held accountable through the appropriate internal processes.”
Rooney’s statement also says the college recognizes the need to redouble its efforts to continue to educate the campus around issues of diversity and race.
This article appears in Dec 12-18, 2018.
At the risk of being categorized as a racist or a fellow traveler (which is probably inevitable), it needs to be pointed out that what we are seeing here is a MASSIVE over-reaction by some members of the public. Clearly this is an incident fueled by too much alcohol and too few working brain cells, not by racial antipathy. Indeed, I’d suggest that a pickup truck displaying a Confederate flag decal or sporting such a flag in the rear window far more likely indicates the presence of a true racist than does the vandalism committed by these two liquored-up college boys. Yet we do not see such vehicles being pursued down the road with shouts of “racist”. Let these clowns be prosecuted under the law and then expelled from SJF as any and all vandals should be, and then ignored as the garden-variety cretins they obviously are.
Also, and more importantly, to label this vandalism as a “hate crime” serves only to cheapen and demean that term when it should be reserved for REAL hate crimes.
I’m wondering why it says in the article “Boedicker told WXXI that.. ”
Is City going to say this now that they were bought by WXXI?
Is it deference to WXXI or is it submission?
… Or just a plug maybe.
To John Goodman: including information from other media and citing those media is a common journalistic practice and a requirement of journalistic ethics. When other journalists get the information, we owe it to those journalists to attribute it to them, not imply that we talked to the source or did the research ourselves.
Thank you for your response, Mary Anna. I am aware of citing sources. And sources should be diverse.
I think that this impression of the new partnership between City and WXXI will return again. It’s a new consideration for City, of course, of which you are aware. I mentioned it because optics are sometimes 90% of a given scenario. And once an impression is formed, it’s sometimes hard to shake.
I do hope the merger goes well for City and WXXI. And I’d love to see a certain highly paid executive at WXXI take a pay cut for the sake of fairness and survival.
Lets say the students did know it was Douglass and they assaulted the statue out of racial animus. If that is the case, this incident constitutes a hate crime, and they have no business being enrolled at the College.
Conversely, let’s assume they are telling the truth about not knowing who the statue represented. If that is the case, then the crime was not motivated by hate but rather ignorance. I am not sure which situation is worse. For how can it be that these two young men made it all the way through high school and then a private liberal arts college without knowing who Frederick Douglass is? Douglass is the most significant and famous abolitionist in United States history. Their ignorance about the African-American experience in this country is a crime in and of itself. I am sad to say it, but there is a reason that these two had no respect for the legacy of Douglass. Whether they knew about him or not, to them, in their drunken stupor, he was just another black person.
Put another way, if these young men are telling the truth about their real motivation, that would be an indictment against St. John Fisher College. For how is it that two upper-class students did not know Douglass when they saw him? I simply refuse to believe they were so drunk that they knew about Douglass but did not know that the statue depicted him. Assuming that they truly had no clue who he was, what does that say about the level of diversity education on Fisher’s campus?
Let’s not beat around the bush. Does Fisher have a problem hiring instructors of color? Yes. Has Fisher neglected to make the curricula more responsive to the learning needs of minority students? Yes. Does Fisher need to do a better job connecting the student body with initiatives and programs based in communities of color within greater Rochester? Yes. Can the school, in general, be more racially and ethnically sensitive to the needs and perspectives of non-whites? Yes.
According to College Factual, an organization that obtains their data from the Integrated Post secondary Education Data System (IPEDS) and the National Center for Education Statistics, St. John Fisher’s college faculty is 85.5% white. Just 5% of the faculty is African American. 84% of the undergraduate student population is white. Only 3.8% of the students are African- American. Not surprisingly, the college is ranked 1,964 in ethnic diversity nationwide with a student body composition that is below the national average. It should not take the destruction of a Frederick Douglass statue to make those statistics unacceptable.
Don’t get me wrong. I appreciate the president’s swift and forceful statement condemning the students actions. But the bottom line is that his school has a lot of work to do. When the president says, We have taken the strongest possible action available to us at this time, that may be true to an extent. What matters far more is how the school decides to look within and acknowledge its own failures over the years to diversify its staff, faculty, and academic programming. What actions will the president initiate moving forward to make sure that no other student under his watch has the impudence to say they do not know who Frederick Douglass is?
George Cassidy Payne is an independent writer, social justice activist, domestic violence counselor, and adjunct professor of philosophy. He lives and works in Rochester, NY.
George Payne’s analysis of the situation seems to have several gaping holes in it. Any attempt to link the act of vandalism committed by these two young men, drunk or sober, racist or not, to the policies of Fisher is a logical gap too wide to be bridged. That George has a personal, and personnel, problem with Fisher has evidently colored his judgment to the extent that he blames the school for actions of its students over which it can have no possible control or influence. What ever racial baggage they now carry they brought with them when they entered the school. Additionally, George makes clear that he believes that racial animosity motivated this vandalism when he states that, ” Whether they knew about him (Douglass) or not, to them, in their drunken stupor, he was just another black person.” Neither he nor what the thought processes, if any, were of two drunken rowdies when they stole the Douglas statue. Neither he nor I are in a position to cast the first racial stone. At this point in time and with the information currently available, all opinions of the event are equally valid, or invalid.
The theory is that college is where people can further their development, which is not a money-back guarantee by any college. The notion that colleges should ban racists from entering is idiotic and ham-fisted, at best. College is as good a place as any to get enlightened. But no one guarantees it.
A crime is a crime and racism in and of itself, while it may be shallow and terrible, is not a crime. Destruction of property and harassing people or defacing a headstone are crimes.
Not every racial crime deserves a headline, however. And there are always going to be racists.
These two kids made a bad mistake. The idea that they should have their lives torn asunder by a bad night and cast out forever, however, is too much about punishment and does not take into account rehabilitation of individuals, particularly young drunken foolish individuals.
This reaction by some to destroy these two dumb kids’ lives for trashing a statue is more the politics of revenge than it is a carefully understood consequence. Anger is appropriate; revenge is for the weak. Rehab and extensive community service is a better option than kicking them out. And the social consequences of what they did will be humbling to them also.
I do not want to see their heads taken off and I am not casting stones. I am merely asking some difficult questions about SJFC. To state that the school has no responsibility in this matter is not only unfair to the community that was targeted by this act of vandalism, it also forfeits an opportunity to challenge Fisher to be better at diversity training, hiring faculty of color, diversifying the curriculum, and being more transparent about race relations on campus.
In other words, SJFC reviewed their applications and admitted them; they brought them onto a campus that has a faculty and student body that is more than 80% white; and they have historically neglected to invest enough resources into diversity training, programming, and courses. To my knowledge, no outside group has ever completed a full investigation into how many racial incidents occur on and off campus that involve Fisher students. Who is reporting these racial incidents and how are they being handled?
Lastly, if someone truly believes that there is no institutional racism at Fisher, I want them to answer the following question: What if the students were not white football players? Imagine instead that they were two black students with corn-rolls and tattoos coming from a club in the 19th Ward rather than a bar on East Ave. Imagine that the two black students destroyed a statue of Susan B Anthony instead of Frederick Douglass. Imagine that the two black students were using misogynistic language while they were doing it. If this were the case, would the students be expelled or suspended?
George Payne – You believe that St, John Fisher should be held responsible for the conduct of its students. But the best you can come up with to support that belief is that they accepted these kids’ applications? That’s not just a stretch, it’s a huge overreach of logic. There is simply no connection that can be supported rationally. But I suspect you will keep trying to do so, reality notwithstanding.
Larry, I also wrote “they brought them onto a campus that has a faculty and student body that is more than 80% white, and they have historically neglected to invest enough resources into diversity training, programming, and courses.”
I want to share this comment from someone who responded to one of my editorials.
“Private institutions of higher learning have a responsibility to TRY and undo the lifetime of default unchecked white privilege. Why? Because being steeped in ones whiteness is to live with a certain myopia that only perpetuates the pain of racism for all who come in contact with the offenders. For a college to NOT try to at least address the inherent white privilege and racism that is systemic disease of every incoming, white student, is to fail to attempt to develop the whole student, not just their knowledge bank and employability. Young white Americans that clear 21 or 22 years old without ONE institution or individual attempting to guide them on their biases and racist beliefs is how we still cannot kill this zombie of racism in America. They grow up to be mature and older adults who carry around with them this under-developed piece as it concerns any race outside of whiteness. In too many white Americans, that under-developed piece stays raw and sensitive, causing knee-jerk and fragile reactions when conversations of race arise. In an increasingly brown and black country, this cannot stand, and has been the norm for too long.”
There are 30 people on the SJFC Board of Trustees. Only one is African American. The rest are white. 23 are white men.
https://www.sjfc.edu/about/trustees/board-…
Let me get this straight. By the time a kid becomes 18 they have spent 18 years being raised by their parents, and they have spent 13 years @ 9 mo. per year attending primary and secondary schools. But magically, when they begin attending a college , for 3/4 of each year for 4 years, Mr. Payne wants to argue that the college inherits total and final responsibility for correcting any mistakes in the student’s social outlook caused by their previous upbringing? The correct response to that claim begins with a “b”, but to use it would doubtless be a TOS violation. So I’ll merely say that it’s baloney.
Jack, thanks for contributing to the conversation. You wrote: “Mr. Payne wants to argue that the college inherits total and final responsibility for correcting any mistakes in the student’s social outlook caused by their previous upbringing.”
No I do not. I want to argue that they have some responsibility. Moreover, I want to argue that this incident presents an opportunity to question SJFC’s track record on race and race relations. Do you think it is acceptable in the year 2018 to have a 30 person Board of Trustees with one African American? Do you think it is healthy for an institution of higher learning to have a faculty that is 80% white?
I am merely asking some hard questions. If you are uncomfortable with these questions, I suggest taking some time to reflect on the source of your discomfort.
George Payne – The racial demographic of the City of Rochester is as follows:
42% African-American
38% White (non-Hispanic)
Yet the RCSD board is:
57% African-American
29% White (non-Hispanic)
Surely, if the racial make up of the St. John Fisher board is one of the reasons why that institutions students are vandalizing statues as you seem to believe, then no doubt the disconnection between racial populations and representation on the RCSD board is equally likely to result in anti-social behavior on the part of Rochesters high school students.
Jack, false equivalence is when an anecdotal similarity is pointed out as equal, but the claim of equivalence doesn’t bear because the similarity is based on oversimplification of additional factors. That pretty much sums up your analogy.
I am not suggesting that the vandalism is a direct result of anyone or any group in particular. Needless to say, the two young men bear the majority of blame and responsibility. To reiterate: I am simply arguing that SJFC’s lack of racial diversity and lack of intentional teaching about race/ race relations has unintended consequences.
As I see it, this whole sordid episode will only result in positive change if Fisher uses it as an opportunity to look within and initiate self imposed reforms. At the risk of repeating myself, I will ask the question one more time: Is it acceptable for an institution of higher learning to have a 30 member Board with only one person of color? Is it acceptable to have a student body that is 80% white? False equivalences aside, do you have a response to these questions?
Sure thing George. You complain that the racial makeup of Fisher’s board must be changed because. in your opinion, it is responsible for the college not imparting the proper social attitudes to its students. But let someone point out that the same claim could be made for the racial makeup of the RCSD board and you run away crying “false equivalency”. The equivalency is exact. it’s simply that you fear that bringing in the RCSD will distract from your jihad against Fisher. But I did find your attempt to rewrite your past blaming of Fisher for the actions of the two vandals to be most amusing. George Orwell would be proud.
Thank you for bringing up Orwell. He once wrote: ” We have now sunk to a depth at which restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men.”
But SJFC has no race problem, right?
“St. John Fisher College’s holiday break was just hours old when two of its students were caught trying to steal a statue of revered abolitionist Frederick Douglass.
A witness said the two white students spouted racial epithets as they stumbled drunkenly down Alexander Street before being arrested by Rochester police.
Then, just three days before the end of the college’s break, an 11-second video surfaced that featured white Fisher cheerleaders singing along with a popular rap song by Meek Mill. The portion of the song shouted out in the video included three uses of the n-word and a crude term for the female anatomy.”
https://www.democratandchronicle.com/story…
The school has nothing to do with this. Zero. This is just a way to bully the school into putting more minorities on their board.
“The portion of the song shouted out in the video included three uses of the n-word and a crude term for the female anatomy”. I find it interesting and odd that the cheerleaders are roundly criticized for singing along with the song, but there seems to be no criticism directed at the person who wrote the song, and the person who performed the song (may be the same person, I didn’t research it). Nor of the apparently large number of rap fans that must like this song a lot to put it in the “popular” category.
What is the goal with the racism issue? Is it to end racism or perpetuate it? For right or wrong, it seems, by being on constant vigilance to point it out, I’d say the later. People tend to get what they expect, after all. I am not black, so I can’t say I’ve walked in your shoes, but I have noticed that those of the black community who look beyond, and focus on the positive tend to shatter the black ceiling and find success greater than the majority of white people. I know it doesn’t sound fair, or right, but it works.
Pittsford, N.Y. St. John Fisher College students are saying, Enough, after separate incidents involving race.
“Several student groups say the college and its president are not doing enough after the theft of a Frederick Douglass statue in Rochester. A second, unrelated incident involved a video of some members of the cheerleading squad using discriminatory language while singing along with a rap song.
Students are now staging their own intervention, meeting Wednesday night and holding a campus-wide town hall Thursday. They are calling on President Gerard Rooney to do more and they are asking him to attend the town hall.”
https://13wham.com/news/local/fisher-stude…
If I understand the situation at St. John Fisher, the cheerleaders were videoed singing the lyrics to “Dreams and Nightmares”, a commercially available rap song from several years ago by a performer named Meek Mill. They did not alter the lyrics in any way. Perhaps George Payne can explain why this should be an issue when the singers are white any more than if they were African American. Is it possible that Mr. Payne is unaware that whites buy a substantial percentage of music of this kind? Should they not have the same rights to sing such songs publicly as do African American consumers?
Frank, it is never acceptable for a white person to use the N word. Nothing else needs to be said.
Frank Pennington – You are 100% correct in exposing the hypocrisy of the situation. Apparently it’s socially acceptable for an African American singer to record such a song. Apparently it’s socially acceptable for him to make millions selling such a song to African Americans and whites . Apparently it’s socially acceptable for African Americans to sing the song in public. Apparently it’s even socially acceptable to broadcast such a song over the public airwaves.. But if some white kids record themselves singing the song, it’s suddenly a racist act.
Amazing, and amusing, how in the 21st. Century people like George still cling to the scientifically- debunked belief that there is a “white” race, a “black” race, etc. Less amusing is how, like various Germanic “scientists” who spent decades seeking to prove the racial superiority of “whites”, he now tries to use race to the advantage of one group versus another. I await his enlightening us as to just what constitutes a “white” for purposes of banning someone from performing rap or hip hop music.
I would agree with the statement “it is never acceptable for a white person to use the N word. Nothing else needs to be said” if it were slightly changed to “it is never acceptable for ANY person to use the N word. Nothing else needs to be said”.
Musician – Agreed. No special dispensations should be granted for racist remarks. That aside, those taking the position that whites should not be permitted to sing certain numbers made popular by African-American recording artists must of needs define their terms. In Antebellum days slave holders in the Americas established a precise schedule for determining the the degree of “blackness” of their slaves. Such terms ran the gamut from Mulatto (one black parent, one white parent) to Octoroon (three generations of descent from an African great-grandparent), to Sangmele ( 1/64 black ancestry). Thus do we not now need a scale of “whiteness” to determine at what point someone is no long so “white” that they can be permitted to use certain terminology without being considered racist?
George is it acceptable for a white person to listen to or purchase the song? Or would that also be racist?
This conversation feels like it should be happening in 1959 rather than 2019.
For starters, this is not about African Americans using the N word. If they want to co-op the word as a means of self-empowerment, autonomy, creative expression, or just plain satire, that is their choice. When a white person uses the N word-even playfully- they are willingly participating in a legacy of exploitation, hatred, torture, and murder. That is the difference and it matters.
The problem I have with the cheerleaders is similar to the problem I have with the two white students who dismantled the Douglass statue. They should have been aware of the racial implications of their actions. For the cheerleaders to claim that they were just singing along to a song is a sign that they have no true understanding of what that slur means. Just as the football players claimed they did not know who Frederick Douglass was, these incidents reveal how woefully ignorant some of Fisher students are about race and racism.
Although it may be advantageous for whites to cite science when dismissing race, the reality is race does exist in America. If someone identifies themselves as white, others in society see them as white, and they enjoy special benefits from being white (e.g. better access to healthcare, housing, schools, promotions at work, tolerance from the judicial system, and more), I would say that constitutes a practical definition of whiteness. It may make a white person feel enlightened or even “scientific” to dismiss race, but they are merely advocating for an artificial and cheap form of equality that makes them feel good while enjoying all of the advantages of living in a nation founded on white supremacy. Not only is that the opposite of proper scientific thinking, it is cowardly.
George —- To the list of questions which you refuse to answer, let me add a couple more. First, since you believe that it’s OK for African Americans to record and sell songs using racial epithets, I assume you also believe that it’s OK for African American DJs to play such songs over the airwaves. So tell us, is it racist if such songs are played by a white DJ (although you’ve declined to define exactly what constitutes being white)? If it’s racist for whites to publicly sing such a song, isn’t it also an act of racist for them to buy and/or listen to such songs?
Let’s look at another medium. Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn contains the n-word. Is it therefore racist for a white teacher to assign the reading of that book to their class? What about assigning readings of any of the works of Langston Hughes or the late African American writer, Amiri Baraka, which contain the word in question?
Frank-thank you for your response. This is getting interesting.
I have provided a definition for whiteness. You may not agree with it, but it is not a question that I have refused to answer.
Is it OK for African Americans to record and sell songs using racial epithets? The simple answer is yes. The word is not racist because African Americans capitalize on it. The word is racist because it was used by plantation owners and others involved with slavery as a derogatory slur. There is a lot more to it, but that is the simple answer. The fact that African American DJs play such songs over the airwaves is their choice and has nothing to do with white people using the word.
If a white DJ plays a song with the n word in it, they better know what they are doing. If they are paying homage to an artist that they believe is influential-and if they are well versed in the real history of the terminology used in the song- I don’t see that as being inherently problematic. (By the way, playing a song is different than saying the word.)
However, if they are just playing the music because it sounds good or because they are trying to appropriate a culture that is attractive to them, that is problematic. I would say a white DJ who does that sort of thing is in the same category as the cheerleaders. At the risk of sounding trite, the fact that you can so easily picture such a person, demonstrates that you have a very well defined understanding of whiteness.
Finally, I appreciate your introduction of Twain, Hughes, and Baraka. It is a fair question with many implications. If a teacher is actually teaching, then the use of the n word is not racist at all. On the contrary, this is exactly how we combat and eradicate racism. By discussing it in schools! And a teacher can do that without even saying the word out loud. Let’s have more conversations about Mark Twain’s use of the n word and less flippant, oblivious, superficial sing alongs on social media. Perhaps if these students actually took a class on Langston Hughes in HS, they would not find themselves in this situation today.
Where did Frank’s last comment go?
At any rate, if I were to play devil’s advocate, I would advise these young women to seek legal representation. I think they can make the case that their First Amendment rights are being violated by the school. What they did was ignorant, offensive, and bad for the reputation of Fisher. However, unlike the Douglass statue vandals, the cheerleaders did not do anything illegal. The last time I checked, we live in a free society where it is not against the law to sing a song-especially one that is not directed at someone with hateful intentions. It would be very difficult for the school to prove that they sang that song with an intent to harm others. Now that they have been ostracized online and suspended from activities, they can make the case that their academic careers have been significantly damaged, which inevitably harms their ability to earn money in the future. Again, if I were in their shoes I would consider moving this into litigation.
But I am not in their shoes. At the end of the day, the fact remains that a group of white students brazenly shouted the N word multiple times with zero regard for the consequences. This is a hard lesson for them to learn, but if they don’t learn it now they never will. For that reason, I have no problem with the school’s decision to suspend the students from further cheerleading activities. The president has a duty to hold students accountable for not adhering to the school’s code of conduct.
One last point of correction. When Frank asked me if it is OK for African Americans to record and sell songs using racial epithets, I was referring only to the N word when I said yes. African Americans should not use other racial epithets to describe any other race or group. People of color do not have a pass to engage in hateful or discriminatory speech.