A White student at the Staten Island campus of St. John’s University in New York posted on Instagram a photo of five White women who had their faces replaced by faces of Black men. The caption on the photo contained the word “niggers.” The student who posted the photo is no longer enrolled at the university.
Students on the campus staged a protest. The protesters were allegedly told to “go back from where you come from” and were taunted by White students who used the word “nigger.”
The main campus of St. John’s University in Queens, New York, is very diverse with Whites making up 44 percent of the undergraduate student body. But the Staten Island campus is only 4 percent Black and Whites are 72 percent of the student body.
I can’t imagine that any knowledgeable person would be surprised. Although Staten Island has an indigenous African-American community, it has long been a breeding ground for anti-Black sentiment. The climate President Trump has so carefully nurtured justifies those beliefs and supports incidents like this one.