A racist video of College of Charleston students was circulated on social media. The video shows three male students in the back of a pick-up truck in the Francis Marion National Forest in South Carolina. One of the students on the video can be heard saying, “Yes sir, we are here in the country about to visit my slave farm.”
One of the students on the video later remarked, “Leroy, I told you to get back to that plantation. Leroy! Get your Black ass up here tonight.”
Stephen C. Osborne, interim president of the College of Charleston, issued a statement that said that the video “was deeply offensive and featured racist statements that made light of our country’s historical wrongs regarding slavery. These disturbing comments run completely counter to our core values of integrity, respect for the individual student, diversity and community.”
The College of Charleston is a state-operated institution with nearly 10,000 undergraduate students and almost 1,000 graduate students, according to the latest data supplied to the U.S. Department of Education.
The U.S. Census Bureau says that Blacks make up more than 27 percent of South Carolina’s population. But, African Americans make up just 8 percent of the undergraduate student body at the state-operated College of Charleston.