The Graveyard Whistler’s literary journey now finds him delving into the phenomenon known as “flash fiction.” He also reveals that he is in possession of a literary treasure trove bestowed upon him by a professor who curated a lit site, until he decided to leave academia and go into law.
Fiction Alert! This story is fiction. It does not depict any real person or actual event.
Introduction by the Graveyard Whistler
Graveyard Whistler here again! I keep finding stuff that just blows me away, and I just have to share it. This time it’s a series of little narrations that have come to be known as “flash fiction.” There are several online outfits dabbling in that endeavor.
The following set of ten that I offer here are refurbished narratives based on a set I found on a site that no longer exists. The site was called “Stone Gulch Literary Arts.” I contacted the owner of that site, and he told me he had completely abandoned it along with literary studies in general, despite the fact that he sports a PhD in American Literature and serves as a full professor in the English department at a state university.
He preferred that I not identify him, and he has since taken down the site from the Web. He said he was now studying law, and as soon as he passes the bar exam, he is waving good-bye to academia.
But “Stoney,” my nickname for him because he refuses to reveal his identity, did give me permission to do what I want with anything found there. And I might add, for my purposes, the site remains a treasure trove of goodies, from the flash fiction to highly sensual poems to short stories full of dark and dreary twists and turns to airy mystical stuff. Stoney’s literary treasure trove even sports some political treatises and analyses that are quite fascinating as well as insightful.
So, I begin with the flash fiction pieces.
Ten Flash Fiction Pieces
Here are the first 10. Each story contains only five sentences. But each boasts an opening, a conflict, and a conclusion. Seems that this would make a useful exercise for the creative writing class.
Prison for the Battered
A battered wife, home alone one morning, gives birth to a baby boy. Afraid of the infant, she buries it in the back yard. She didn’t even know she was pregnant! The neighbor’s dogs dig up the body of the infant. The battered wife welcomed prison to escape the beatings from her spouse.
Lucy’s Tunes into Law
Lucy loved music and wrote many songs. She performed her songs on a number of CDs. Lucy’s friend sent two of Beth’s CDs full of songs to a famous singer. The singer ripped off the songs, and left Lucy demoralized. Lucy never wrote another song but decided to go to law school to study copyright law.
Candy’s Dream Job
Candy was poor and couldn’t buy her dream dress on display in Gladys Harper’s Boutique window. Candy tries to spirit the dress away under her winter coat. Gladys’ sharp eye catches Candy’s attempted crime. Gladys requires Candy to work in the boutique to earn money to buy the dress. Years later, Gladys dies, bequeathing to Candy both the boutique and Candy’s dream job.
A Big Heavy Rock
Martin brings the big heavy rock to his room upstairs. Delbert is walking past Martin’s house. Martin then drops the big heavy rock on top of Delbert’s head. Martin panics and then calls an ambulance. Seems unlikely but the two boys became fast friends as Delbert recovers in the clinic.
The Green Marble
Edna carried around her three pretty marbles. She handed over a blue one to her friend, Martha. Annette coveted Edna’s the green marble. Edna let Betty have her green marble. Annette hated Betty from than on.
Old, Dead Guy Waiting
An old guy named Winston Totenfelder was waiting by his mailbox. Unfortunately, the mail was running very late that day. Old man Winston Totenfelder started to worry about his friend, Jack Neuland, the mailman. Jack in his mail truck had crashed into a big buck deer on his mail run. Old Winston Totenfelder gave up waiting, walked back to his house, and in his kitchen near the sink, fell dead.
Pop! Pop! Capped! Capped!
The house looked empty to Stoop and Dreggs. Stoop ran to the back porch, while Dreggs stayed on the front porch. Stoop shouted out to signal to Dreggs—time to break through the doors. Pop! goes the lady of the house, capping Stoop. Dead instantly! Pop! goes the other lady of the house capping Dreggs. Also dead instantly!
Purple Bicycles
Twin boys, Jon and Don, sped on their purple bicycles over to Mortmaker’s Lake. Jon told Mrs. Mortmaker about the heron he saw by the lake. Don spoke to Mr. Mortmaker about riding his bicycle around the lake. Both Mr. and Mrs. Mortmaker utterly despised all children. Those purple bikes were brought up out of the lake, after a ten year search for the twins.
Glazna’s Final Swim
We all carried our lunch pails down to Spork River at high noon. Glazna boasted that she could swim fifteen miles upriver without one stop. Amy replied she was very doubtful that Glazna could do that. Glazna popped up off the rock she sat on, slung off her shoes, and dived into the muddy water of Spork River. A report on the six o’clock news the next day claimed Glazna’s lifeless body was recovered from Spork River after a twelve hour search.
Jimmy and the Hold Up
Jimmy buys himself a nifty water pistol at Jaggly’s Dollar Emporium. Jimmy’s mom tells him not to take the squirt gun to school. Jimmy tucks away his new water weapon into his backpack and ventures off to class. A teacher calls Jimmy’s mom at lunch time. Jimmy had attempted to hold up the secretaries in the main office brandishing his new water pistol.
A Final Comment by the Graveyard Whistler
This installment features only the first 10 of these flash fiction pieces. I’ll add more later. But I’ll probably delve into other genres before I continue with these. I have put off writing my dissertation because at this point I am not finding as much information as I had anticipated on the topic of irony.
Maybe I will change my focus to a simple notion of “variety” in the literary world because I am finding that literature, both ancient and modern contemporary, does sport a wide array of different topics, genres, issues, attitudes, and styles. I could like “coin” a whole new glossary of literary devices if I put my mind to it, and I might just have to do that!
The Graveyard Whistler has found a new story with a complex of irony. He is rethinking his profession as literary sleuth. Captivated by the stories he finds, he remains conflicted about continuing with literature. Maybe he will give up and become a lawyer.
Fiction Alert! This story is fiction. It does not depict any real person or actual event.
Graveyard Whistler Offers Some Explanatory Remarks
Hey, hey! It’s been a while since I’ve posted.
The one titled “Literary History and the Art of Irony” brought me a ton of complaints from all the brothers and sisters who enjoy a beautiful, harmonious relationship and deeply resent that I would reveal a set of siblings who scratched at each other like cats in a clothes dryer.
My response was to delete that post, even though the subject was irony, the sibs just provided the example. But hey, I’m not in the business of alienating readers, so I just let it go. The experience did give me some food for thought.
So as I rethink my journey into the literary life, I am finding it discouraging that so many people can’t tell the difference between biography and fiction. What I mean is, a writer creating fiction does not always reveal only what is in his heart and mind: that’s why it’s called “fiction.”
The writer of fiction makes up stuff. If a writer were limited to writing only what he felt and thought, there would be no murder mysteries because only murderers have the knowledge of what it feels like to kill and what thoughts are engendered by that deplorable act.
So as I think though my dilemma, I take comfort in knowing that I will probably never become a creative writer: I write no poetry, no short stories, no plays, no novels. I just write about what poets, fiction writers, playwrights, and novelist have already written.
As I have said, I am especially interested in irony as a literary form and that’s why I wrote about the dysfunctional sibling relationship because the piece I had found had dealt with irony.
The following piece that I found, not on the Internet, but in an ancient, dusty tome at the New Chesterfield Library in Cabot Cove, Maine, features a wacky sea captain and her crew of the Blarney Barnacle, a strange seafaring vessel that ranged up and down the East coast from Maine to Georgia, sometime after the Civil War in the 1870s.
It’s a long and complicated tale but I have excerpted a spot that I found particularly interesting. It was quite a hassle having to type out text, made me very appreciative of the “cut and paste” function on modern word processors.
Without further ado, I present the story to you warts and all—meaning I have not corrected spelling or grammar errors unless they interfered too much with meaning.
The Irony of the Bones
The seas was strictly calm the night that Elizabeth Wayneright ran off from her blackhearted husband.
She hid under the technical tarp on the starboard side and was not detected until we’s way down the coast nearing on Massachusetts.
Cap’n Jane Pickwick, who as you now know, ran a tight ship-shape shippe—actually we wasn’t a shippe, we more a oversize tub but big enough to hold a crew of 9 and sometimes we’d take on passengers who need to travel down the coast.
We started out as usual, Capt. Janey, as we with affection called her, making her rounds, and her first mate, Lt. Maxine Stauttlemeyer, was checking out supplies then ran around the tub, as we with affection called our shippe. Everything in order we start her moving on down the coast.
We’s almost to Massachusetts Bay when a storm busted through, starting to bluster us about something awful. It wasn’t near so bad as it sounded, we’s all used to it and knew we’d be through it in an hour. But the stowaway, Elizabeth Wayneright musta thought we’s headed to perdition.
She came busting out flailing her arms around screaming and yelling, “Oh, God! Oh, God! We’re going to die! We’re going to die! What have I done? What have I done?”
First mate Maxy, as we with affection called her, arrived on the scene, grabbed Lizzy, as we later came to call her with affection, and got her settled own.
She brought Lizzy to Capt. Janey who asked Lizzy all manner of interrogatories, maybe taking hours on into the night.
Capt. put Lizzy in a cabin that had a cot, gave her some tea, and told her that breakfast was at 600 hours. We can only guess if Lizzy slept but next morning as we’s sailing the tub around Mass Bay, we stopped, spread out breakfast and then Lizzy told us her story.
Elizabeth Wayneright was a wife and mother, citizen from a little fishing village about a mile north of Cabot Cove, Maine. She wrote stories for newspapers and magazines. She wrote stuff she just made up, not news reports or journalist-like stuff.
She said she was doing pretty good, making a few extra bucks to help out the family. She had a husband who worked as a lumberjack and blacksmith, depending on what was busy at any given time.
They had one son, who was now grown, married, and living in Augusta, where he did some copyediting work for the state.
She said she worked as a waitress in the local pub while her son was growing up, and that’s how she got the idea to write made-up stories, listening to and talking to all the different types of folk who’d blow into town.
She said she’d been writing her stories for about ten years, sending them off to as far away as California. Said her stories had been published in the same magazine that published biggies like Samuel Clemens, aka Mark Twain.
We’s all really impressed, we hadn’t heard of her, but we did know the man Samuel Clemens, aka Mark Twain.
Going on with her story, she said everything was fine, her money helped so that when her husband couldn’t get enough work, they didn’t ever have to fall into debt or go begging on the streets. Then during a long stretch of workless days, her husband started rifling through the stories she had written.
At first, she was glad to see that he was taking an interest, something he had never done before. She felt a little concerned however because he’d read and then the rest of day not say anything. Then he’d read some more and seemed to get kind of mean toward her.
This went on for a week or so, and then he came busting into their bedroom where she sat writing, and he was shaking a magazine at her, and began to call her all sort of bad woman names, like bitch, whore, trollop.
She asked him what he’s taking about and he said it was all there in black and white. She hated him, she had bedded every stranger who came into town, and now she was planning to kill him. It was all there in black and white, he kept saying.
She tried to explain to him that those were stories she made up, she said she got ideas for those stories from listening to folks who frequented the pub where she used to waitress.
She told him she never wrote any stories about him, herself or anyone else she knew. They were all just fiction, stories she had made up.
He was having none of it. He stated ripping the pages out of the magazine, and throwing them at her. She tried again to reason with him, but again he had the goods on her it was all there in black and white.
He kept this rant up for several days, and then one night as Lizzy was cooking supper, he blasted though the door into the kitchen brandishing a knife. Whore! Trollop! What you think of this. I’ll teach you to make a fool out of Roger Blassing Wayneright.
He struck at her, leaving deep wound in her left arm. Lizzy held up her arm and sure enough a deep wound she said she wrapped up and then packed a little bag, and while Roger was sacked out after supper, she ran from their home and here she was.
We all sat, amazed, by this tale this poor woman was telling. We all said we’d think of how we could help her. She said she knew this tub went down the coast but didn’t know how far.
We told her it goes down to Savannah, Georgia. She asked if she could stay with us until then. We said we’s glad to help anyway we could.
After pulling the tub into Savannah, Lizzy clutching her little bag left the shippe, and we never heard from her again. We kept on sailing the Blarney Barnacle up and down the coast.
Then about thirty years after we’d encountered Lizzy, we all stepped out of our tub near Cabot Cove and went into the little diner where we planned to get a much needed, nearly home-cooked meal.
The place was buzzing with a strange report that was spreading through the little village. Near the old Wayneright place, some pigs has had been plugging into the dirt and unearthed a bunch of bones.
The local sheriff had sent the bones off to the capital for testing. But what grabbed us was the rumors that was buzzing about.
Some people was saying those bones was Roger Blassing Wayneright and that Elizabeth Wayneright had murdered her husband about three decade ago. They was sure it was her that done the nasty deed because one night she went missing and soon after it was discovered that Roger was also missing.
But then other folks saw it different, they said it was Elizabeth’s bones and that Roger had done his wife in. Both stories were floating around and we couldn’t tell which side was right, except for the fact that we’d carried Elizabeth Wayneright down to Savannah. We heard her story, but maybe she left out somethin’?
We had a meetin’ on the tub and tossed around the notion of telling the local authorities about seeing Elizabeth all those years ago. We voted that we should tell and so next day, we fetched ourselves to the sheriff’s office and laid out our tale.
He shocked us though and said that Elizabeth Wayneright had come back to Cabot Cove and she and Roger had patched things up and had been living pretty much a quiet life for at least the past twenty years or so.
So we asked him why the two sides of a story about those bones: some thinking Lizzy killed Roger, and some thinking Roger killed Lizzy. He said, that’s just what people in that town do. There was a third group of folks who knew that both Waynerights had moved to Augusta to be near their grandchildren.
A friend of Elizabeth, fellow writer lady of Cabot Cove who wrote under the name of Janice Baines Longstreet had kept that third group in the know about Elizabeth. So the sheriff could say for sure that those bones belonged to neither Wayneright. And to cap it off, he had funeral notices for both Roger and Elizabeth from when they lived and then died in Augusta.
We asked him why there could be three different version of the Wayneright story floating around this little village when at least two upstanding citizens knew the real skinny.
He just said, people gonna believe what they wanna believe. Don’t matter who says what. Once they choose up a side they just won’t see the other side, no matter the evidence.
Capt. Janey then put out the question we’s all wondering about. How did Elizabeth ever convince her husband that her stories were just stuff she made u? He cut her arm thinking she was going to kill him because of her stories.
The sheriff said that writer lady had a book that tried to answer that question. But he said he thought because it was a novel, it might have fudged the details a bit.
What he knew was that Elizabeth came back because she wanted to keep writing her stories and making money.
Roger had been down on his luck for quite a while, and had to depend on their son to even keep their home, and so when Elizabeth showed up, he knew he’d either have to accept her and her money or eventually sink to the poor house.
He knew their son who had a growing family couldn’t continue to support him. The sheriff said, it’s simple, money talks, and Roger finally accepted the fact that if stories about adultery and murder could make money that was better then no money.
We left again down the coast before the report about the bones came back, but we knew that once it did, no matter what the report said, those two sides would continue their rumors, and the third side, the one that knew the truth would just be so much whistling in the wind.
Graveyard Whistler’s Final Remark on Dramatic/Situational Irony
I asked a friend of mine to proofread this piece and he asked me what is ironic about the bones. Well, at first the reader thinks they must be Roger’s because they know Elizabeth had traveled with the Barnacle crew after running away from him.
Then it shifts to the possibility it could be Elizabeth’s because they learn that she went back to Roger.
But then they finally know that the bones are not Roger or Elizabeth, and they never find whose they are.
It’s a complex of dramatic and situational irony instead of simple verbal irony because the irony is based on situation not just words and the audience does become aware of information that the people in the story will never know.
This commentary on Sterling A. Brown’s “Southern Cop” offers an alternative reading to the sycophantic interpretation given by postmodernists who subscribe to the prevailing ideology of victimhood. The curse of identity politics soft censors such stances; thus they remain rare.
Introduction with Text of “Southern Cop”
While the speaker in Sterling Brown’s “Southern Cop” seems to be exposing and rebuking racism, he actually engages in racism himself. This widely anthologized poem features the following scene: A rookie cop named Ty Kendricks has shot a man who was running out of an alley.
The poem does not report the reason that the man was running nor the reason that the police officer happened to be at the scene. However, the report clearly states that the man’s reason for running was not because of any guilt on his part. It is useful to keep in mind that the caveat stating that one is innocent until proven guilty applies to all citizens—even those who are running.
The speaker of the poem purports to represent the outraged citizenry, whose emotional reaction is so powerful that the speaker must turn to verbal irony in order to convey that outrage. The outraged speaker assumes that his audience is as offended as he is and thus will agree with his statements on all levels.
But the speaker also assumes that a racist audience will take him literally, even though brushing away the irony would demonstrate the utter bankruptcy of his intentionally ludicrous exhortations. The ideas that because Ty Kendricks was a rookie in the process of proving himself and that the citizenry should decorate him for shooting an innocent man cannot be taken literally.
The ideas of proving manhood and decorating a cop for shooting an innocent man are clearly absurd. The ideas are absolutely preposterous, yet the speaker does not suggest the course of action society should take in dealing with Ty Kendricks, the rookie cop, who likely made a mistake, without consideration of the race of the victim.
What does this rookie cop deserve? Who is to decide? An angry, disorderly mob? The speaker’s emotion becomes magnified with each stanza from the first line of the first stanza that would appear not to be ironic at all but quite literal to the first line of the last stanza that is undoubtedly filled with irony.
About half-way through the poem the irony becomes obvious. And the speaker then sets center stage his ironic barbs in his effusion.
Southern Cop
Let us forgive Ty Kendricks. The place was Darktown. He was young. His nerves were jittery. The day was hot. The Negro ran out of the alley. And so Ty shot.
Let us understand Ty Kendricks. The Negro must have been dangerous. Because he ran; And here was a rookie with a chance To prove himself a man.
Let us condone Ty Kendricks If we cannot decorate. When he found what the Negro was running for, It was too late; And all we can say for the Negro is It was unfortunate.
Let us pity Ty Kendricks. He has been through enough, Standing there, his big gun smoking, Rabbit-scared, alone, Having to hear the wenches wail And the dying Negro moan.
Commentary on “Southern Cop”
This irony-filled drama portrays a bundle of rage and racism. The attitude of the speaker weighs in at least as heavily as the actual event that the speaker is decrying.
Stanza 1: Forgiveness Is Good
Let us forgive Ty Kendricks. The place was Darktown. He was young. His nerves were jittery. The day was hot. The Negro ran out of the alley. And so Ty shot
The first stanza opens with the speaker seemingly quite controlled as he suggests that he and his milieu “forgive” the young cop named Ty Kendricks. The invocation of the Christian value of forgiveness offers no clue that the speaker would not, in fact, forgive this rookie cop. Of course, the biblical injunction demands that trespassers be forgiven.
However, in this particular scenario, what is the speaker suggesting be forgiven? He is urging forgiveness of Ty Kendricks the rookie cop who shot an man because he was running out of an alley. The speaker does not reveal the reason that the man was running, nor what caused the cop to shoot; the speaker is simply asking that the rookie be forgiven.
Stanza 2: Understanding Is Also a Good Thing
Let us understand Ty Kendricks. The Negro must have been dangerous. Because he ran; And here was a rookie with a chance To prove himself a man.
Next, the speaker asks that he and his listeners “understand” the rookie cop. Of course, they should try to understand both the perpetrators of crime and the enforcers of law. Otherwise, justice cannot prevail without understanding.
But then the speakers’s audience is apprised of what they are being commanded to forgive and to understand: the man was surely dangerous/guilty because he was running. Not only that, the rookie Ty Kendricks now has the opportunity to show himself to be a man.
Because running does not equal guilt, and the notion of proving manhood by shooting someone is ludicrous, it now becomes clear that the speaker is engaging in verbal irony to portray his true message. This speaker does not, in fact, want his audience to forgive nor understand Ty Kendricks, the rookie cop.
What does the speaker hope to accomplish with his use of irony? He intends to brand Ty Kendricks a racist and elicit sympathy for the man shot by this cop. Of course, the man who was shot deserves sympathy, but the speaker offers no evidence that Ty Kendricks was a racist cop.
That fact that Kendricks shot a man running out of an ally does not equal racism, despite the fact that the running man was black. All things being equal, Ty Kendricks would likely have shot any man of any race in this situation.
Stanza 3: Condoning the Killing of an Innocent Man
Let us condone Ty Kendricks If we cannot decorate. When he found what the Negro was running for, It was too late; And all we can say for the Negro is It was unfortunate.
Condoning this apparently despicable act of a rookie cop shooting an innocent victim becomes a near surreal request. But because the speaker is engaging in irony, he does not intend his listeners to “condone” but instead to “condemn” the rookie cop.
The cop’s reaction of shooting the running man became just another “unfortunate” event by the time the cop learned the reason for the running. But what is the efficacy of forgiving, condoning, and decorating a cop for a bad shoot?
The ironic use of the terms means that the speaker is in reality suggesting that his listeners continue to hold a grudge and to condemn cops, even those who might have mistakenly shot someone. The intensity of this verbal irony may possibly encourage speculation that the speaker is even attempting to instigate rioting, burning buildings, and killing other cops.
Stanza 4: Pity for All Involved
Let us pity Ty Kendricks. He has been through enough, Standing there, his big gun smoking, Rabbit-scared, alone, Having to hear the wenches wail And the dying Negro moan.
Finally, the speaker appears to return to some semblance of humanity, asking that he and his listeners “pity” this poor rookie cop. Of course, the cop deserves pity. Or more accurately, he deserves sympathy and support. Taking the life of a fellow human being causes emotional damage—even to the most well-adjusted veteran law enforcement officer.
And taking a human life constitutes a serious, deeply spiritual offense against Creation and the Creator, even though that Creator has arranged Creation to require such an offense at times. Even man’s law allows for self-defense.
But notice that the speaker is still in his own racist venue, as he applies his final acerbic barb of irony: he does not, in fact, want his audience to pity that rookie cop. Instead, he wants his readers to pity only the family of the deceased man: they stood there crying and moaning the loss of their loved one.
The speaker asks us to pity the rookie only because that rookie has to listen to that crying and moaning. By stating ironically that the pity should apply to Ty Kendricks and contrasting his situation with that of the deceased man and his family, the speaker is implying that any loss suffered by the cop remains negligible.
But suffering cannot be compared and contrasted especially in such a callous way. There is no way of calculating and weighing the suffering on either side: it’s a lose-lose situation.
Ultimately, there is no pity for Kendricks from this speaker and his ilk—only a hollow attempt to portray the cop as a criminal, not simply a human being who has made a mistake.
The Issue of Racism in the Poem
A cursory reading of Sterling A. Brown’s “Southern Cop” may result in the assumption of the stereotypical view that cops shoot young black men because they are black. An example of such a reading includes the following:
Sterling A. Brown’s poem “Southern Cop” published in 1936 is an extremely powerful piece of poetry in American history because it cuts at the heart of racism in America. Unfortunately, many of the points Brown makes are still relevant today. In fact, this poem could have been written after any number of recent events, Ferguson perhaps being the most well known, and it would be as pertenant (sic) as ever.[1]
The claim that this poem parallels the situation in “Ferguson” is patently false. The shooting in the poem “Southern Cop” and the shooting in Ferguson have nothing in common. In the “Ferguson” shooting, the race of the cop who shot and the race of the victim are known. In “Southern Cop,” the race of the cop can only be assumed—and then only prejudicially.
The “Hands up, don’t shoot!” claim, following the shooting of black teenager Michael Brown by white cop Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri, in August 2014, has been debunked repeatedly; yet its basic impetus has refused to be abated [2] [3] [4] [5]. In fact, the only racism discoverable in the poem”Southern Cop” comes from the speaker, who identifies the victim as a “Negro” but does not ever mention the race of the cop who shot the “Negro.”
Because the stereotype of white racist cops, especially southern cops, is so ingrained in the culture, the speaker feels no need to identify the race of Ty Kendricks, who could as likely have been of any race. But because of the assumption that the cop is white, the speaker demonstrates his own racism by his utter contempt; he is deliberately attempting to pit the race of the shooting victim against the race of the shooter.
The speaker demonstrates sympathy only for the “Negro” while he attempts to promote hatred and contempt for the cop.
Before the late 1980s in the United States, the terms “Negro,” “colored,” and “black” were accepted widely in American English parlance.
While the term “Negro” had started to lose it popularity in the 1960s, it wasn’t until 1988 that the Reverend Jesse Jackson began insisting that Americans adopt the phrase “African American.” The earlier more accurate terms were the custom at the time that Sterling A. Brown was writing.
Suggestion for Students Writing Papers on Sterling A. Brown’s “Southern Cop” and Other Sensitive Issues
The following advice applies to students attending most American colleges and universities. Exceptions are Hillsdale College and a few others, where the First Amendment and other constitutional protections are still operative.
The current prevailing societal emphasis on identity and the politics of racial victimhood insures that my critical stance in this commentary is deemed unacceptable and will be at least soft censored, if not completely canceled.
So if you take such a stance in your classes, you are likely to be graded down or even censored—at best. At worst, you may be labeled racist, even expelled.
Therefore, please consider your options when writing on sensitive subjects like this one. Know your professors’ biases and use caution in crossing them.
However, the best outcome is that you are in position to take legal action against those professors who violate your constitutional rights. With such endeavors, I wish you all the best success.
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