College Students Protest Play About Illegal Immigrant But Celebrate ‘Whiteness Group’ That Bars Whites Asking Questions of People Of Color

At Kenyon College, in Gambier, Ohio, a satirical play about one Guatemalan illegal immigrant who wound up at the college drew an incendiary response, forcing the playwright to cancel the play’s production, while at the same time the students celebrate a new student group called “the whiteness group,” whose founder reportedly said at the group’s first meeting, “Racism is a white people problem.”

Professor Wendy Mcleod’s latest play, The Good Samaritan, was partly drawn from the real-life story of a group of men in Marion County smuggling Guatemalan workers and forcing them to work on an egg farm for up to 12 hours per day. Mcleod noted in an email to the college about the play that the immigrants “had been working without pay and living in dire conditions.” As the Kenyon Collegian reports, the play poses the question of what would happen if one of the illegal immigrants escaped from the egg farm and is found by a white student who finds him in the backseat of her car, prompting a discussion in a dorm room by white students deciding what to do.

After deciding to cancel the play after the fury expressed by members of the campus community over the portrayal of the illegal immigrant, Mcleod sent the student body an email, stating, “I know some struggled with script’s satiric elements, but Freud aptly wrote that humor is about ‘bringing the repressed to light.’”

That prompted this sanctimonious response from the editors of the Kenyon Collegian: “The issue here is not one of repression — which can be a self-inflicted act — but of systemic oppression. Mcleod fails to take responsibility for her role in perpetuating damaging stereotypes in a time when profound dangers face those who are undocumented immigrants in this country … In an age when the real lives of immigrants are used as bargaining chips in congressional budget meetings, isn’t it time we take responsibility for our own actions? Isn’t it time that those individuals who hold positions of power are held accountable?”

Meanwhile, a student named Juniper Cruz created a student group called “The Whiteness Group.” The group’s rules state, “No white person can ask a person of color questions; white people must try to answer their questions for themselves. And no spreading rumors about what people say during the meetings.” At the first meeting, some attendees defined whiteness as “power,” or as “lacking a historical perspective.”

Rachel Kessler, the priest-in-charge and chaplain of the Harcourt Parish, who attended the second meeting of the group, emailed the Kenyon Collegian, “As white people, we can become paralyzed by our sense of shame for our racial privilege or by our fear of accidentally saying something problematic. Neither of those impulses are actually productive for combating racism and white supremacy.”

When defenders of Mcleod’s right to produce her play articulated their concerns, they were shot down by students; after Professor Fred Baumann told a panel discussing the cancellation of the play, “Today is the end of [liberal education at Kenyon College],” one student stated on Facebook that if liberal education “necessitates the silencing of marginalized communities, the protection of racism, and our complicity with both, then let the damned thing die.”

Mcleod sent a January 6 email to the campus suggesting a public forum to discuss the play; she intended to explain “what inspired and informed the play, the story it tells, and how comedy can be a force for change.” She later said she would not attend “in the hopes that the community can get to issues larger than a single play.”

The Latinx student association Adelante issued a public statement reading:

It is inexcusable that you fail to offer an apology to the group directly affected by the representations in your play, those of us who, on top of constantly justifying and affirming our presence on this campus, have to now bear the emotional and psychological labor of expressing to the wider Kenyon community, within the confines of ‘civil discourse,’ why these misrepresentations are detrimental … it would be an opportunity for yourself, as well as everyone in attendance, to genuinely hear the voices of Latinx youths, voices that have been historically silenced.