Students at a Georgia university burned a Latina author's book after she talked about white privilege at a campus event.
Video showing a group of laughing students gathering around a flaming grill, watching pages of the book "Make Your Home Among Strangers" burn, has been widely shared on social media. The footage was shot shortly after author Jennine Capó Crucet spoke at Georgia Southern University's campus in Statesboro on Wednesday.
Capó Crucet's acclaimed novel tells the story of a young Cuban American girl who is accepted to a prestigious university in the U.S. It has been required reading in some freshman classes at the university.
The book burning came after a white student asked Capó Crucet during a question-and-answer session why she "made a lot of generalizations about the majority of white people being privileged," the university’s student newspaper, the George-Anne, reported.
“I noticed that you made a lot of generalizations about the majority of white people being privileged,” the student said. “What makes you believe that it’s okay to come to a college campus, like this, when we are supposed to be promoting diversity on this campus, which is what we’re taught? I don’t understand what the purpose of this was."
Capó Crucet responded, “I came here because I was invited and I talked about white privilege because it’s a real thing that you are actually benefiting from right now in even asking this question.”
JaQuaylon Taylor, 18, a freshman at the university, told NBC News that the student's question at the talk "threw everybody off ... There was a lot of negativity in that space."
After video of Capó Crucet's book getting torched circulated, the author said in a statement Friday that she had been invited to "give a talk on issues concerning diversity and the college experience, one that expanded on the themes of my novel."
Capó Crucet said that after the student's question, which she said led to students shouting back and forth at each other across the room, she asked faculty to follow up with the student who had posed the question and any others who may be similarly upset, "because a compassionate and continuing conversation needed to occur."
"We weren’t going to answer these questions in one night of discussion," she said in her statement.
Source for more information on the matter: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/geo ... e-n1065396
As for my opinion on this matter, I think it's just disrespectful that these students would burn Crucet's book just because it mentions "white privilege." They're allowed to disagree with her views, but burning her book is taking it too far. Hopefully, this doesn't stop the author from writing more books in the future because of this incident.
What's your opinion NSG? Were the students disrespectful or we're they in the right?
