Who hung black effigies on UC Berkeley campus? Mystery solved

By Howard Portnoy
Who hung black effigies on UC Berkeley campus? Mystery solved

To the born skeptic, the whole shebang sounded like too much of an inside job to be an act of racial bigotry, as many on the left were hoping. The reference here is to effigies of black lynching victims found hanging at the University of California, Berkeley. The Associated Press noted on Sunday that the provenance of the images was in question and was either “powerful protest art or just plain tasteless and racist.”

The photographic images were found Saturday morning hanging at two prominent spots on campus. They were discovered a few hours before a demonstration against police brutality organized by a black student union was to start. Police are investigating, but officials say they still don’t know who hanged the images or the motivation.

Pastor Michael McBride of the Way Christian Center and co-director of Intervarsity’s Black Campus Ministries at UC Berkeley tweeted:

Yesterday, “credit” for the images was taken and, curse the luck, it wasn’t a bunch of evil white guys in pointy hoods.  It wasn’t white guys at all, and one of them — Laura Nelson — is ostensibly a gal. It was “queer black and PoC artists. The group released a statement (h/t Jim Hoft):

black-artists-statement

A clue that this wasn’t act of racism was suggested by the appearance of the hashtag #Ican’tbreahte appended to at least one of the effigies.

image

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Howard Portnoy

Howard Portnoy

Howard Portnoy has written for The Blaze, HotAir, NewsBusters, Weasel Zippers, Conservative Firing Line, RedCounty, and New York’s Daily News. He has one published novel, Hot Rain, (G. P. Putnam’s Sons), and has been a guest on Radio Vice Online with Jim Vicevich, The Alana Burke Show, Smart Life with Dr. Gina, and The George Espenlaub Show.

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