White Like Me me assigned to college softball squad after lame gag goes awry...
A rather surreal development, in which Tim Wise's White Like Me has an unusual cameo
DELAND -- Some women on the Stetson University softball team donned basketball jerseys, painted themselves black, wore cornrows and fake gold teeth and flashed "gangsta" poses for pictures that ended up on the Internet, all in the name of Halloween.They say they didn't know they were tapping into an ugly chapter of American history, that of 19th century actors performing in blackface.
"I find it offensive, objectionable and sad," said Leonard Nance, dean of first-year students and chairman of the Diversity Committee. "This is not behavior that we condone. It goes against every principle we believe in."
Members of the men's basketball team loaned the softball players their practice jerseys. Softball players wore the costumes Oct. 29 to a contest at a DeLand bar, where they met up with some of the basketball players, the softball team said in a statement published Thursday in The Recorder, the Stetson student newspaper.
Three softball players dressed as black basketball players; four dressed as white basketball players.
Softball players said they were dressing as individual basketball players, not as black caricatures.
"We had (the basketball players') permission and help," the statement reads. ". . . They thought the costumes were great."
Wylie Tucker, an assistant men's basketball coach, said his players were surprised to learn of the controversy.
"The players felt that the (softball players') intentions were not offensive," he said. "Rather, they were elated that people thought enough of them to try to be like them."
None of the softball team's 16 players pictured on the school's Web site are black. Eight of the 14 men's basketball players are black. About 4 percent of the school's enrollment is black.
The school is requiring both squads to meet with the Diversity Committee, watch a documentary that addresses blackface and read the book "White Like Me," by Tim Wise, an anti-racism activist who recently spoke on campus.