@bonifartius @tripu

Although it is difficult to form any type of conclusions from a single article, not actually being in the room at the time, I think that the fact that the woman who complained was a freshman and most likely a young person, contributes to the reaction. One of the purposes of college is so young people can learn how respond appropriately in social situations. To learn to be adults.

I don’t know if she questioned Sheng contemporaneously during the class or waited until afterwards to complain. Questioning him during the class would be the proper way to do it. Then they could discuss it in the classroom and sort it out. It sounds like she became very confrontational about it.

As for Sheng, you never actually know for sure what is going on inside someone’s brain. He seems rather clueless about the whole situation. The article said that he had attended awareness training, and I don’t understand how someone could not know that blackface in almost any context is inappropriate today and so he should have either picked an alternative composition adaptation example or explained prior to the showing that that blackface was inappropriate even in the 60s when it was made.

The reason why that kind of contextualization is required before showing the film is because older productions of that sort are designed to promote and perpetuate racism, which was largely tolerated before the civil rights movement during the 60s. It was designed to make people more racist. If those films are shown to a young audience who may or may not understand that, then it could have racism-promoting effects on those young people. By explaining all of that up front before the film is shown, then it helps to mitigate and inoculate against that and instead it can show how racism is bad.