TYT: Citadel Cadets Suspended For Dressing Like KKK

Eight students at The Citadel military college in Charleston, South Carolina were suspended after photos were found of them on Facebook, wearing white hoods that “some say” look like KKK hoods. Cenk Uygur, John Iadarola (Think Tank), Jimmy Dore (The Jimmy Dore Show Podcast), and Wes Clark Jr., hosts of the The Young Turks, break it down. Tell us what you think in the comment section below.

“At least eight students at The Citadel military college in Charleston, South Carolina have been suspended after photos of them dressed in white hoods surfaced on Facebook Wednesday night. Though Citadel president Lt. Gen. John W. Rosa was quick to explain the incident as a group of students “singing Christmas carols as part of a ‘Ghosts of Christmas Past’ skit,” that excuse looks even flimsier when considered in the context of the school’s racist past.

Wednesday night was not the first time Citadel cadets have dressed up like the KKK. The Post and Courier recalls an October 1986 incident in which five white Citadel cadets “entered black student Kevin Nesmith’s room wearing white sheets and towels, and shouting racial insults. They left a charred paper cross in his room.”

According to a Washington Post report about the incident, Nesmith was one of 31 black students in a freshman class of 651. The cadets who terrorized him were not expelled—instead, Citadel officials ordered them “to walk 195 hours of punishment.” Nesmith, however, resigned from school citing continued racial harassment. The NAACP then filed an $800,000 federal lawsuit on Nesmith’s behalf, claiming that “racial bigotry has historically been tolerated and sanctioned by officials at the Citadel."*

Read more here: http://gawker.com/this-isnt-the-first-time-citadel-cadets-have-dressed-up-1747514398