Race, Rhetoric, and Judicial Opinions: Missouri as a Case Study

Brad Desnoyer and Anne Alexander

On November 9, 2015, the president of the University of Missouri System resigned after “months of escalating racial tension surrounding high-profile incidents on the flagship campus.” The resignation and events preceding it, including a graduate student's hunger strike and a threatened boycott by the University of Missouri's football team, prompted local, state, and national debates on race and higher education.

On one hand, some media outlets reported that “angry black students” caused “[c]haos” and “targeted” innocent students. In this narrative, commentators portrayed students as throwing “tantrum[s]” and wishing to be “coddl[ed]” in an “imaginary civil-rights triumph.” The University was depicted as a community “gripped” by “fear” due to the acts of African-American students.

In contrast, other media outlets reported that African-American students protested with “anti-racism demonstrations” after “racist incidents” occurred at a campus with a long history of racial “injustice.” In this counter-narrative, students were battling “systemic racism,” and the football team's boycott “influence[d] broader campus issues.” Opinion pieces “applaud[ed]” the students' “ability to effect change” in a “hostile environment[]” and articulated that “racial threats” by white students “against [b]lack students” escalated, leading to a “[c]risis” where black students were afraid for their safety.

These competing narratives are more than mere media constructs; they are reflected in all of society, where “majoritarian narratives” dominate the landscape with their themes and rhetoric. And while the rhetoric of  race evolved over the twentieth century, the ubiquity of majoritarian narratives undermined any true change of the story.