Compton cookout

The Compton Cookout was an off-campus costume-party organized in February 2010 at the University of California San Diego (UCSD) to mock Black History Month. The event, advertised through the popular social networking site Facebook,<ref name="UC San Diego Condemns Student Party Mocking Black History Month" group="Ref"/> urged guests to wear chains, don cheap clothes and speak very loudly, The San Diego Union-Tribune reported.<ref name="UCSD Party Mocks Black History Month." group="Ref"/> UCSD administrators condemned the party as a “blatant disregard of our campus values,”<ref name="UC San Diego Condemns Student Party Mocking Black History Month" group="Ref"/> and students met with administrators to express their concern. As of 2010, African-Americans numbered less than two-percent of the UCSD undergraduate student body, despite recruitment efforts, <ref name="UCSD Begins Investigation of Frat's Race-Mocking Party." group="Ref"/> and thirteen percent of the African-American students admitted to UCSD decide to enroll there.<ref name="Diversity Study." group="Ref"/> These numbers are sometimes taken to reflect a propensity for discrimination at UCSD.
Background
UCSD officials did not identify the hosts of the Compton Cookout, but an email obtained by The San Diego Union-Tribune from Gary Ratcliff, assistant vice chancellor for student life, linked the costume party to Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity.<ref name="UCSD Party Mocks Black History Month." group="Ref"/> “It was not an official Pike event, but the students who posted it on Facebook were members of Pike and other frats,” Ratcliff wrote. Garron Engstrom, president of Pi Kappa Alpha, asserted that the fraternity neither planned nor endorsed the costume-party. “The fraternity regrets the display of ignorance and error-of-judgment made by any individual members who may have attended or were associated via social-media with the racially-offensive party,” Engstrom wrote in an email.<ref name="UC San Diego Condemns Student Party Mocking Black History Month" group="Ref"/> “These actions are in direct violation of Pike’s code of conduct, and appropriate disciplinary actions will be taken.”
Reactions
California lawmakers condemned the invitation to the Compton Cookout, which invited guests to dress and act in a manner associated stereotypically with poor, urban African Americans.<ref name="TV Show Incenses Black Students at UCSD." group="Ref"/> Assemblyman Isadore Hall, whose district includes Compton, called the invitation “a blatant and hurtful act of racism, sexism and hate.”<ref name="UC San Diego Condemns Student Party Mocking Black History Month" group="Ref"/> Jeff Gattas, the UCSD executive director of communications and public affairs, told the Union-Tribune that because the event was not sanctioned by the university or run by a student organization, university officials do not have a reason to penalize the party hosts.<ref name="UCSD Party Mocks Black History Month." group="Ref"/>
On the 18 of February, students on SRTV, the campus TV station, allegedly called the protesters "ungrateful n-----s." According to the source, a note was also found on the TV studio floor that read “Compton lynching,” NBC San Diego reported.<ref name="Compton Party Part Deux Organizer Defends His Actions." group="Ref"/>
NBC San Diego reported on the 21 of February that a second invitation, Compton Cookout Part Deux, was advertised through Facebook. Mike Randazzo, the organizer of Part Deux, told NBC San Diego that the response to the first Compton Cookout was injudicious: “If your intent is to make fun and not to harm anyone, and you really aren’t trying to hurt anyone’s feelings, then it’s different from trying to cut someone down on purpose.”
“Everyone gets made fun of out of jest now, not hate,” the invitation to Compton Cookout Part Deux read.<ref name="Compton Party Part Deux Organizer Defends His Actions." group="Ref"/>
History professor Danny Widener, who directs the university's African American studies program, said he was outraged but not surprised by the party, the Los Angeles Times reported. Widener said that "the campus climate is one in which are constantly regarded as a statistical anomaly at best.”<ref name="UC San Diego Condemns Student Party Mocking Black History Month" group="Ref"/>
Poet and Temple University professor Will Esposito writes, on the national poetry blog PhillySound, that Randazzo “presents two justifications for the second party: 1) the stereotyping of everyone in turn is a jest, or at least, is not racist; and 2) racial stereotyping is protected by right. Randazzo does not acknowledge that the first justification veils an impulse to segregation. To argue that it is not racist to stereotype separately but equally is to install a separate-but-equal clause at the heart of the justification. No wonder he resorts to claims of right: the first justification is a contradiction.”<ref name="Poor Justifications for Racism." group="Ref"/>

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