More evidence that racism is alive and well in the North, in urban areas, and not something exclusively in the distant, Southern, rural past appeared in the New York Times today:

The police and city education officials said yesterday that they were investigating the appearance of a racial slur on a bench that was to be used by a Harlem high school football team at a game on Saturday at Staten Island Technical High School. Besides trying to determine who was responsible for the slur, school investigators were looking into the response of Staten Island Tech faculty members, said Margie Feinberg, a spokeswoman for the Department of Education. The coach of the Harlem team, sponsored by Wadleigh High School, accused two Staten Island Tech faculty members of trying to trivialize the incident.

And, for the national view on higher ed racism, Vox Ex Machina is keeping a running tally of the College Racism Roundup.

What seems clear from the both the details of the Staten Island incident in which faculty members were reportedly trying to trivialize the incident, and the pervasiveness of the racism chronicled over at Vox ex Machina, is that the academy itself is racist.