Everyone should read this USC student's powerful response to being called a racial slur
Rini Sampath may be the leader of the University of Southern California’s student body, but that doesn’t make her immune to racially-charged attacks. In a moving statement posted to Facebook, Sampath claims a member of a USC fraternity called her an “Indian piece of shit,” and hurled a drink at her through an open window as she was walking home from a friend’s apartment. The incident was wholly unprompted, and left Sampath reeling. She described her feelings in the post, writing:
Once his fraternity brothers realized it was me, they began to apologize. This stung even more. Today, as I try to unpack these events, I couldn’t quite figure out why their after-the-fact apologies deepened the wound. But one of my friends explained it to me the best this morning: “Because now you know, the first thing they see you as is subhuman.” And that’s the first thing some students on our campus see when they look at anyone who looks like me.
Sampath, who was born in India, has dealt with racism on campus before. She told the Washington Post that she would have a better chance of winning the presidency if she selected a white man as a running mate. (She didn’t, and still won.) In her post, Sampath addresses common reactions to accusations of racism in progressive environments: