EAST CAMPUS– Campbell Greenwood CC ’21, a statistics major from Santa Monica, CA, courageously refuses to say the n-word when Kanye West’s 2005 hit “Gold Digger” is played at campus parties.
“I don’t care if it’s in the lyrics — I’m not gonna do it,” Greenwood told the Fed in an interview this week. “My frat brothers can say what they like. I know I’m on the right side of history.”
Campus activists have responded enthusiastically to Greenwood’s radical self-restraint.
“It is so refreshing to see students working at the ground level to combat American racial issues,” said Jessica van Doren, administrative assistant at the Office of Diversity, Culture, and Inclusion. “Through the Core Curriculum, Columbia students do a lot of theoretical engagement with these topics, but it’s amazing to see someone getting down into the hands-on, nitty gritty work.”
Greenwood hopes other white students will follow his example.
“As a white man, it’s hard to reckon with the complicated legacy of racism in America. But each of us has to do our part, no matter how much that rhyme begs to be finished. If refraining from saying the n-word is what it takes to help mend the racial scars of American society, that is a sacrifice I’m willing to make.”
He later added, “Now, if ‘Freaky Friday’ came on, that’d be a different story. That’s my jam.”
