Student’s TikTok sparks racial insensitivity concerns
Professor’s minstrel show lecture spurs discomfort among students
The music department faculty plan to add sensitivity training for their professors after a student’s TikTok highlights problematic teachings in class.
February 23, 2023
A Murray State music class lecture garnered online attention after a student posted a TikTok of their professor discussing the impact of minstrel shows in America and seemingly offering praise to the discriminatory form of entertainment.
American minstrel shows were prevalent during the 19th and 20th centuries and were supposed to be a form of racial comedy based on the exaggeration and caricaturization of Black stereotypes, often with a white performer in blackface. “Jump Jim Crow” was an early popular minstrel show, according to PBS, which later gave way to Jim Crow laws in the late 19th century.
“The one positive the minstrel show does is it unites American humor,” said Director of Jazz Studies Todd Hill to his History and Analysis of American Popular Music course. “A lot of people see nothing wrong with wearing blackface. Otherwise, you couldn’t tell jokes you wouldn’t tell.”
Hill went on to say the greatest minstrel performers were Black and “it was a better way to make a living, better than chopping cotton, sure as hell better than living in a sharecropper shack somewhere.”
Sophomore music business major Mayson Phoenix recorded Hill’s voice during his lecture and posted it to TikTok, receiving around 91,000 views.
Phoenix said they felt uncomfortable with the way Hill was discussing minstrel shows, which led to them recording the video.
“He had started talking about the positives with minstrel shows, and I was like, ‘That is so weird that you said that,’” Phoenix said. “I had decided to pull up my phone and start recording myself on Snapchat because I originally just posted it to my story. Because I was just, you know, wanting to show some of my friends, like, ‘Hey, this is really messed up.’”
After receiving a lot of attention on Snapchat, Phoenix decided to post the video on TikTok on Feb. 4. When Phoenix made their post at the time, they couldn’t articulate why the lecture made them uneasy, but after posting the video on their TikTok page, witch.frown, Phoenix received around 3,000 comments helping them find the words to explain how the lecture made them feel.
“It wasn’t until I posted it to TikTok that I got all the comments, saying, ‘This is how he could have addressed it’ and just talking about how this was wrong and borderline racist, and I agree,” Phoenix said.
Following his praise for the impact minstrel shows have had in America, Hill said it was something he would never get involved with as an “empath” meaning he is someone who is understanding of other’s emotions.
While Phoenix received a lot of support from fellow TikTokers, they have received some bullying and threats on YikYak, an anonymous chat app that allows users to interact with those within a 5 mile radius of them. Not only was Phoenix targeted but so was one of their friends who defended them.
“By the time I was looking through [YikYak], some of the worse ones had been taken down,” Phoenix said. ”There were still a lot of ones calling me stupid…and some people were making fun of the fact I was homeless. I got screenshots of the ones that had been deleted before I saw them [that] were saying stuff, like, how people wanted to murder people like me.”
Phoenix also talked about some speculation regarding the TikTok being taken out of context or Hill possibly reading, but Phoenix said this wasn’t the case.
“I went to the section of the book that he was supposedly reading from, and it’s nothing like what he was saying, like sure some of the topics that he was talking about are in the book, but they’re handled in more of a polite manner and handled with so much more care,” Phoenix said.
Phoenix shared the book with The News titled “American Popular Music, from Minstrelsy to MP3.” Chapter Two, “After the Ball,” talks about minstrel shows but does so in a neutral fashion to explain the history, not the “positive” impacts of minstrel shows.
In regards to what they’d want to see done in the future surrounding this topic, Phoenix believes if content like this needs to be covered, it should be done so by a Black professor.
“I personally don’t think that a non-person of color should even be teaching that subject because of how sensitive it is,” Phoenix said. “The department definitely needs to be educated on a lot of different topics. They need to be educated more on LGBT topics, more on [Black, Indigenous and people of color] topics because they just kind of pretend they don’t exist.”
The News reached out to both Hill and Lucia Unrau, music department chair, regarding this matter. Unrau said the department would not be making a comment.
“This matter is being addressed in accordance with University policies and procedures,” Unrau wrote. “Murray State University is a student-centered and inclusive university where all students are valued and respected. As this is a personnel matter, we will have no further comment.”
The News also contacted the Institutional, Diversity, Equity and Access Office in regards to how this matter will be handled, but they deferred us to Executive Director of Branding and Marketing Shawn Touney, who echoed Unrau’s statement.
On Feb. 15, Phoenix posted an update on the matter. The class will not be taught for the remainder of the spring 2023 semester. Instead, it will be replaced by another course that will begin meeting during the second half of the semester.
The half semester class will not be taught by Hill.
In addition to the TikTok update, Phoenix updated The News saying they had a meeting with a member from the IDEA office and the Dean of Humanities and Fine Arts David Balthrop.
Phoenix also said the music department will be going through sensitivity training every year following this incident.
James • Feb 24, 2023 at 10:25 am
Please learn the difference between scholarship and activism. Hill’s words were reflecting the dominant scholarship on the material, and to cast it as otherwise misconstrues the material. Also arguing that someone cannot teach something because of their experiences diminishes both the human intellect and the capacity of historical empathy.
Anti-intellectualism at its finest.
Sergio • Feb 24, 2023 at 8:25 am
What is this article? Is this a gossip column or a ‘gotcha’ piece? It doesn’t really read as a news article, but maybe I’m missing something. The title makes it seem like a student uncovered racial insensitivity from a professor. However, as I read the article, it makes it seem like a professor was discussing a racist topic from the past and a student was groomed by the internet to feel a certain way about it. I don’t think that’s what you are going for, is it? That doesn’t look too good for this poor student or professor.
Your main source was a student that didn’t really understand his opinion on the matter, as you mention. Then, he solidified his opinion after receiving 3,000 comments. After getting those comments, he was able to solidify how he felt about what was said. Essentially, you are submarining your source by telling us he was groomed by 3,000 comments on the internet about how to feel about the subject. You don’t need to treat a source that bad when you are writing the article. It loses credibility for the source. Someone who was taught what to say something, can’t be taken as sincere. A lot of this could have been left out of here to give your source more credibility, especially since it looks like your trying to give him creditability to make the professor out to be a racist.
It also mentions that this wasn’t taken out of context, but the context of the lecture wasn’t really discussed. The book was discussed and I would argue that if a teacher is reading straight from the book, get a new teacher. Reference materials are different than curriculum. How about for context, can we get a quote from the other kids that were in that same class? I’m not really willing to bury a man based on one student’s account. I would hope that the news would do more research than ask one kid and then label a man a racist from a short video. I’ve not seen the TikTok, but my understanding is that they aren’t very long. Classes are around 45 minutes if I remember correctly. Are we to believe the TikTok alone? Are there not ANY other students to ring in to confirm what they heard? Isn’t this basic journalism? Don’t you need to corroborate what your hearing with other sources?
I’m not saying that this isn’t a viable news story, but this article seems like a lazy attempt to paint a student as a groomed kid with no opinions other than what the internet tells him to feel and paint a professor as a racist. Plus, the start of the article discussing Jim Crow minstrels reads as a crappy high school book report.
But whatever, the student is apparently a sheep, the professor is a racist, and critical race theory should only be taught a black teacher. If critical race theory is not taught by a black teacher, don’t teach it I guess? Got it, thanks Murray State News.