Lately, I’ve been feeling very uncomfortable as a conservative professor on a college campus. Maybe it’s all those long hours I’m putting into writing to help pay for the child my wife and I are adopting from Vietnam. UNC-Wilmington’s health plan only gives us money if we want to abort a child but nothing if we chose to adopt.

But there is evidence that my discomfort is due to more than just writer’s fatigue. Other conservatives are having a hard time, even in the Deep South. And I reckon that’s mostly due to the fact that our Southern campuses are being over-run by Yankee professors and administrators. And I think I have more than a few good examples to support my contention.

Recently at Georgia Tech, the College Republicans placed 48 white crosses on the campus lawn on the 34th anniversary of Roe v. Wade - in order to pay their respects to the 48 million babies aborted since 1973. (Author’s note: UNC-Wilmington’s Women’s Resource Center “celebrated” the 34th anniversary of Roe. There are rumors that they jammed scissors into the skulls of 48 baby dolls while singing Alanis Morissette, but, unfortunately, the rumors cannot be confirmed).

The incident at Georgia Tech seems at first like an example of simple liberal intolerance. But it isn’t. My sources tell me that the crosses were stolen by Yankee administrators in the Georgia Tech Office of Campus Diversity and the Georgia Tech Women’s Resource Center. Their motivation was that they feared the crosses were about to be used as part of a Klan rally. Adding to the confusion was the fact that three students were seen shortly beforehand wearing white robes on their way to an off-campus Karate class.

But one can easily see how the “all Southerners are Klansmen” stereotype makes it tough for us (Southerners, not Klansmen) to feel comfortable on a college campus.

Also note the recent incident at Clemson University. Some white students threw a party on Martin Luther King, Jr. day. One white student put on black make-up and many were seen drinking cans of Schlitz Malt Liquor. The president of the university said he was “angered” by the incident and the NAACP (National Association for the Aggravation of Caucasian People) even stepped in to investigate.

The incident at Clemson seems at first like an example of simple adolescent racial insensitivity. But it isn’t. My sources tell me that Senator Joe Biden was there at the Clemson party, too. After downing a few Malt Liquors, he was quoted as saying, “If the Negroes would just quite drinking this stuff, they wouldn’t be so damned unclean and inarticulate.”

One can easily see how giving Biden a pass – just because he’s from Delaware – and investigating the Southern white guys is discriminatory. And that’s another reason why it’s so tough to be a Southerner on a college campus.

This concerted effort to cultivate negative stereotypes against Southerners is by no means confined to the South. Recently, at Arizona State University, resident assistants were asked to engage in a diversity exercise that promoted intolerance of white Southern Christians. Continued...