RACISM AND TURF WARS AT ROXBURY COMMUNITY COLLEGE:

Kambon now spearheads a group called “Friends of Roxbury Community College.” The group has written an outrageous letter to Governor Deval Patrick. Kambon is incensed because the newly appointed chairman of the board of RCC, Gerald Chertavian, is white. This, to Kambon and company, is an outrage. . . .

Chertavian is a great choice to head the board. After a successful career on Wall Street, he began a highly regarded job training program for young people of color who struggled in traditional educational settings — exactly the constituency RCC serves. He is strategic, thoughtful, and the most unassuming zillionaire I’ve ever met.

It’s tempting to dismiss Kambon’s ravings as empty demagoguery. Yet in this case his view probably does resonate with a segment of the community. But that segment cannot be allowed to stop the school from reforming its culture and its mission. . . . And this is really about turf. The RCC administration — most of which remains in place — has failed at virtually every aspect of running a college. But none of that ever outraged Kambon and his followers — not a graduation rate in the low single digits, not the financial aid problems, not the unreported campus crimes, not the attempt to keep quiet a student’s report of sexual assault by a professor. No protests, no letters to the governor, about any of that.

No, the real focus of their outrage is that this white guy might not view the incompetents who turned RCC into an educational and bureaucratic mess as untouchable.

And what’s really outrageous is that this isn’t even surprising.