The Mizzou Hunger Strike Kid Has Been "Outed" As Being The Child Of A Multimillionaire Family

StlToday – Jonathan Butler, a central figure in the protests at the University of Missouri, is an Omaha native and the son of a railroad vice president, the Omaha World-Herald reports.

Butler refused food last week in a move to force the university system’s president, Timothy M. Wolfe, from office. Wolfe resigned Monday and Butler ended his hunger strike.

Jonathan Butler played high-school football at Omaha Central High, where he won a state championship, and earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration from Mizzou, the newspaper reports. He is working toward a master’s degree in educational leadership and policy.

He is a member of a prominent Omaha family. The newspaper says that Butler’s father is Eric L. Butler, executive vice president for sales and marketing for the Union Pacific Railroad. His 2014 compensation was $8.4 million, according to regulatory filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

This one is going viral through the conservative Internet today, people railing on the hunger strike kid Jonathan Butler because he’s actually rich and not an impoverished black youth with memes like these:

Or stuff about how part of his gripes were about grad students losing health care when his dad’s work compensation is this:

And I get how it looks. I went to a private high school in New York because my local high school in a shitty part of the Bronx would have gotten me stabbed for being the only white face there. As you might guess, the school had a super Jewish liberal NYC vibe where kids had free periods, could leave campus, and there was pretty collegial overall. When I came back to visit the year after graduating, there were a bunch of kids outside on the field between buildings “protesting” the genocide in Darfur. They held their little signs, chanted, acted like they were accomplishing something, it was exactly like you’d guess. They didn’t live in Darfur, none of them had ever been there, and I sincerely doubt that they could even pick an indigenous Sudanese person out of a lineup. At the time, I was just some cynical 18 or 19-year-old and probably made some shitty remark to myself and moved on.

But you know what? Those kids may have been little liberal nerds and they may have had no real reason to have this attachment to the genocide of African farmers but Darfur was still a real fucked up situation. And I think that’s what I didn’t convey in my novella about Missouri yesterday. I don’t think Melissa Click, who’s never been a black person, who only lives to complain about things and relish every moment, who looks like the teacher from the Magic School Bus, should be telling us about the problems of black people. But that doesn’t mean things can’t affect you. Is the most effective way to get a message across yelling at people, tying up public areas, and generally being a nuisance when in 2015 you can make an eloquent blog post or well-produced video and get just as much traction and attention for your cause? Of course not. But it doesn’t make the point less valid.

And I hate to break it to white people and be the “guy with a black friend” (also really wish we still employed someone of color besides me after a good beach trip to say it instead, shouts to Mo) but just because your family is rich as hell doesn’t mean you like, stop being black. That’s a part of your outfit regardless of how wealthy or educated you are. Here’s a story that always stuck with me from when I was a young NBA fan, about former Celtic Dee Brown:

WELLESLEY — Thirteen years ago, Dee Brown learned firsthand what can happen when a black face looks out of place in Wellesley. On that particular day, it ended up pressed against the pavement.

Brown was the top draft choice of the Boston Celtics and had just bought a $750,000 house in the affluent suburb when seven police officers, searching for a black man who had robbed the bank across the street, ordered him at gunpoint out of his car next to the Wellesley Hills post office, made him lie face-down on the ground, and slapped on handcuffs.

“Then somebody said, `That’s the guy that just got drafted by the Celtics,’ ” said Brown, now a consultant to a computer software company outside Orlando, Fla. “I probably would have given [up] my contract at the time because I was so scared.”

“The Dee Brown incident brought forth a number of different concerns that people had,” said [Thomas J.] O’Loughlin, who is now the Milford police chief. “But to give the community its due, you had a community that was willing to listen and address the concerns.”

First of all: Wow, Dee Brown became a computer software consultant, did not see that coming. Second of all: Here’s Dee Brown, a professional athlete who would end up becoming a big name in Boston but was already a first round draft pick, driving down a street, being pulled over by seven cops just because he was a black guy in a neighborhood where another black guy did something bad. I get it, there aren’t a ton of black guys in the area so it’s like saying “Find the guy in the Where’s Waldo outfit” but that’s the point: Even if someone is doing well, it doesn’t mean they don’t have experiences or knowledge that we don’t have.

It doesn’t help to single this kid out for being a “spoiled rich liberal protester” because to do that is diverting from any actual issue the kid is trying to raise. Just hear what he has to say and go from there. Writing a large portion of campus’s feelings off because, surprise, the graduate student doing a protest hunger strike who signed a Do-Not-Resuscitate order before starting is dramatic and had a better hand dealt in life is short sighted. No matter how much he grandstanded or how fat his dad’s bank statements are, Missouri is still a place where people conceivably envision a world where white militants were going to come and attack them. It’s still a place where alums from the previous generations can recount traumatic incidents with vivid detail. Regardless of the circumstance, the emotions Jonathan Butler stirred up on that campus are real and resonated with a lot of people affected by them, well beyond just the Melissa Click types.

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Jonathan Butler is who we thought he was. But the less we find superficial reasons to avoid real issues, the better off we’ll all be.