This president didn’t make any disparaging remarks.
The racial slurs were made by unidentified persons in a pick up truck at the Black student body’s president. The university chancellor addressed the issue immediately. He said, “One bias incident is one too many. The incidents that I have heard about—both blatant and subtle—are totally unacceptable. Our core values of respect, responsibility, discovery and excellence leave no room for bias and discrimination.” Then a drunken student directed racial slurs toward Black students rehearsing a homecoming skit.
Because of these incidents this president was confronted by protesters at a homecoming parade. These Black students turned the incidents involving racial slurs into a combined grievance about racism.
Now racism is a belief in superiority. If that belief doesn’t produce a discriminatory action then the belief is impotent. But if that definition is too general Georgetown University professor Michael Eric Dyson specifically stated: Racism presupposes the ability to control a significant segment of the population through imposed policies coercively.
Does the use of racial slurs meet the criteria of either one of these definitions to justify a real grievance?
But the protesters blocked the president’s vehicle during the homecoming procession. The president didn’t exit the car to interact eventually the police pushed the protesters back. The protesters felt slighted. They believed the president demonstrated indifference by remaining in his vehicle. Then a protester went on a hunger strike.
The hunger striker stated his reason was these incidents “dynamically disrupted the learning experience for marginalized underrepresented students.”
Now is that a real grievance or is that hyperbole?
When the football team boycotted in support of the hunger strike their first demand stated: The president must acknowledge his White male privilege, recognize that systems of oppression exist, admit his gross negligence, apologize for allowing his driver to hit a demonstrator, and apologize for refusing to intervene when the police used excessive force with demonstrators.
Is that a real grievance or is that hyperbole?
Then the Missouri Student Association wrote a letter to the Board of Curators that began: The University of Missouri met the shooting of Mike Brown with silence. In the following months our students were left stranded, forced to face an increase in tension and inequality with no systemic support.
Is that a real grievance or is that hyperbole?
Historically students that sought to integrate lunch counters were trained to withstand racial slurs and battery by ignorant individuals because their real grievance was against segregation institutionalized by the state.
These students internalized their real grievance—racial slurs—and imagined themselves incarcerated by institutional racism. (Hunger strikes are tactics of political prisoners or people under colonial rule.) And those that sympathized with these students provided psychological comfort for their distress but that is not the same as moral support for their demands.
(J. Pharoah Doss is a contributor to the New Pittsburgh Courier. He blogs at jpharoahdoss@blogspot.com)
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