After talking with my daughter who attends the University of Connecticut, she shared with me the incident of a white fraternity calling members of Alpha Kappa Alpha, a black sorority racially offensive derogatory names. One of the members of the sorority included a faculty member, all of whom were engaged in a rock painting ritual that takes place at UConn, when this incident occurred. The police were called, and after the black female faculty member explained what happened, the police did nothing. Later, at a campus meeting that included the police chief, the question was asked of the police chief, if a black fraternity harassed members of a white sorority in a similar fashion, what would your response be? The police chief declined to respond. As black people in America, we know what the response would have been in a place like Storrs, CT - arrests, suspensions, and possible questionable police tactics. It is unfortunate that in 2014, racism still exits. The only difference between 1964 and 2014 is that we live in a society today that perpetuates the lie and falsehood that we live in a post-racial society. At least when we acknowledged the need for civil rights, civil rights leaders not only fought to liberate black people and others who were marginalized, but the bigger benefit of the civil rights movement was that it liberated the souls of both the oppressor and the naïveté of innocent white privilege both if which facilitated the structures and institutions that promoted racism. This is a time for a neo-civil rights movement, with a new strategic approach.
Posted on: Mon, 17 Nov 2014 03:30:38 +0000
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