After recent national and local racially-charged incidents, 25 Northwestern students gathered Tuesday to discuss how to handle the controversies.
The talk, “The Aftermath: From Megan Williams to the Jena 6, What Are the Repercussions?” was sponsored by the African American Freshman Advisory Board. It featured interim Weinberg Dean Aldon Morris and African American Studies professors Martha Biondi and John Márquez.
The discussion centered around a few recent incidents. Last December, six black high schools students were charged with attempted murder for beating a white classmate. Although the charges were later reduced to battery, many said the case of the “Jena 6” students is an example of racial injustice. In another incident, Megan Williams, a 23-year-old black woman, said she was kidnapped, raped and tortured by six white individuals for more than a week in West Virginia in September.
Biondi said the incidents were troubling because of what they represent about the country.
“I think one reason why there’s been such outrage is that what has happened flies in the face of the color-blind rhetoric we’ve heard from our government,” she said. “Recent events shatter the myth of a color-blind America.”
The students said they were particularly upset by a recent “blackface incident” at NU. They said two NU Ph.D. students attended a Halloween party a few weeks ago costumed in blackface because they “thought it would be funny.” Students and others at the discussion said the costumes were offensive to blacks.
“These could be future teachers (at NU),” Biondi said. “If Ph.D. students think that this is funny, then that’s a problem.”
Communication freshman Marcus Shepard, the president of the Freshman Advisory Board, said he has already been subjected to a lot of racism while at NU. He said he’s been called the n-word, had his Wildcard questioned at least 10 times and has felt scared for his life by white people yelling obscenities from cars.
He said NU students are ignorant to the racism on campus.
“People here at Northwestern are white-privileged,” he said. “They don’t see racism here because they’ve never seen racism, and it always comes back to, ‘I have a black friend.'”
Despite these incidents, the faculty urged the students not to get too caught up in the specific events.
“While we focus on the nooses,” Morris said, “we have to recognize that these are but manifestations of much deeper structural issues.”
Medill junior Tyler Yarbrough said it is unfortunate that it takes sensational events to get students together.
“We jump when there’s atrocities,” she said. “Nowadays it takes events like this to bring us together and that’s where the problem lies.”
Morris said the first step to being an activist is getting a good education.
“There’s no real divide between activism and scholarship, but a realization that activism is scholarship and scholarship is in many ways activism,” he said.
Biondi said students need to be “extremely vigilant” in working to stop racism.
“Historically, students have been at the forefront of the activism that brings tremendous social change,” she said. “It was the students putting their bodies on the line that really ended apartheid in the U.S.”
Communication freshman Candise Hill, vice president of the Freshman Advisory Board, said black students have the responsibility to educate their white counterparts.
“I’ve been insulted racially, but I’ve also come across so many people who truly don’t know,” she said. “It blows people’s minds and really does change the way they live.”
Shepard said the discussion helped students realize anyone can change society.
“We as students learned tonight that we have the power,” he said. “If we put ours minds to it, we can starting making change here.”
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