During the recent debate over the alleged police brutality against Chipalo Street '06 GS, I have had trouble figuring out where to position myself. On the one hand, institutionalized racism is a very real problem, and collective action is an effective way of bringing attention to it. On the other hand, I think it is wrong to immediately assume that all instances of confrontation between white and black individuals are racially motivated, and to view these issues exclusively through the lens of race. By perpetuating the language and worldview of race, we push the possibility of a world in which skin color does not matter further into the distance.
If we are to truly unite against racism, we have to do so through issues that unite rather than divide our campus. For example, why don't we put all of our white, black, red, yellow and brown heads together and figure out how to deal with a clear instance of institutionalized racism: the situation at Hope High School. Brown students could demand that 10 percent of the sales of their overpriced books go directly to help the under-funded, predominately black high school five blocks from our campus.
Or maybe Hurricane Katrina should be the issue around which we unite. Many poor, black New Orleans residents are still struggling because the federal government has hung them out to dry. Maybe we should organize to support them. Like the situation at Hope High School, the federal response to Hurricane Katrina is a clear and indisputable example of racist injustice, and even as students we can make a real difference there.
Right now, on campus, we are only making things worse. It is extremely troubling to me that on-campus rallies fighting against prejudice have been based upon one. As the letters pour into The Herald, and protesters march, it's baffling that no one has realized that all of this was sparked by an unproved assumption that a police officer's actions were racially motivated.
The first step to ending prejudice is to end our own. The absolute last thing we need is somebody marching against another color, or influencing someone else into adopting a racial worldview. The goal of racial equality should not be making things better for your race. The goal should be to make things better, period. In a world without racism there would be no "us" and "them," no racial divisions. This means that in the fight against racism, there should not be racial lines either. We need to start to change how we view this entire issue.
Instead of looking at things in terms of race, we should start looking at things in terms of racism. In that way, one can only be one of two things: either a bigot, or not. There is no difference between a white bigot and a black bigot. And if you aren't a bigot, then there is no difference between white and black. Instead of rising up in groups of color, we should rise up as a group of non-bigots to get rid of all the stupid, racist nonsense in this country.
There should be protesting here at Brown. It is an absolute necessity to have people who are passionate, forceful and angry enough to march against racism. But we need to make sure that our conviction doesn't affect our intelligence. And we need to practice what we preach. There needs to be an effort to unite those at Brown who believe in true equality.
As with the current national political climate, the only people we hear from in this campus debate are the extremists. I say, to hell with them. We should march against the very idea that there is a "white side" and a "black side," because going back and forth is going to get us nowhere. We should create a discernable group that is the middle, made up of people who don't see skin color except when someone in the paper rants about it, and don't care about skin color except when they get so frustrated about the small percentage of bigots who are screwing things up for everyone. I would be willing to wager that that would include the vast majority of this campus, as well as the majority of this country.
If you are interested in creating or joining an anti-racist group on this campus that isn't for blacks or whites, reds or blues, gays or straights, women or men, staff or students, then e-mail me. There are already plenty of race-centric anti-racist groups on campus, but at some point, there needs to be a group for everybody.
Carman McNary '08 had a dream once.
In it, he could fly, and it had nothing to do with race.
