Jeff Chang, a music critic and journalist, addresses racial unrest on college campuses across the country in the essay “What A Time To Be Alive” in his most recent book We Gon’ Be Alright. Chang starts off the essay with the University of Missouri situation between former President Tim Wolfe, and graduate student Jonathan Butler, as a specific example of racial protests on college campuses. To continue he begins to address the public’s reactions to these protests as some said students were a threat to free speech. In the important study Chang adds a historical reference talking about the end of the apartheid in South Africa. The apartheid was a policy of segregation on grounds of race during the years of 1948-1991. “Roelf Meyer served as the National Party’s vice minister of police from 1985-1988. His job was to stop demonstrations in Black townships by any means. Throughout his work he began to …show more content…
Although some like Conor Friedersdorf, of the Atlantic, categorized students as “intolerant bullies, (34)” meaning that the reasons for protests were not really reasons at all. Chang argues that the issues students are expressing need to be improved upon as if not, we will continue to go round and round in this vicious cycle. The addition of the apartheid in South Africa backs up Chang’s argument as there is a consensus of it being a serious issue. This explains why he included this piece of history and how it relates to college campuses. Encouraging critics to listen to students, just as Meyer did to those of color, is the only way to prevent today's youth from bring up the same issues in future years. Just as Chang predicted, the next school year brought protesters to hundreds of colleges and universities. What happened at Mizzou was just the beginning of a country wide movement for racial justice on campuses that hasn’t stopped
Charles R. Lawrence intended audience in his article “On Racist Speech” is college students and universities. His sense of tone is forthcoming. Lawerence word choice sets the tone by using the words conspicuous,dissenter, and bigot. The article gives examples of how universities do not protect minority college students. Lawrence states that universities should protect their students He also gives an example of how universities have tried to have rules to ban racist speech yet they have proven ineffective in stopping racial slurs. The regulations have not stopped the verbal brutality yet it has stopped the occurrences of physical fights. He mentions how students do not have any need to be hurt verbally.
To stifle the spread of the ‘contagion,’ the article, “Four Students Spark Spreading Drive,”sites how the “good performance of the Southern police” is what “prevented chaos.” [v] By using a favorable term to describe the white institutions, the article works to label police as an admirable unit who selflessly suppressed anarchy. This is contrasted with the ‘chaos’ utilized to describe the sit-in protestors. In making this comment, the article implies that the protests harm society rather than help it. Moreover, words like “contagion” and “chaos” are also utilized to condemn the black’s entitlement to protests; once again, the media plays on white fears that whites might stand to lose their sense of entitlements if they allow minorities to have the same rights as they do. The diction used by the Chicago Defender’s article parallels the word choice of Harold L. Keith’s article, “Are White Supremacists Killing Labor?”, which is about the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Triggered by the arrest of Rosa Parks, the NAACP organized the Boycott to change segregation laws regarding bus seats and driver courtesy toward people of color. Emerging Civil Rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. was primarily responsible for coordinating the Bus boycott movement.[vii]. Keith’s article
Political turmoil on campus began in 1968 when a Black Panther member, George Murray, was dismissed from school, and student militants called a strike. Using terrorist tactics, these groups intimidated and physically threatened students and professors if they crossed the picket line. Some of their demands included the formulation of an autonomous black studies department, promotion to full professor of a faculty member who had one year's experience, the firing of a white administrator, and the admission of all black students who applied for the next academic year.
College is full of new experiences, new people, and new communities, and many universities encourage the exchange of new ideas and diversity among students. This year, the University of Chicago sent out a letter to all of its incoming freshmen informing them that in keeping with their beliefs of freedom of expression and healthy discussion and debate, the school would not provide “safe spaces” or “trigger warnings”. Senior Sophie Downes found this letter to be misleading in many ways, including in the definitions of safe spaces and trigger warnings, as well as the issues it was addressing. Downes claims that the letter was misrepresenting the school, but also was using the letter as a sort
On the date May 26, 1956, two female students from Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University, Wilhelmina Jakes and Carrie Patterson, had taken a seat down in the whites only section of a segregated bus in the city of Tallahassee, Florida. When these women refused to move to the colored section at the very back of the bus, the driver had decided to pull over into a service station and call the police on them. Tallahassee police arrested them and charged them with the accusation of them placing themselves in a position to incite a riot. In the days after that immediately followed these arrests, students at the Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University organized a huge campus-wide boycott of all of the city buses. Their inspiring stand against segregation set an example and an intriguing idea that had spread to tons of Tallahassee citizens who were thinking the same things and brought a change of these segregating ways into action. Soon, news of the this boycott spread throughout the whole entire community rapidly. Reverend C.K. Steele composed the formation of an organization known as the Inter-Civic Council (ICC) to manage the logic and other events happening behind the boycott. C.K. Steele and the other leaders created the ICC because of the unfounded negative publicity surrounding the National Associat...
Furthermore, despite the Federal government’s attempts to combat white vigilance, violence was still continuously used against African Americans. Although higher education was now available to African Americans with the opening of universities such as Howard and Fisk, many ex slaves remained uneducated and therefore maintained an inferior position in society. Like French political observer Tocqueville noted, although slavery no longer existed, ‘racial prejudice’ continued. This allows us to draw the conclusion that while the reconstruction period succeeded in aiding African Americans in the fight for civil rights, its goals were not full-filled.
Even though whites and blacks protested together, not all of them got punished in the same ways. Even though it wasn’t folderol committed by either race, racists saw it as this and would do anything to keep segregation intact. Sometimes, the whites would be shunned, by society, and not hurt physically. While the blacks, on the other hand, were brutally kille...
Students at the University of Missouri, specifically the Concerned Student 1950 activist group, began a resistance movement to remove the university’s president, Tim Wolfe. The university saw a rise in the number of racist incidents, but the president did not take any action. Some of the racist incidents include “a swastika, drawn in excrement” and the “screaming of racial insults, including the ‘N-word” at the head of the Missouri Students Association (“Missouri”). The students began protesting by standing in front of the president’s car at a parade, but when that didn’t garner a response they began to resist in more extreme methods. Jonathan Butler, a graduate student at the University of Missouri, went on a hunger strike, refusing to eat until the president, who took little action against the racist incidents, chose to resign. Hunger strikes, much like abortions, are a form of resistance that can be categorized by inward violence. After a week without food, Tim Wolfe resigned and Butler was able to end his hunger strike (Lowery). The students at Missouri were able to use resistance successfully to create a change in their university’s leadership. Not only did they succeed in changing the leadership, but they gained the attention of the entire nation. Their actions are causing citizens all around the country to think about existing
Solorzano, D., Ceja, M., & Yosso, T. (2000). Critical race theory, racial microaggressions, and campus racial climate: The experiences of African American college students. Journal of Negro Education, 69(1/2), 60-73. Sue, D. W. (2010). The 'Secondary'.
Critical race theory (CRT) is a framework that may be useful for examining how racial climate impacts the undergraduate experiences of African-American students on college campuses (Murphy, Gaughan, Hume, & Moore, 2010). CRT draws from a broad base of literature in sociology, history, ethnic studies, women’s study, and law (Murphy, Gaughan, Hume, & Moore, 2010). CRT consists of five elements: 1) the centrality of race and racism, and their intersectionality with other forms of subordination, 2) the challenge to dominant ideology, 3) the commitment to social justice, 4) the centrality of experiential knowledge, and 5) the transdisciplinary perspective (Murphy, Gaughan, Hume, & Moore, 2010). Applying CRT to education is different than other CRT applications as it challenges traditional paradigms, methods, texts, and separate discourse of race, gender, and class by showing how social constructs intersect to impact on communities of color (Murphy, Gaughan, Hume, & Moore,
In New York during the 1940’s a non-violent act of civil disobedience occurred among blacks to protest segregation laws. Blacks were not allowed to live in white neighborhoods, had to ride in the back of buses, lived in poverty with poor schools, and were frequently beaten by police.
In 1994 Renown College Professor Nikki Giovanni published a breath taking book that contains guidance to black college students on how to academically apply their selves in College, and she teaches them how to deal with the ignorance of white people from sharp tonged comebacks to gaining a Professors respect. Along the way The Article “Campus Racism 101” states Giovanni has acquired a tenure, she has a teaching position for life at the predominately white student body Virginia Tech. (Writing on the River 11) Nikki Giovanni’s “Campus Racism 101” gives advice to black students on how to succeed in College, appeals to Giovanni’s credibility, and appeals to the emotions of racism all in order to educate how black College students need to deal with ignorance on a College campus.
Diversity, we define this term today as one of our nation’s most dynamic characteristics in American history. The United States thrives through the means of diversity. However, diversity has not always been a positive component in America; in fact, it took many years for our nation to become accustomed to this broad variety of mixed cultures and social groups. One of the leading groups that were most commonly affected by this, were African American citizens, who were victimized because of their color and race. It wasn’t easy being an African American, back then they had to fight in order to achieve where they are today, from slavery and discrimination, there was a very slim chance of hope for freedom or even citizenship. This longing for hope began to shift around the 1950’s during the Civil Rights Movement, where discrimination still took place yet, it is the time when African Americans started to defend their rights and honor to become freemen like every other citizen of the United States. African Americans were beginning to gain recognition after the 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868, which declared all people born natural in the United States and included the slaves that were previously declared free. However, this didn’t prevent the people from disputing against the constitutional law, especially the people in the South who continued to retaliate against African Americans and the idea of integration in white schools. Integration in white schools played a major role in the battle for Civil Rights in the South, upon the coming of independence for all African American people in the United States after a series of tribulations and loss of hope.
Light, J. R. (2001). Making the most of college: Students speak their minds. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Massive protests against racial segregation and discrimination broke out in the southern United States that came to national attention during the middle of the 1950’s. This movement started in centuries-long attempts by African slaves to resist slavery. After the Civil War American slaves were given basic civil rights. However, even though these rights were guaranteed under the Fourteenth Amendment they were not federally enforced. The struggle these African-Americans faced to have their rights ...