A contemporary occurrence of racism occurred close to my university, the University of Cincinnati campus, at a rival school, Xavier, where students, similarly to University of Cincinnati students, prepare themselves, their costumes, and their residences with halloween garb and decor. A student there posted a photo on her Snapchat wearing apparent blackface, captioned “Who needs white when black lives matter”, and concurrently another student hung a plastic skeleton dressed in a dashiki, in their dorm room window.
The president of Xavier, Michael Graham, released a statement expressing his state of being “outraged and deeply troubled” by the Snapchat, and the hanging skeleton. One thing I noticed right away in the photo of the skeleton was a Trump flag hanging right beside it.
President Graham emailed Xavier staff and students Tuesday morning saying, “Please be assured this is being addressed on campus through a variety of channels. Racist actions are unacceptable on our campus, and we have mechanisms to respond in a responsible and thoughtful manner. When one of us falls short, we all fall short. Many of our students, of all races, are in pain over this. Steps are being taken to make sure that all members of the Xavier community know that we must act with integrity, justice and generosity, in solidarity for and with each other” (Cincinnati.com).
I find this important because it continues to prove what my “Race and Ethnicity in American History” class has taught me more repeatedly this semester; that racism and white supremacy are things still very present in the fabric of modern American culture, due to our historical roots in slavery, repeated inequality and other injustices. We see a surfacing of racism today from a variety of sources and individuals, white and black, educated and uneducated, civil servant and civilian.
The hanging skeleton I find a bit more disturbing, personally, as it brings my mind to our historic lynching and violent past. The caption on the photo of the girl with blackface shows me incomprehension of the person who captioned it. There is a need for white people, just like there is a need for black people. The Black Lives Matter movement is acting now because it is desperately attempting to tell America that right now black people are being mistreated, therefore we need to come together to make our country right. This is not a dis on any other race. It is the attempt to form an equitable society here in the Land of the Free. To me, what truly needs to be acknowledged is present day, structural racism. Individual acts such as these are simply a surfacing of the suppressed, ignored and unacknowledged roots of our present situation, the real issue is remaining unaddressed while we scapegoat individuals as being hate-filled.
