We all ought to be out utterly outraged. Here we are in 2011 and black students can’t walk around on campus without being accosted over their skin tone. Racism is not okay. It’s a primitive mindset that any respectable person should revile. It’s an illogical, detestable stain on the conscience of humanity, and a sin we need to purge from our collective soul.
Justin Zimmerman is not your “boy.” He’s an intelligent, vital member of our community. The thousands of other African American students on this campus are as well, and no one has the right to treat them like they are second-class citizens and assault their dignity. What sort of self-aggrandizing attitude must one possess to feel entitled to shout a word I can’t even bring myself to type to a random person from their window? A word that was invented to subjugate and oppress a group of people because of their skin color? A word stained with the blood of a brutally enslaved people, shouted at lynchings, used to enforce a cruel caste system of poverty and miseducation?
Delta Tau Delta should be deeply ashamed. One of your members shouts something so despicable out of the window of your fraternity, and only one of you possesses the guts or moral fiber to speak up? Which is it? Was everyone else in the room a bigot or just a coward? Forgive me if I’ve got the situation all wrong, but this is the story we’ve been presented with. I hate to be so brash, but I’m tired of having something new about the University to be ashamed of so frequently. “Committed to Lives of Excellence.” Isn’t that your motto?
Maybe sometimes the hatred festering in peoples’ hearts becomes too much for their fragile psyche to bear, and they have no choice but to spew venom at their fellow human beings. Or perhaps they feel so inferior as a person that the only avenue they can find to give themselves dignity is to ascribe to a series of hateful delusions meant to reinforce some type of inherent superiority. But then, maybe they are so uneducated or inept in their capacity for critical thought that they actually believe in racial superiority and thus feel convicted that it should dictate their conduct. Who knows?
And if you don’t have the heart or decency to recognize the inherent significance of treating your human brothers and sisters with equality, then let me appeal to your sense of practicality. Consider the vitality of our state. It’s awfully hard to convince people to relocate or start a business in a place where no one wants to live. When all people can think of when they hear “Alabama” is racism and ignorance, they tend to feel a little put off.
Let’s look at the big picture. Tradition and heritage are important to Alabamians. But some of our heritage needs to serve as a solemn reminder and not be glorified. Some of our stories should constantly remind us of the evil that men are capable of, in addition to the incredible strength of the human spirit and the boundless possibilities of passionate people.
Our heritage is slaveholders and sharecroppers. It’s Miracle Workers and coal miners. It’s artists and rocket scientists. Revolutionaries and reactionaries. Our soil was the battleground of the Civil Rights Movement, and on our streets were Freedom Rides and marches to Montgomery. We’ve got great stories about Atticus Finch and Rick Bragg. But we’ve also got horror stories about church bombings and syphilis experiments.
The Old South is long gone. We can’t have a New South if we’re stuck in a Reconstruction era mindset. Alabama is the eighth poorest state in the U.S. We rank consistently in the bottom 10 states in education. United Health puts us as the third least healthy state. What we’re seeing here is the slow death of our piece of the South. If we don’t get our heads and hearts in the right place, then we’ll continue to dig our own grave.
Yes, we have our positive stories and grand moments. But we also have an ugly side. And it seems more and more we show the ugly side, as the nation around us embraces equality and modernizes. All people have heard from Alabama in the past few years is church fires, Tim James ads, and religious intolerance at its Capstone university, not to mention annual episodes of racism from its fraternities.
It should be our mission as a people to live up to the indelible words etched into the fabric of this nation at it’s founding: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal…” And that means we must take a stand against this hideous attitude and promote a society where people are treated equally.
Alex Hollinghead is a junior majoring in math and philosophy.
