10/19/2007 5:36 PM
This weekend, I will be attending an "Undoing Racism" Conference at The Riverside Church, put together for our lay leadership. This summer, I was elected to the Mission and Social Justice Commission at Riverside, hence my being invited. This conference couldn't come at a more opportune time, as all across the United States, it seems that blatant racist displays have heightened in occurrence. Just last week, a black, Teacher's College professor, just across the street from me here at Columbia University, found a noose hung on her office door. For those of you who don't know, nooses were used in the lynchings, violent executions usually by hanging, of African-Americans particularly by the Ku Klux Klan after the Civil War, and sadly, sometimes even after the Civil Rights Movement. It is a hateful kind of "let's teach them a lesson, let's show who's boss", fear-mongering act, wanting to express white dominance, which is utterly and completely deplorable, disgusting, and oh so wrong. Therefore, the fact that empty nooses are now popping up all over the country, in New Jerseyand Louisiana recently, shows that although America has continued to make improvements in its racial relationships, it is a far cry from our living together in true peace and harmony.
Columbia's School of the Arts encouraged everyone to wear orange this past Tuesday as a show of solidarity against bigotry and for diversity, for not only was the noose hung on the professor's door last week, over the weekend, bathrooms were vandalized with anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim graffiti, somewhat surprising considering that we are a liberal university in one of the most diverse cities in the world! I donned my bright orange Penguin v-neck sweater, ready to join the masses in saying, "Enough is enough!" I mean, really, this is 2007, almost 2008, and it is completely outrageous that these kinds of things are happening, and further, that somehow hate is continuing to be passed down from generation to generation. When I got out of the subway station and entered Earl Hall's gates, watching people rushing from class to class, building to building, I thought that I had gotten the date wrong from the flyer. Everyone seemed to be dressed so, uh, normally. Then, occasionally, I would see a pop of orange from across campus. I was discouraged. There are so few of us in this solidarity, I lamented. Upon arrival at my office, I noticed no students were wearing orange there either. "What happened? Where is your orange? You couldn't wear an orange shirt, pants, shoelaces, something?" I asked. All replied, "I guess we didn't get the memo." Turned out, the School of the Arts did not do the best job of advertising the day (something I would think the School of the Arts should know how to do, actually); however, at the rally after lunch, once all the orange wearers got together, we did seem like a rather large orange fist raised up from Columbia saying that we do not accept this and will not accept this on our campus, in New York, or in the world.
So, although I am not especially thrilled about sitting in a conference ALL weekend (I do relish my weekends), I am excited to learn what we can do to make this world a much more humane and accepting place to live. We're all human. We all feel, love, suffer, experience, enjoy. We all pump blood through our hearts and breathe air into our lungs. Hopefully, this conference will help to teach me some ways, even if they are just simple, everyday ways, in which we can work together to end not only racism, but also sexism, classism, homophobia, religious-intolerance, and the like. After all, God loves all God's children – no matter what.
