Overt racism may have slowed to a trickle since the civil rights movement of the 1960s, according to some blacks and civil rights supporters, but most say it still exists in some form.
With the advent of another Martin Luther King Jr. holiday and recent firing of Northwest Christian College dean Betsy Clewett, a dismissal that she said was due to her support of minority students, many are taking this opportunity to question what has changed in the past four decades of the civil rights movement.
“Some things are not out in the open, but they’re still there,” Black Student Union member Latina Lewis said.
Assistant history professor Martin Summers, who specializes in African American studies, agreed.
“Racism still remains at a deep structural level,” he said.
BSU member Tremaine Thompson said many people don’t know — or appreciate — why they have the third Monday in January off from school and work.
“It seems like it’s not as important anymore — like it’s just a holiday,” he said.
Summers agreed that the holiday has a different meaning in 2003 than in the ’60s.
“MLK was a symbol of accomplishment,” he said. “That’s still true to a certain extent, but MLK as a symbol has been appropriated by Madison Avenue.”
Some, like Lewis and fellow BSU members Kennasha Roberson and Erica Tucker, said the University is lacking in diversity.
“Diversity is not just about having a student union,” Roberson said. “It’s not just separate places for everyone — that’s segregation.” Thompson said the majority of white students at the University don’t see racism or prejudice because they don’t personally experience it.
“We’re still in the back of the bus, metaphorically speaking,” he said.
University Bias Response Team coordinator Chicora Martin said four racially-related complaints were filed last term, which she said is about average. But she added that acts of racism are more common than the figures show because many incidents go unreported.
Lewis said black students face more pressure to act as good examples for all black people.
“I feel like I have to be a spokesperson for every black person so people wouldn’t believe all black people are like that,” Lewis said. “I have to make a conscientious choice to sit in the front of the bus, because if I sit in the back, it’s bad.”
Roberson agreed, saying black students have to be representatives of their race, “whether you like it or not.”
Most BSU members agree that the positive achievements of Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement outweigh the negative ones present today.
“I wouldn’t be going here if it wasn’t for them,” Thompson said.