When the Brown v. Board of Education verdict forced public schools to desegregate on May 17, 1954, the national conscious officially reconciled the half decade of Jim Crow laws. Unfortunately, the ability for people of color to attend the white school system did not solve the major problems. Youth of the sixties went to school to learn and to fight white supremacy. They did not go to school to sit next to Ross R. Barnett or Jim Clark. Those first people of color to attend segregated schools wanted to kick white bigots out. Taking the school system to the Supreme Court, in the ’50s, was to fight against white supremacy’s grip on academia.
After more then 50 years of integration, today’s schools have had to adjust to people of color at traditionally segregated schools. Yes, people of color sit in classrooms by their own will, but we don’t have to tolerate incompetence and bigotry. Before abolition, people of color were forced to fight against white supremacy. Today, the struggle has changed; we still fight against white supremacy, but now we want equal academic opportunity. Such as the opportunity to study of fields of interests in a public institution.
People of color pay taxes and abide by the laws of the Constitution, yet we are still not equal in the United States to white people. There are many reminders of this at our university. First, Eurocentrism is present at our university. Programs like romance languages, European studies, multiple European language studies, and Russian and Eastern European studies are fully staffed and funded at the UO. Why is there not an equally funded program for South American studies, or African Studies or Polynesian studies? People of color cannot relate to teachers at a Eurocentric university because they view history and politics completely differently. Academics disagree about the interconnection of imperialism, slavery, nationalism, capitalism and democracy. Academia has heavily rejected alternative narratives that inspire resistance and revolution.
I am not free to study what I want, and I am questioned “why are you here?” Most white students ask me this because they have never experienced people of color succeeding or subjects that people of color are concerned about. Often times I get the impression that white people don’t expect people of color to succeed or that they do not have the ability to do so. There seems to be more of an agreement to put us in jail and criminalize us rather then to give us educational opportunities. It is the responsibility of flagship institutions to allow opportunities for people of color to work in the academic arena.
For years people of color at the UO have been demanding a commitment to hiring a cluster of faculty of color. A teacher of color will help white students see that people of color can in fact reach the top of academia. A cluster hire would also be valuable to faculty of color to work with other experts in common fields of study. Our school seriously lacks diversity in its faculty and in its academic subject matter. More teachers of color will help replace the culture of whiteness at this university.
Ty Schwoeffermann is a University student