Last Wednesday night a group of friends and I were walking home when, out of nowhere, a truck full of guys drove by screaming at us: Faggots! Nigger! Not even five minutes later, a different truck cruised by, directing a variety of racial epithets at me alone. A couple of weeks ago, while walking home from a party, a large group of people on one of the apartment balconies in Riverpark began yelling insults that had much the same ring as ones described above. Those were not the first times that I have experienced such behavior, and in my bones I know that they certainly will not be the last.
I thought that college would be an opportunity for me to immerse myself in multiculturalism and diversity of every variation: ethnic, sexual, religious, etc. And despite the disappointment that those expectations have led me to, I still ask myself: Why? Why after huge technological, social, and cultural advances has this one plague on society not changed in the way that people think it has? Or in the way that people, like me, wish it would? I understand that some people are afraid of what they do not know, but as time goes on, that gets harder and harder to accept, for even without the passage of time or the advancements we have made, there are no excuses for such actions. There are no excuses for such disrespect.
The ignorance that I have had to combat at Ohio University has been unbelievable. Once, in a political science course, the instructor of record announced to the class that black people, black culture and black single mothers as a whole were the biggest problem facing society today. I approached my academic adviser at the time, Tom Hodges, about the racism I was experiencing on campus, and he said racism was an issue on this campus, and I wasn't the only one who confronted it here. I've had to deal with accusations that my acceptance into the prestigious E.W. Scripps School of Journalism had only been granted under the pressure of meeting the demands of affirmative action. What many on this campus fail to realize is that when viewed statistically, affirmative action caters to white women more than ethnic minorities. Yet, while many of the ethnic minorities on this campus have to defend their enrollment at this university every day, I have heard few stories of white women being taunted for the fact that they hold, by far, the largest numbers of any group benefiting from affirmative action. When I walk down Court Street, many of the white students refuse to meet my eyes or even speak to me when I say hello. Other students have adamantly refused to sit next to me in classrooms, or even shake my hand on the basis that being contaminated by a nigger is unacceptable.
I, like many other ethnic minorities, have been ostracized on this campus. I never thought it mattered if I was accepted or not. But the more difficult it becomes for my friends and I to walk down the street without being called a nigger, the more important it becomes for me to demand the basic respect that all humans, regardless of race, class, sex, religion, etc., deserve. Because as soon as we as a society begin to allow the cessation of basic human respect and kindness to prevail, we become nothing more than a disunited, apathetic frontier of human decay. I refuse to let that happen. So the question becomes, what do we do about this? How many people are willing to actively fight with me? How many people are willing to engage in constructive dialogue and ACTION so that we can rid ourselves of this disease that is governmentally sanctioned, constitutionally supported, and flourishing daily in our society ... in our so called land of the free ... on our campus?
-Jade Baltimore is a junior journalism major. Send her an e-mail at jade.baltimore@ohiou.edu.
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Letter to the Editor
