Speak Out and Fight Hate

On Wednesday, queer leaders issued a statement regarding the hate crime at Teachers College, where we asked individuals to send e-mails to President Bollinger, as well as call the main University telephone number at 212-854-1754. Our friends are still writing, calling, and asking the President to ensure that demands of students and faculty of Teachers College and Columbia University are met. I’ve had a chance to read some of the letters that were sent, many of which came from a profoundly deep and personal place, expressing a range of emotions—confusion, fear, rage, and also hope.
The statement also roughly outlined what a noose and lynching represents: a history of bigotry and oppression that extends well beyond the gates of this campus, well beyond the recent bias incidents and into an institutional and systematic history of racism and domination that this country has struggled to tear itself away from. Lynchings and nooses have been used world-wide as well: Iran has used nooses to execute those caught engaging in gay sex, some musicians in Jamaica have called for lynching of gay people, and the murder of Matthew Shepard in Laramie, Wyoming, which took place nine years ago today, has been characterized as a lynching.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. once said no direct action is ever “well-timed,” and that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. With this in mind, queer student leaders worked with Queer Awareness Month, the Office of Multicultural Affairs and the University Chaplain to broaden the scope of Coming Out Day, which was held yesterday. Earlier yesterday morning, what was to be originally a celebration of Coming Out Day was reoriented into a productive open forum with Deans Austin Quigley and Chris Colombo of Columbia College and Vice Dean Morton Friedman of the School of Engineering and Applied Science. It is crucial for everyone at Columbia—not just the LGBT community—to be visible and present at these dialogues because we must speak our truth to power. You and I are so much more than a university; we are a community regardless of how presidents pass the buck through whatever affiliation agreements they have fashioned and how prudent their intent may be. Too often, said Dr. King, the word “wait” can also mean “never,” and that we have to endure not just the hateful actions of bad people but also the appalling silence of good people.

We must refuse to accept the notion that the decentralized networks and models of bureaucracy that pervade Columbia can determine our social relations. As a community we can no longer stand silent and separated reacting to each crisis as it happens—no one will show us the way out of hate and violence unless we make that path for ourselves. We risk consumption by institutional consciousness and having someone else speak for us if we don’t define ourselves for ourselves.

Deans Quigley and Colombo told the community they are willing to work with us to create these mechanisms within the University—such as open and public guidelines for dealing with bias crimes and genuine safe spaces. This is a positive point of departure for everyone at Columbia and it is a process which affects us all, because ultimately, no matter how much discourse or statements are produced by these hate crimes, in the end we either have safety or we don’t. Oppressions cannot be disentangled from another; they are not discrete nor easily defined. To quote Audre Lorde at length:

“There is no hierarchy of oppression. I know I cannot afford the luxury of fighting one form of oppression only. I cannot afford to believe that freedom from intolerance is the right of only one particular group. And I cannot afford to choose between the fronts upon which I must battle these forces of discrimination, wherever they appear to destroy me. And when they appear to destroy me, it will not be long before they appear to destroy you.”

The author, a student in the School of General Studies majoring in anthropology, is a board member of Columbia Queer Alliance. A version of this e-mail was sent out yesterday on several mailing lists.