racism

When I open the Spectator opinion section and read accusations that the Columbia community is racist, I feel frustrated.

The rage engendered in these contexts is a direct manifestation of my frustration with the audacity of white privilege and the white supremacist attitudes and behaviors that exhibit themselves in multiple, and sometimes shocking, ways on this campus.

The problem, unfortunately, is that the hate-filled incidents of last semester gradually dropped this free-flowing intellectual academy to its knees, to the point that a rather innocuous incident, like Monday’s discovery in Hewitt, can be blown so far out of proportion as to risk harming the great free speech experiment that is the American university.

When applying for a column in the Spectator, I jokingly told my friends that I was thinking of naming it “Race Man.” I thought this funny because of its multiple layers of signification.

Yesterday, five students began a hunger strike, depriving their bodies as the worst aspects of Columbia University have deprived all of our minds, hearts, and spirits.

In the past weeks’ furor about nooses and graffiti, which dramatize age-old concerns about our Eurocentric curriculum, paternalistic gentrification efforts, and feelings of marginalization from students and faculty, Columbia has had to defend and confront its legacy of diversity and inclusion more so now than ever before.

Let me first state that it hurts me immensely that the recent acts of hate at Teachers College were directed at two outstanding people in the school community.

Like many other members of the Columbia community, I was shocked by the response to the recent bias incidents on campus. However, my dismay did not result from the actions of the administration, but rather from those of my fellow students, some of whom have seized upon recent events and twisted their meaning to reflect an activist political agenda.

“Not here! Not Anywhere! Not here! Not Anywhere!” So went the cries of disgusted protestors two weeks ago when a noose was found on the door of a black Teachers College professor. Yet evidence points to a sad reality: it is here, and it is pervasive in American society at large.

Not surprisingly, even in America in the 21st century, racist, homophobic, and anti-Semitic incidents still occur. Nevertheless, it is outrageous that these incidents are happening, one after the other, in a prestigious, civilized, and scholarly institution such as Columbia University—which, ironically enough, is surrounded by two extremely diverse neighborhoods: the historical black community of Harlem (also home to the most recent wave of African Muslim immigrants), and Washington Heights, home to Dominicans, Puerto Ricans, and Central Americans.