Every student around me has a drive to become the next MLK, Gandhi, Oprah, whoever. Stop trying and begin to think about the actions you support!
I applaud whoever decided to have the 5 Claremont schools unite and march around campus. It’s noble and it shows we care. However, whoever though that wearing a BLACK shirt would help the cause, I need to meet you. YOU did not think about all the different labels the color black contains.
Black students are being oppressed. Black students were threatened with a gun. Black students were bullied. But Black students fought back and are now charged with ridiculous accounts. However, if these incidents were different—-if the white students were being oppressed at school, if the black students were threatened with a gun, if the black students ended up beating up a black student and were being charged with similar accounts, the whites would be fighting for lesser charges, and the blacks would fight for greater charges.
This world is not white and black. I am a beautiful shade of brown. I will personally not wear a black shirt. Wearing a black shirt would make me feel as though i’m fighting for those “black brothers” or those “black sisters” and not for the simple fact that our justice system is not fair.
I am fighting the injustice. I am not fighting racism with racism. And I advise you not to either because then your steps around campus WILL MEAN NOTHING.
I am marching with a GREEN shirt.
Green—a symbol of growth and of nature. We are naturally equal.
Carlos di Abbastanzza Benne said,
September 21, 2007 at 7:40 am
(This is totally my opinion)
I just finished watching American History X with some of my friends in the hall, and for the first time I felt I could sympathize with this race so called Caucasian. UofR is well known for its very diversed campus, but specifically for its large Jewish student body. Just in my hall there are approxx. 13 jewish kids.
While watching this movie I felt very out of place knowing I was the only colored in the room. I was trying to keep my inner-thoughts to myself while the supremacist family (the Nazi party) talked about Immigrants as the source of failure in this country. I felt very useless at that point, like i couldn’t say anything because it would just worsen the mood of the movie.
Then the party went on to explain their true HATE against Jews. It was like I was watching myself in the mirror; looking at my friends crouching into their seats because they did not know what to do other than laugh about the situation. I had not put one or two together (that these white people are not like any other people, they have been descriminated against just like MY PEOPLE). It was until one of them asked me impatiently “Carlos do you think we are the source of failure in this country? just like the movie is saying…” Wow the same question i was asking myself is also being asked by others unlike myself.
It was then that i felt a sense of community, it was then i felt as one and it is what it is History and its conditions will not leave any of us alone. Not until we answer the latter question that he and I asked ourselves.
My point is that In History the only problem we have is not being able to think like ONE, or even feel like one. The fact that the color black on a shirt lits fire within people’s beings is what makes us violent. Let the meaning of the color go, go with your instinct and move on with your life. The color black will stay forever and it will be worn by many.
It is the fact that many wore, wear and will keep on wearing the color black to symbolize the many implications those people had to go through to survive. It is the fact that people wore black today that matters, because for once they felt and acted as one; just like my hall did while watching American History X.
The only way we can all sympathize with the JENA 6 is by feeling like them, wearing black. For many years black people have been put in the spotlight, just like the color black on a shirt makes people stand out. That is why wearing black is not a sign of promoting racism, but rather a sense of integration among different kinds of people.
-Carlos Tejeda