Student vigil urges equality
Eliminating racial discrimination and carrying on a 40-year dream is what keynote speaker Dr. William A. Smith urged Utah State University students to do, during a candlelight vigil honoring Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Tuesday night.
Smith is an assistant professor of education, culture and society at the University of Utah and a civil rights activist. He spoke to nearly 100 students gathered in the Sunburst Lounge in the Taggart Student Center.
He shared personal experience and research to inform the audience about the racial crisis in America and a condition he calls racial battle fatigue.
Smith said his father was a bodyguard for King and was very much aware of civil rights, but also affected by racial discrimination growing up in Chicago. Today, Smith said he is a civil rights activist because he decided when he was a boy he wanted to make the world a better place. He said that racial battles continue like they did when he was young, but he sees hope for improvement if all people will help fight these battles.
“We have a lot of work to do, we have a lot of challenges ahead, but if we can make one small act toward this, then we can help carry out Dr. King’s message from 40 years ago,” he said.
In response to a personal experience he had a few years ago with a child calling him a demeaning racial term, he said, “It felt like he just stabbed me in my heart.”
Smith said that even though this experience happened years ago, “the feeling is fresh; the pain is still there.”
It is experiences like these, Smith said, that cause people of color to have
racial battle fatigue. This condition is based off of Smith’s own research, he said, and also 40-50 years of research literature.
Symptoms of racial battle fatigue, Smith said, include headaches, back aches, high blood-pressure, changes in appetite, ulcers, anxiety, worry and much more. These are stress-induced when people of color are placed in situations that are demeaning, where untrue, stereotypical comments are made or instances of racial microagression.
Smith said that a national study conducted by universities such as Harvard, Michigan State, Berkley and Stanford show there are obsessive stereotypes directed toward people of color. Smith said that these stereotypes include such ideas that people of color are criminals or predators, they have ghetto-specific knowledge or behaviors, they attend school only as athlete-students and they are anti-intellectual and, therefore, not a legitimate part of campus. These are all false stereotypes and Smith said anyone can be proactive in treating people of color with respect and treating them as individuals, not stereotypes.
He talked about social justice activism being a movement against stereotypes and discrimination that can take place at USU.
“[It] should be done by everybody; everybody has a role,” he said. “White allies can send messages and open up doors to staff and students everywhere.”
Smith said that a major concern he has is the declining number of African-American students, as well as teachers and professors. He said there is a faster and larger growth among African-American females than African-American males, according to research that he has gathered from 1991-2001. He said he believes it is because these males have racial battle fatigue from the way they are treated on campuses across America.
Smith quoted Amos Wilson when he said, “To be a black male is to have your integrity chronically under question.” Social justice activism will help stop such feelings, Smith said.
In a question-and-answer session after Smith’s speech, the new dean of the College of Natural Resources, Nat Frazer, made it clear he wanted to do something about racial injustice on USU’s campus. He said he’s from the southern part of Georgia and that he knows the discrimination that takes place. He told the audience that if there was anyone there who felt they were in a situation where they had been discriminated against because of their race, that he wanted to know about it. Smith responded positively to Frazer’s comment.
“We need people who will be responsive to these issues,” Smith said,” And it’s great for a dean to be willing to do so. But it’s faculty and students that need to be willing to follow your example.”
For more information, contact the Black Student Union at 797-1733 or HYPERLINK “mailto:bsu@cc.usu.edu” bsu@cc.usu.edu.