We must do more to address racial injustice

Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier ^ | 11/9/15 | Jim Wohlpart

[campg]

Last Thursday night, more than 100 community members gathered at the Waterloo Center for the Arts for a panel discussion of Racial Justice. The forum engaged the philosophy behind the Black Lives Matter movement and discussed the system of racial injustice here in the Cedar Valley and in the nation. Panel members included the Reverend Abraham Funchess, the Reverend Belinda Creighton-Smith, the Reverend Mary E. Robinson, Public Defender Aaron Hawbaker, and Chief Dan Trelka.

As panelists eloquently explained, the Black Lives Matter movement is about reasserting the inherent dignity and respect of a group of people who have been diminished and degraded by our culture and society. One audience member noted that when some counter the Black Lives Matter movement with the statement that “All Lives Matter” we erase the racial injustice that Black people experience and lose the opportunity to engage one of the most enduring problems that confronts us as a nation, the problem, as W.E.B. DuBois put it over one hundred years ago, of the color line. The forum was ably moderated by Al Hays, President of the Cedar Valley Unitarian Universalist Board of Trustees.

The problem of the color line – the systemic degradation and segregation of Black people in the United States – seems intractable. Forums like this have been held periodically, yet nothing really seems to change. What are the leverage points that influence a system? How can the work of race relations and racial justice be expanded to engage a broader community? How can those who live lives of privilege and power acknowledge complicity in and indeed responsibility for a system that diminishes others? These were some of the questions that were raised and debated at this important forum – a forum that served as the beginning of a dialogue that must continue for change to take hold.

At the same time as the forum was happening in Waterloo, students on the campus of the University of Northern Iowa were sharing their own experiences of discrimination and disempowerment. Students expressed their hurt, their fears, and their frustration at a system that, for them, silences their voices and disallows any type of meaningful change. As an academic administrator at the university, I have had the opportunity to get to know some of these students. When I hear about their struggles I am filled with a deep and abiding sadness; I am reminded of my own complicity in our systems and my responsibility to engage these important issues.

Ultimately an institution of higher education must create and then nurture a culture that makes certain that all voices are heard and that all problems—including issues of racial injustice—are surfaced and engaged. Clearly, the administration needs to work harder to make certain that such a culture exists and all students feel embraced. In some sense, our efforts have been cosmetic, not systemic, and so we are the ones, ultimately, who must take responsibility for this continued failure and provide leadership to create a campus that embraces diverse individuals, perspectives, and ways of being in the world.

Can the University and the broader Cedar Valley community do better? Do we have the will to make deep lasting changes that embrace differences in ways that enrich all of our lives? These are questions that must be asked, and asked again, so that we know, forthrightly and honestly, what we value, what we envision for our future, and why our individual and collective work matters. And then we must act to break free of the patterns of injustice that stifle the full potential of our communities.

[campg]

The hand-wringing and victim mentality is so pathetic. it must be an election year.

[Lurker]

It’s long past time to start publicly mocking these idiots. Refuse to serve them at your places of business. Deny them any social contact.

Let them stew in their insanity alone.

[skeeter]

How can you do enough for people who can’t admit that they’ve created their own condition?

[Gay State Conservative]

WILL ANOTHER $22,000,000,000,000 IN WEALTH REDISTRIBUTION BE ENOUGH?

[DungeonMaster]

Welfare would be a good place to start.

[bgill]

That’s right. We should do more about racial injustice. Us poor white folks keep getting shafted.

[Darteaus94025]

I AGREE!!!

Let’s all agree to end Affirmative Action and empowering the bigotry of the Black “Civil Rights” “Leadership”.

[SoConPubbie]

NO, no we do not!

[butlerweave]

Just an excuse for when Obama gives slave reparations and thanks to Congress he has a Blank Cheque

[The Toll]

Agreed. White people are beaten, robbed, raped, and murdered by Blacks every single day across this country. Something should be done!

[dainbramaged]

We must do more to address racial injustice
Hey - stuff it where the sun don't shine, loser.

[Iron Munro]

Equality is racist.

Merit based outcomes are racist.

Anything less than preferential treatment for non-whites is racist.

Expecting minorities to follow rules and not break the law is racist.

[jmaroneps37]

I totally agree. If we don’t do something about the epidemic of Black on White murders nobody will be left to fund welfare programs.

[Yosemitest]

These stinking LIARS always divert from the truth that Obama is EVIL and is a FASCIST.
They don't DARE debate the FACTS that their leader is a LIAR !
Booker T. Washington nailed the truth about them long ago.

Take a look at Booker T. Washington on Black Victimhood.
This is a very important fact THAT IS NOT BEING TAUGHT TODAY !

A number of black “leaders” (e.g., Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton) have made their living by promoting black victimhood and white guilt.
Jesse Jackson has been shaking down corporations with the scam for decades.
Booker T. Washington (1865–1915) warned of such people within the black community in his 1911 book My Larger Education.
He described them as “problem profiteers”:

“There is another class of coloured people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs and the hardships of the Negro race before the public.
Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs
– partly because they want sympathy
and partly because it pays.
Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances,
because they do not want to lose their jobs.”
(p. 118)



My Larger Education: Being Chapters from My Experience
(Dover Thrift Editions)

Click this:

My Larger Education (an African American Heritage Book) Hardcover – January 14, 2008

[driftless2]

When you have people as far divorced from reality as this clown running our institutions of higher learning, then all we will be doing in academia is going backwards. People this dense weren’t in charge 50-60 years ago. Now they are the norm.

[SE Mom]

...must do more...

They just got some more with the resignation of Tim Wolfe.

[Gamecock]

Here is an answer.

I had a Soldier who grew up in the inner city of Baltimore.

He joined the Army.
He was wisely counseled to peruse a college degree.
He took classes and earned a BS degree.
He applied for a civilian program, the Army sent him back to school, and he earned a second degree and was commissioned.
He is now working on his masters.

Seems to me he could have wrung his hands about white privilege, or follow the road he did. He choose wisely.

[Gamecock]

It’s never enough.

[NorthMountain]

Panel members included the Reverend Abraham Funchess, the Reverend Belinda Creighton-Smith, the Reverend Mary E. Robinson, Public Defender Aaron Hawbaker, and Chief Dan Trelka all of whom are welcome to pound sand.

Where are the tar and feathers?

[Skeptical constituent]

After 7 years of Obama and democrat policies, race relations have gotten worse. It has happened under these circumstances only because it was the deliberate intention of this mal-Administration to divide and conquer. That is what community organizers do.