The Red and Black

Issue date: 4/23/09 Section: Opinions

MARC McAFEE

No offense to our newly crowned National Champion equestrian team, but I'd like to take this opportunity to beat the proverbial horse to death. I think I can add something to this latest racially-charged discussion.

The controversy surrounds Chris Chiego's Monday Opinions piece, which said minority student groups need to be disbanded because they promote segregation in the name of diversity. For those of you like me who had to read it a few times, that's what he meant when he said the University's "nebulous concept of diversity" seems to "manifest itself as an ideological orthodoxy," which results in the "balkanization of our campus into heavily segregated fiefdoms."

Many people on both sides of the issue agreed it's too bad the University environment is so voluntarily split up. We even got an angry column from Zaid Jilani, apparently still fuming over a two-year-old Chris Chiego column about cheating in Dubai.

Unlike Mr. Jilani, I don't think Mr. Chiego's social status or intelligence means he's wrong. I actually think he's correct that change will be up to each student, I just don't think he's right about how to do it. You don't fix the problem by "abandoning" all the diversity programs.

Instead, if you're truly worried about segregated groups, you should go in and integrate the groups yourself.

I tried it, and it was an awesome experience. It was at a Black Affairs Council forum about Malcolm X. I sat in the middle of a room full of black students, who initially looked at me with inquisitive glances. I then watched as a few white students entered the room separately. Although they appeared to be strangers, they kept sitting next to the other white students in the room. It was there that I learned people gravitate toward others who share their experiences.

We had a great discussion at that forum, but I didn't just learn about Malcolm X. I learned what it's like to have a room full of faces turn to see your reaction when an issue regarding your race is brought up. It was funny for an hour, but it might not be for a lifetime.

Yes, whites integrating student groups is a truly brilliant idea. That should make it obvious the idea wasn't my own.

I have to give credit to Dr. Robert Pratt, head of the Department of History, for showing me the light.

"Why does the burden of integration always fall on black folk?" he asked me. "If a white student is worried that a group is excluding people, take your friends, and go in and integrate them!"

He told me about his mother, who denied a request to send him to a white school when he performed so well at his all-black school.

"She was a prophet," Pratt said of his mother. "She knew that true integration would come only when the white kids had to come to the black schools - and it eventually happened that way."

So if Chiego is truly worried about a divide on campus, he should escort a few friends from Demosthenian Hall down to the next Black Affairs Council forum. They won't turn anybody away.

Just don't be surprised if they laugh at you when you use the term "segregation" to apply to student groups on campus, because that isn't segregation.

"Segregation" forced blacks to walk all over town for hours to find a bathroom they were allowed to use. It caused Klansmen to visit Hamilton Holmes to warn him they were going to string him up if he stayed enrolled at the University. And it was the fear of losing segregation that drove two Klansmen to blow Lemuel Penn's face off with a shotgun, after they followed him through Athens in 1964.

This isn't ancient history, Chris. Those shotgun-wielding Klansmen were found not guilty by an all-white jury when your parents were probably in grade school.

So I'd be a little more lenient when that targeted generation's kids or grandkids feel more comfortable in their own "separate but equal groups." And if you still don't like it, the Black Affairs Council meets every other Wednesday.

Bring your friends.


- Marc McAfee is a senior from Kennesaw majoring in broadcast news.

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