The recent “Town Hall on Race and Inclusion,” was the University’s attempt to “have a conversation” in order to cover its respective derriere.
This “conversation,” or dialogue, is really a misnomer; it was an attempt to silence students into a whitewashed complacent stupor in order to prevent UNC from following the steps of Missouri and Yale. The very premise of the Town Hall, its very name indicates how delusional UNC administrators are in addressing the calls of students of color to both acknowledge and address its racist history and present — steps which are actionable. It fails to address the core of real problems at UNC.
UNC administrators, faculty and students: why are you so scared of addressing the system of racism? Why is it that you can’t even properly name a Town Hall meeting without trying to beat around the bush?
UNC administrators circumvent and whitewash the real problems here at this university through the very title of the town hall. “Race” and “inclusion,” are not systems that need to be addressed and demolished.
Anti-Blackness, white supremacy and the prison-industrial complex are. “Inclusion” itself is a meaningless term only serving to tokenize if equity and the explicit goal of demolishing anti-Black systems are not concurrent. As a woman of color, I do not regard my being “included” into a university that upholds white supremacy by protecting Confederate monuments as something to be grateful for.
Inclusion itself does nothing — and can often continue oppression — and we need to stop this idea of needing a “conversation” around it to solve problems. We’ve been having this “conversation” for far too long, and it’s led to nothing but a bout of administrative white tears and decades of inaction. Scott Woods, writer, poet, critic and librarian, calls out the culture of “race conversation” in his piece. He writes:
“A conversation about race in 2015 is not a goal. It is not a good goal, it is not a reasonable goal and it is not an equitable goal. In fact, treating the conversation like a goal is offensive to thinking people who have been having these conversations longer than you or your daddy or your grandfather have been alive, let alone the people forced to live as the subjects of your well-meaning conversations.”
#ConcernedStudent1950, The Real Silent Sam Coalition and the University of Cape Town’s Rhodes Must Fall have laid down the demands of Black people and other people of color, from Cape Town to Mizzou to UNC. It has been way past time for you to stop your chatter. Stop the conversation.
We have laid out our demands, and now, UNC, you have a choice: will you divest from your white supremacy, from your racist past and from your culture of oppressing the voices of Black people and people of color on this campus? Will you awaken from your deliberate ahistorical amnesia to meet these demands? Because either way, whether you resist them or not, they will be met.
