TO THE EDITOR:
As I pause during Black History Month to reflect on racial progress at UNC and survey the enormity of the remaining work, many questions bombard my mind — impacting my productivity as a faculty member and preventing a good night’s rest. Is unconscious/implicit bias the “new” racism?
Should I feel less pain and anger if exclusion, a result of pre-civil rights racism and an outcome of whatever it is called today, is no longer marked by a “Whites Only” sign on the door but a view of who is inside clearly indicates “For Whites Only”? Are the harms less damaging because they are inflicted without malicious or conscious intent?
Do the words, in lieu of actions, of kind colleagues spoken in whispers assuage the ill effects and change the outcomes? For me, a Black person for whom Blackness is salient, the answer to all of the above is “no.”
Faculty, deemed by some to be the heart of a university, have a responsibility. What will we, UNC faculty writ large as a collective rather than individuals shouldering burdens in their silos/units, do to address race issues at this great, global, public research university? Is “to seem rather than to be” when it comes to race satisfactory? I have faith, though dwindling day by day, that we will get real about race, strive for excellence in this domain, and our actions will convey N.C.’s motto “to be rather than to seem.”
Prof. Eileen Carlton Parsons
School of Education
