TO THE EDITOR:
I’m not convinced of the sincerity in Chancellor Carol Fort’s apology for slavery and the use of slaves to help build the university. I sense a betrayal coming in the form of an attempt to remount the statue of Silent Sam on campus. Sam may remain silent in a static position, but believe me when I say that opponents of this vile display representing a murderous, onerous and despicable time in American history will not be silent and won’t stand idly by.
We cannot continue to go back in our mind to those times each time we see or think of this horrific symbol on our campus whose students and graduates comprise a cross section of American society and not solely the descendants of Confederate soldiers and slave owners. There are thousands who are descendants of the raped, lynched, tortured, abused, over worked, emasculated, marginalized, disenfranchised and those sold as chattel who attend, or who have attended this great university.
We must look forward to a future that is pluralistic, diverse, fair and equitable. Not looking back through the silent but deadly gaze of a statue that immortalizes and celebrates this horrendous history of slavery and the fight for its continuation.
If statues like Silent Sam are to remain on public property, it must be equitably joined by statues, not plaques, depicting the horrors of slavery, lynchings, the break up of families at the auction block, sadistic and systematic rape of slave women and men, and laws codified to belittle and marginalize the descendants of the slaves.
Ron Scales
Class of 1983
