Dr. Yusef Salaam — one of the Exonerated Five, formerly known as the Central Park Five — will speak today at 6:30 p.m. in the Student Union's Great Hall. We, the Editorial Board, encourage students and members of the community to attend this event hosted by the UNC Muslim Students Association.
Salaam’s story is one of our nation’s more egregious miscarriages of justice. In 1990, Salaam, along with four other New York City teenagers, was wrongly convicted of rape and assault. He was only 15 years old when police coerced him into giving a false confession. Salaam served nearly seven years for a crime he did not commit.
African Americans are intimately familiar with the gross injustice proffered out by our country on a daily basis. For these citizens, the Founding Fathers’ promise of "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" is all too frequently denied.
Salaam is so much more than his tale of stolen youth, but his experiences highlight both the overt and subtle forms of criminalization that Black boys and men have no choice but to encounter.
Hopefully, Salaam’s words today will shed light on this phenomenon, which is present even here in Chapel Hill. Three years ago, The Daily Tar Heel reported that more than half of Honor Court academic cases at UNC concern students of color.
Earlier this year, the Youth Justice Project showed that Orange County Schools suspended Black students at a rate 3.2 times higher than it suspended white students. The numbers were even worse for Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools, which were 13.9 times more likely to suspend Black students than their white counterparts.
At UNC, less than 10 percent of students are Black. This statistic, combined with the fact that only two out of five students are male, means that Black men are seldom heard from or seen on campus. Those that are visible are more likely to be recognized for their achievements on the athletic field than for their presence in the classroom or the student government suite.
It is easy to generalize and abstract away the experiences of these students. What is harder — yet infinitely more rewarding — is to take the time to listen to and learn from their plight.
Salaam will present a perspective seldom heard from on this campus. His story is one of both tragedy and triumph, and it calls attention to the all-too-real stereotyping and prejudice against Black men in America that leaves nearly every one of them wary of falling victim to Salaam’s fate.
