Ewuare X. Osayande
By: Adam Segal
While the 2008 Martin Luther King, Jr. Celebration at Lehigh was in full swing, I decided to accompany my roommate to one of the guest lectures. For his political science class, he was required to attend Ewuare X. Osayande’s speech entitled “Confronting American Terrorism,” a name that truly caught my attention. I hadn’t heard the word ‘terrorism’ applied to supposed racial inequality in America and I wondered just how terror tactics were being used in our society. Despite my immediate disdain for the title of the lecture, I decided I would give Osayande the benefit of the doubt and allow him to explain himself. I made an earnest attempt to check my preconceptions at the door and give him a chance to convince me of this so-called “American Terrorism.” The following is a summary of his main points along with my own responses. Background or any proof whatsoever of his claims will not be covered in this article, as they were never covered during his speech. Apparently, he figured one all-encompassing explanation would suffice: institutionalized racism in America. This was a “proven fact” as he put it, and all of the societal ills that he would go on to address could be traced back to this “fact.”
Osayande first pointed to the wealth distribution in America. He claimed to be preaching MLK’s message: that capitalism was put in place by white racists to keep blacks from gaining true equality in America. As was the case throughout his speech, the audience was expected to accept this assertion, due to Osayande’s superior wisdom. Apparently, many members of the audience agreed with him. During the time allotted, a member of the audience prefaced her question by proudly acknowledging her hatred for capitalism; a stance worn as a badge of honor amongst those gathered to hear Osayande. Perhaps she honestly didn’t believe in capitalism and was a follower of the practical and often successful economic theory of communism. Osayande furthered his argument by pointing out how the wealth distribution in America was created by racist whites to keep blacks poor and in inner cities as a form of segregation. However, Osayande had researched a solution to this problem. He proposed that we end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and redistribute that money as a form of reparation to all African-Americans. How could our government have overlooked such an obvious answer?
Throughout his speech, Osayande pointed to current conditions and somehow made connections to racist institutions in our history, when no reasonable connections existed. Wealth distribution through capitalism as a means of segregating our society was the first example of this strategy. Osayande’s next case dealt with the prison system in America. He pointed out the alarming rate at which black males end up in prison compared to whites. No explanation was necessary aside from the implied “innate racism” of our judiciary and penal systems. He did not provide any evidence to back up this theory; however, he assured us of its “proven” accuracy. The next portion of his prison argument was an excerpt that truly captured the spirit of his entire presentation. He focused on the low or non-existent wages that are given to incarcerated workers for prison jobs and more specifically license plate manufacturing. Next, after pausing for dramatic effect, he lowered his voice and, as if he was exposing his audience to some obvious yet hidden truth, whispered “…slavery.” The room let out a simultaneous gasp; some even clapped as Osayande removed the veil that had been blinding us to the evils of American society. How had we not seen it before? American whites, who had so missed their beloved practice of slavery, ingeniously figured out that they could falsely imprison African-Americans and make them work for free in prisons. The very notion would be considered preposterous by any rational American, yet Osayande was confident in preaching its legitimacy.
His next topic was more recent in America. He spoke of the courts striking down a busing agenda that would have forced students from wealthy white neighborhoods and poorer black neighborhoods, no matter how far apart, to attend the same schools. In Osayande’s mind there could be only one explanation for the agenda’s failure to pass; I venture to say none were surprised at his explanation. Osayande repeatedly failed to provide a reasonable conclusion as to why busing was not put into practice. In his opinion, all of this is perfectly logical: the ends justify the means. If some poor blacks are forced to do the same thing against their will, but receive a slightly “better” education than in the school district their parents taxes pay for, his cause will be better off in the end. Most of us would be terrified with the knowledge that we could no longer go to school with the people we grew up with; that sounds more like “terrorism” to me than anything Osayande mentioned.
These are only a few of the examples Ewuare X. Osayande presented to prove the institutionalized racism in America. He also ran through the usual “evidence”: the government’s response to Katrina, the Jena 6, Megan Williams, and others. In each case, he ruled out coincidence. Whenever crimes were committed against blacks, Osayande concluded that white racists intentionally committed it. He took this idea so far that I began to wonder if anything negative could happen to African-Americans that wasn’t the result of institutionally racist America somewhere along the line. I felt an obligation to address this line of thought during his allotted question time. While the rest of the class lobbed softballs that basically asked him to enumerate his points on racist America, I alone asked him to explain himself. I posed the question, “Do you think that any one of these issues that you have raised could also be explained by flaws and the lack of quality leadership in the black community, and cannot solely be explained away by anti-black racism?” He seemed taken aback, as if anyone in the room could still have doubts about evil America after his brilliant, eye-opening speech. He cockily chuckled as he responded to me, once again stating that everything he said was a “proven fact.” Interesting; next time I’m in a debate I’ll try the Osayande strategy: simply state that whatever I say is a “proven fact.” I’ll call it plan X. I then asked him if he understood the harm that he was doing, teaching this message of hate to young African-American children. Nothing could be worse than telling young boys and girls that they will never be given a chance in their society, that the people around them generally hate them and will not allow them to succeed. It’s called a self-fulfilling prophecy: if enough demagogues like Osayande tell blacks that they cannot succeed in racist America, many will eventually begin to believe it and won’t possibly be able to prosper. Another harm in his message was the pure divisiveness of it. It was obvious that he was attempting to divide our society by asking blacks to get together and demand “equality.” He went so far as to list the ethnic groups that blacks needed to work with, such as Asians, Hispanics, and Cubans. He left whites out, of course, stating that “we don’t need to work with whites; we are constantly forced to communicate with them.” I wonder if Lehigh could have found someone who was less in line with the words of the great Martin Luther King Jr.
