Remaining Awake
By: John Ellis
This year, for Martin Luther King Day, the University put together several days of lectures and talks to consider the diversity issues of the campus and to coincide with the inauguration of President Obama. On the twenty-first of January, there was a luncheon summit with nine professors representing nearly every relevant academic department talking about their research in terms of black issues and Martin Luther King. The core of the discussion centered on the matter of opposing injustice, though it repeatedly touched on the theme of this week’s events. Perhaps the most interesting perspective on the concept of Remaining Awake came from Ziad Munson, adjunct professor of Sociology and Anthropology: “For me, being awake is making sure that we – this generation and the next generation – are well educated. We have to look at K-12 and that needs to be revised, because, at that level, if we continue to do a terrible job, then we might not see our position improve.”
Edward Whitley, Adjunct Professor in the English Department, started with a King quote that was echoed throughout the discussion: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” This sentiment is fundamental to the anxiety which propels the civil rights movement today much as it did forty years ago. Today we look at the issues facing black and minority Americans and it is easy to assume that, because the civil rights movement is over, equality has been achieved. When we think comparatively of the struggles that are faced now versus those faced in the 60’s, the latter obviously dwarfs the former. There is no comparison between the injustice that blacks face today and that which they faced then; where doctrinal and ideological vectors once stood in ugly maleficence now we find only remnant memories and biases that linger on and taint the waters of an otherwise just society.
Ted Morgan, Professor of Political Science, brought up the concerns of media in terms of interpreting the civil rights movement as it happened and in retrospect. In reference to the modern perspective, Morgan described a “canonization” of King – making him into a symbol of the beneficent aspects of the 60’s political movements. Morgan then explained the media’s dualistic portrayal of King as a good version and the more popular bad version, which decried, “Martin Luther King in the streets, Martin Luther King protesting… King raising national issues.” In contrast to the modern praise we are familiar with, Morgan offered quotes from the New York Times and Washington Post, which chastised King for expressing anti-war sentiment in conjunction with civil rights in response to King’s comment that the US was “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world.”
In the open discussion the question was put forth of the legalities encountered enforcing affirmative action, specifically the ways in which discrimination lives legally in the workplace, a point that was alluded to by Corinne Post. Post fielded the question by explaining that “You can get in legal trouble for discrimination [against employees], but you can’t get in any trouble for favoritism.” The challenge faced in policing favoritism is that it is very subtle and difficult to prove. Unlike discrimination, which tends to happen with a large sample size of applicants under the carefully controlled conditions of a job interview, favoritism tends to occur in murky circumstances with a small number of people.
The need for action is obvious, but the action that our emotions stir us first to take is less than optimal. We would like to crusade against ignorance and bigotry, to grind the hate, fear, and anger right out of every heart, so that the threat of injustice would have nowhere left to live. This response is impractical and, worse yet, inflammatory. There is no way to touch bias in our hearts through intention. We can compensate for it, do our best to live with it, but it can never be killed through conscious effort. Rather, it is the unconscious mind that decides the course of bias that lives in our hearts; it is a matter of collect observation and opinion that forms our slanted feelings.
The ends that we must seek are to change our hearts by cleaning the background noise that is collected and then concentrated there. We promote equality of thought by investing in multiculturalism and unbiased social interactions. The existence of separate black and white cultures restricts commonality and stifles dialogue. It is perhaps the greatest disappointment of this country today that there is a portion of black culture that feels incompatible with the greater society as something to be protected, as though being accessible to non-black consumers would in some way cause the culture to no longer belong to black people, and to weaken them thusly. I believe we stand to see the reverse be true; by separating black concerns from those of others it creates the appearance of different problems where there are only the same problems as dictated by history and human nature. When we make a conscious effort to treat the black and white communities as separate communities, we reinforce the cultural boundary at the center of the division between blacks and whites.
As can be expected, there was the occasional ultra-pessimistic opinion, yet these were not the opinions of the faculty. That graduate students asserted both that “many countries see the US as backward” and that “the race situation at Lehigh is terrible,” demonstrating the need for such events, if only to quell the Chicken Littles of our ivory tower. And so the University continues to struggle with the difficult nature of our unfortunate identity as a predominantly white and wealthy school. The words expressed by the faculty do bring hope, as we recognize the ambiguity of the problem and the dangerous potential of rhetoric to inflame that which must be soothed.
