Dear Herald Editorial Board,
I read your recent columns on Multicultural Student Coalition and racial climate: the March 28 editorial, “Disappointing move by MCSC” and the March 28 column, “Racism best ameliorated by constructive collaboration.” My takeaway is that, as a person of color living on campus, there are little to no voices in student media that give a damn about any voice but white ones. When I look at Ms. Herrejon’s heartfelt testimony in ‘Racism best ameliorated,’ I also see the hateful comments on your own page combined with no response from your paper. Ms. Nye’s column rings hollow on racial climate now, seeing that the racially privileged board she sits on recently stated that MCSC is not serving the students that give them their trust. It is patronizing to be told by whites that one of the few organizations that advocates for the humanity of folks like me on campus (MCSC) is actually not serving my interests.
For educated people, the Badger Herald Editorial Board seems to know absolutely nothing about almost any people of color anywhere, ever. By and large, POC don’t talk about racism because it’s fun. When you see POC-owned establishments consistently shut down for being disorderly, while the largely white Mifflin St. Block Party is something the local government wants to preserve, there’s a reason. When you see people of color tokenized by the UW administration, the UW Greek society and local government, there’s a reason. When you see people of color going to prison at far higher rates for the same offenses as whites in this county, there’s a reason. Because of all that’s happening to people of color individually and as a group, it would be fundamentally irresponsible of me or most anyone I know to stand pat or to act like all we need to do is act like race is not an issue.
When I see the terms “collaborative, cooperative environment” in Ms. Nye’s column, it makes me beside myself. MCSC engages in a racial critique, and your reply is that they’re ‘disappointing.’ POC say they are being marginalized in high school or post-secondary school, and you tell us we need to be cooperative and stop complaining. It seems the Herald is only interested in dialogue furthering white privilege. I don’t know many who “devolve into factions;” people of color I know often work within their own circles precisely because when we do say how we feel about the racial climate of a mostly white space, white people like this board are often smug and patronizing (“disappointing move … “), flippant and dismissive (“evidence for … [institutional racism] simply does not exist”) and/or overtly racist. So with your calls for a more constructive dialogue, I must ask you to be honest and either take people of color as much at their word as you do whites, or simply stop saying you care.
Colin Bowden ([email protected]) studies IT programming and analysis at MATC-Madison.
