The immediate response to the verdict in the George Zimmerman trial on my campus was a mixture of outrage and frustration. A reaction of this kind isn’t surprising at a historically Black university, especially here at North Carolina A&T State University.
I’m a dean at the institution of higher education that produced the Greensboro Four—the students who created the lunch counter sit-in tactic that provided impetus and momentum to the Civil Rights movement.
There’s no debate about whether the range of reactions to the Zimmerman acquittal underscores the need for a national conversation on race. Unfortunately, that conversation is unlikely to happen because the groundwork hasn’t been laid for such an emotionally charged discussion.
There are various constituencies that share some measure of blame for an environment that renders an honest and meaningful discussion on race an unlikely prospect. One of the culpable entities is the higher education community.
That colleges and universities have failed to systematically engender frequent discussions and analyses of race and racial issues is both unfortunate and disturbing because these are institutions that predicate their existence on the pursuit of truth and enlightenment. But a review shows that only within the past three decades have the majority of predominantly White colleges and universities stepped away from the practice of racial discrimination in student enrollment. Almost all these institutions were completely silent about the pernicious effects of racial segregation during the long period when that practice dominated life in the South and was quite prevalent in the rest of the country.
Would the civic atmosphere be less polarized at this point if our institutions of higher learning had presented themselves as appropriate forums for the national dialogue on race that President Clinton called for 16 years ago? Even now, when we examine the curricular offerings and supplemental co-curricular activities that are presented to our best and brightest young people, penetrating analyses of race, prejudice and discrimination are usually conspicuously absent.
Trayvon Martin’s killing and George Zimmerman’s acquittal aren’t unusual. Quite the contrary. This tragedy mirrors hundreds, if not thousands, of similar incidents throughout the course of American history. Violence, including homicide, is a tool that White Americans have used since people of African descent first came to this country as a means of keeping us “in our place.” This phenomenon, and the reasons behind it, remains largely unexamined in our colleges and universities.
