Mizzou: After the fact (op-ed)

Grievance is defined as a real or imagined wrong.

The college I attended still held classes on Martin Luther King Jr.’s Holiday. That was a real grievance. The grievance was a fact and the evidence was class attendance. Imaginary grievances aren’t facts. They’re feelings formulated after the fact and the evidence is hyperbole.

Recently Mizzou’s (University of Missouri) president was pressured by students to resign. (A student went on a hunger strike and the football team announced they would not play games.) The real grievance was racial slurs. Mizzou alums must have thought Mizzou’s president or someone close to him made disparaging remarks again.

In 2003 the wife of Mizzou’s first black president was recorded advising a black basketball player, in trouble for domestic violence, not to date white girls because they will ruin your (rear end). When her comment and other derogatory remarks surfaced in the press an offended white parent wrote Mizzou’s student newspaper stating: If the president’s wife was white “and she had been talking about staying away from black girls there would have been outrage. The NAACP would be calling for [her husband’s] resignation … Jesse Jackson would be threatening economic blackmail and black athletes and students would be encouraged not to attend MU.”

This president didn’t make any disparaging remarks.

The racial slurs were made by unidentified persons in a pick up truck at the black student body president. The university chancellor addressed the issue immediately. He said, “One bias incident is one too many. The incidents that I have heard about -- both blatant and subtle -- are totally unacceptable. Our core values of respect, responsibility, discovery and excellence leave no room for bias and discrimination.” Then a drunken student directed racial slurs toward Black students rehearsing a homecoming skit.

Because of these incidents this president was confronted by protesters at a homecoming parade. These Black students turned the incidents involving racial slurs into a combined grievance about racism.

Now racism is a belief in superiority. If that belief doesn’t produce a discriminatory action then the belief is impotent. But if that definition is too general Georgetown University professor Michael Eric Dyson specifically stated: Racism presupposes the ability to control a significant segment of the population through imposed policies coercively.

Does the use of racial slurs meet the criteria of either one of these definitions to justify a real grievance?

But the protesters blocked the president’s vehicle during the homecoming procession. The president didn’t exit the car to interact eventually the police pushed the protesters back. The protesters felt slighted. They believed the president demonstrated indifference by remaining in his vehicle. Then a protester went on a hunger strike.

The hunger striker stated his reason was these incidents “dynamically disrupted the learning experience for marginalized underrepresented students.”

Now is that a real grievance or is that hyperbole?

When the football team boycotted in support of the hunger strike their first demand stated: The president must acknowledge his white male privilege, recognize that systems of oppression exist, admit his gross negligence, apologize for allowing his driver to hit a demonstrator, and apologize for refusing to intervene when the police used excessive force with demonstrators.

Is that a real grievance or is that hyperbole?

Then the Missouri Student Association wrote a letter to the Board of Curators that began: The University of Missouri met the shooting of Mike Brown with silence. In the following months our students were left stranded, forced to face an increase in tension and inequality with no systemic support.

Is that a real grievance or is that hyperbole?

Historically students that sought to integrate lunch counters were trained to withstand racial slurs and battery by ignorant individuals because their real grievance was against segregation institutionalized by the state.

These students internalized their real grievance -- racial slurs -- and imagined themselves incarcerated by institutional racism. (Hunger strikes are tactics of political prisoners or people under colonial rule.) And those that sympathized with these students provided psychological comfort for their distress but that is not the same as moral support for their demands.

First published by the New Pittsburgh Courier 11/18/15