Earlier this week the African-American students at Ole Miss were accused in an article published by The Root of being “not socially conscious” by a fellow black graduate student, whose idea of social consciousness is defined by a historically black college or university, or HBCU, diploma. So to him and any other individual who shares his disappointment:
We chose an alternative route than our fellow brothers and sisters. We sit with “them.” Eat with “them.” Party with “them.” Some of us date “them.” And from the outside looking in, we desire to be “them.” Similar to MLK, we are accused of being pacifist and conformist, blacks who are unaware of their color. It seems that since we do not attend an HBCU our blackness is obsolete. The sit ins we have performed, marches we have led and words we have written are empty because our experiences of being black are unlike those of our HBCU counterparts.
It’s offensive to have our blackness minimized because we chose to attend Ole Miss, or because our reaction to racial incidents do not meet the standard of being black.
There is more than one way to approach racial inequality (as we see with Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X), and the opportunity we have to befriend white students inside and outside of the classroom enables us to make changes that an outsider may see as insignificant or compliant.
It reshapes our mind from an “us versus them” mentality, and we build honest bonds with white students that serve as a crossroad for discussions on racial injustices.
You might not see, but yes, we marched after the murder of Michael Brown, laid on the ground after Eric Garner and every day we raise our voices. Each day, what you see as passivity, we see as breaking the stereotype. We are breaking the mold.
I know for a fact that we have numerous African-Americans who are aware of their blackness, but they are not only aware of that.
They are also aware of their humanity.
People who posses the ability to promote their love for their ethnicity and humanity have inspired me to be proud of my own voice. That is how I know that we as a race are not socially unconscious at The University of Mississippi. Even more than that, we are not so bent on being so superior in a homogenous view of blackness that we take it upon ourselves to always take the Malcolm X approach.
Civil rights would not have been accomplished without both the peace of Martin Luther King and the uproar of Malcolm X, and I firmly believe that like these two men, black students at The University of Mississippi are well aware that we are both of African descent and American. Therefore we yell when we are wrongly done and march when we have been slighted. Yet, we also sit and build relations while growing with our fellow white students.
So no, we are not conformist. We are not unaware. We approach injustices differently because Ole Miss is different. Believe it or not, we are actually the minority here, so what is done at an HBCU does not always translate here. Different is not synonymous with wrong.
But I doubt some would understand this from how high they are sitting.
Jannell Granger is a junior international studies major from Pearl, Mississippi.
