You are currently browsing the category archive for the ‘Race’ category.
A vice president of the Binghamton University Student Association has been the target of racist taunts from members of her own student government twice in the last week.
Last Sunday night, according to witnesses, Binghamton SA Vice President for Finance Alice Liou, who is Asian-American, was arguing with Elahd Bar-Shai, a member of the university’s Student Assembly, in the Student Association offices. After she made a disparaging remark about his appearance, he said he was surprised she could “see anything with those squinty eyes.”
At a meeting of the Student Assembly the following night, Bar-Shai, who last semester sponsored an SA constitutional amendment to eliminate the student government’s Vice President of Multicultural Affairs position, stood for election as chair of the Assembly, winning in a 14-11 vote.
After that vote, several of Bar-Shai’s supporters left the meeting, causing the Assembly to lose quorum. An SA officer followed them out, attempting to convince them to return, and the group’s discussion got heated. Eventually Liou became involved, and Assembly representative Mike Lombardi, a supporter of Bar-Shai, told her to “go eat a dog.” (In one account, he told her to “shut up and go eat a fucking dog.”) At that point, Liou says, she called him a “white bastard,” and had to be restrained by friends.
Campus police were called to the Assembly meeting as a result of the disturbance, and the Binghamton administration is now investigating the incident, but no disciplinary action has yet been taken. Lombardi, who is the former business manager of the Binghamton Review, a conservative newspaper on campus, resigned from the Assembly on Wednesday.
A group calling itself “A Coalition of Angry Students” is planning a protest rally on campus this afternoon (Facebook Event page here). They are demanding that Bar-Shai and Lombardi “be suspended for a semester, stripped of their SA positions and sign written apologies” to Liou.
May 4 update: This post is still getting a lot of hits, and I’ll be following up as I get more information. In the meantime, if you attended the Saturday protest, or have other news to share, please leave a comment or send me an email.
May 5 update: The Student Assembly ousted Bar-Shai as its chair at a meeting last night.
“Freedom is the right to share, share fully and equally, in American society — to vote, to hold a job, to enter a public place, to go to school. It is the right to be treated in every part of our national life as a person equal in dignity and promise to all others.
“But freedom is not enough. You do not wipe away the scars of centuries by saying: Now you are free to go where you want, and do as you desire, and choose the leaders you please.
“You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, “you are free to compete with all the others,” and still justly believe that you have been completely fair.
“Thus it is not enough just to open the gates of opportunity. All our citizens must have the ability to walk through those gates.
“This is the next and the more profound stage of the battle for civil rights. We seek not just freedom but opportunity. We seek not just legal equity but human ability, not just equality as a right and a theory but equality as a fact and equality as a result.”
–Lyndon Johnson, Howard University Commencement, June 4, 1965.
Anita Hemmings, the first African-American graduate of Vassar.
Anita Hemmings became the first black woman to graduate from Vassar College in 1897 — forty-three years before Vassar opened its doors to black students.
The whole story is here, and it’s a great one. (I found it via this excellent post by TransGriot discussing the use of the term “passing” to describe transpeople.)
Xavier University, the nation’s only historically black Catholic college, has invited Donna Brazile to speak at their commencement, but the Archbishop of New Orleans says he won’t be there.
Brazile, the campaign manager of Al Gore’s 2000 presidential campaign — and a one-time student activist with the United States Student Association — is a black Catholic, and a native of the New Orleans area. But she’s also pro-choice, and that’s not sitting well with Archbishop Alfred Hughes.
“You are not a committed anti-racist until you can look at the ugliness of racism without flinching.”
—Womanist Musings. (Go read the whole post.)
studentactivism.net 
Recent Comments