There's been some nasty racist graffiti painted on the mens' room walls at the junior college I attend. You know the stuff - lots of swearing, the only word with more than one syllable starts with an N, and so on. Student Michael Schaffer wouldn't stand for this bigotry, and decided to do something about it.
To raise awareness of the issue of racism on our campus, Schaffer collected photographs of some of the vile slurs and slanders and made a poster. To this he added a statement against the racist graffit, words that he unironically calls a "testament to the fears of an uninformed heart":
After coming to a country that was already established and culturally rich, murdering and enslaving the people, stealing the wealth of these nations to gabble away and use to fund wars in the name of compassionate, forgiving, understanding Jesus Christ with no understand or respect for the meaning of these golden emblems or the person you wage war for.
After stealing a people from their homeland, erasing the culture, replacing tradition with a white Jesus Christ, enslaving these people for four hundred years to build the industry and government we live under now, and ending the non-violent campaign of Martin Luther King Jr. and passionate voice Malcolm X with bullets instead of intellect or respect.
After Cesear Chavez and his people fought non-violently with mind, body, and soul simply for a wage that could sustain a family, put children through school, cloths on their backs, and food on the table three times a day.
We continue to perpetuate the sense of difference and found-less feeling of superiority of whiteness by allowing janitors -- people of color here at SRJC -- scrub racist graffiti directed towards them off the walls of our urine and feces reeking restrooms.
So there's the solution: fight bigoted hate speech with, uh, bigoted hate speech. Given the upswing in "white pride" organizations around here, I'm surprised there hasn't been a protest, although a dozen copies of the poster were destroyed the same day he put them up. The bigger surprise was that this message was "overwhelmingly approved" by the Inter-Club Council. This is from the school paper dated March 24, and does not appear to be an April Fool's joke. I didn't try to confirm it, though.
Posted by Warrior Tang at April 8, 2004 04:17 PM
Don't you just love student activist types who don't think out their plans? Reminds me of the pro-Palestinian protest crowds here who campaign for freedom, peace and equality for all by cheering on the suicide bombers.
Posted by: zi at April 8, 2004 04:15 PM