The mobilization of students – particularly students of color – prior to and during last week’s Diversity Strategic Planning Steering Committee Town Hall Meeting was beautiful. It was a strong show of support for our brother Josh Odam, and the community let the Chancellor know the precarious state that students of color – black and brown students in particular – live in at the University of Massachusetts.
The actual meeting though, was a farce. Start with the name. By reducing questions of white supremacy, settler colonialism and hate crimes to “diversity” the administration papers over the historical violence that made and makes UMass what it is today – an institution that almost exclusively serves the white and wealthy.
The chancellor made a distinction between promoting diversity in times of crisis – like the aftermath of the two death threats – and “regular” times. What the chancellor seems to fail to realize however, is that these events are inevitable on a campus that has no consistent and sustained effort to analyze the interlocking oppressions that largely determine who we are as a culture. And that the hate crimes are only the most extreme examples of a campus that offers the black and brown members of their community an unending stream of micro and macro-aggressions.
To paraphrase activist Kwame Ture, this is a country built on the enslavement of black people and the genocide of the First Nations peoples. These two facts are integral to any type of social, economic, psychological or geographic analysis of both UMass and the nation at large. But white supremacy and settler colonialism are rarely confronted on campus. Town Hall meetings and blue ribbon committees are on diversity, or at the extreme, “racism.” Black and brown people are “underrepresented” rather than deliberately excluded via a Eurocentric admissions process.
It is apparent that people at the University consistently engage in a cruel form of black and First Nations Holocaust denial. But why exactly do the forces of white supremacy and settler colonialism continue to hold such sway, 522 years after their introduction to this continent?
The answer is that the same economic regime that accompanied their introduction here is still in place.
According to the black American historian Phyllis Boanes, in the 16th, 17th, 18th up to the beginning of the 19th century, the planter and merchant class that owned the original 13 colonies were faced with a dilemma. Too often black people, First Nations people and white workers would realize their interests would align and fight against their oppressors. The planters and merchants realized that they needed what the Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci would later call a “historic bloc” to align a section of the working class with the elite.
This was done through rampant, white, supremacist chauvinism. The myth of “manifest destiny” – that the entire continent belonged to the white man – was propagated, and a new doctrine of universal white manhood suffrage was implemented. In a cruel twist, while the voting rolls increased massively in the beginning of the new republic, the amount of black voters went down, as the previous landholding and taxpaying requirements were revised in favor of a sole whiteness requirement.
We can see the continued reification of this historic bloc today. The average white family has six times the wealth as the average black or Latin family. When the racial statistics intersect with gender, the differences are even starker. According to a report from a leading economic research group, “while single white women in the prime of their working years (ages 36 to 49) have a median wealth of $42,600 (still only 61 percent of their single white male counterparts), the median wealth for single black women is only $5” – meaning that the average white woman in the prime of her working years has more than 800,000% more wealth than the average Black woman.
It is in the economic elite’s best interests to have white students crowing about affirmative action taking “their” spots than talking about the crushing load of student debt or the outrageous administrative overhead at UMass, or the varying tax deductions that allow the wealthy to pay barely any taxes.
It is in our best interests – the working classes – to relentlessly critique white supremacy and settler colonialism so we can defeat the capitalist forces that are intent on destroying us.
Matthew Cunningham-Cook is a Collegian columnist and can be reached at [email protected].
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t • Oct 27, 2014 at 12:46 am
so much appreciation for this article. as a queer woc at a state school in CA, navigating through institutionalized racism and discrimination in academia has been emotionally draining and taxing to say the least. and to all the commentators- it’s clear their privilege is shadowing a clear sighted vision of reality- or at least the reality for a lot of us other folks.
Bill • Oct 24, 2014 at 3:11 pm
It’s funny how it’s ok to openly hate white people because of the color of their skin. But to even imply that any other race is less than perfect makes you a racist. Backwards logic if I’ve ever heard it. My hunch is the author will never enter the real world and will remain in academia. Just a hunch.
Arafat • Oct 24, 2014 at 2:03 pm
Does the KKK represent diversity acceptable to the diversity czars?
If not then why are supporters of Hamas acceptable?
Who defines which “diversity” is too diverse?
Ralph • Oct 24, 2014 at 1:25 pm
This line is particularly comical: “the varying tax deductions that allow the wealthy to pay barely any taxes.” Last I checked, the top 10% of wage earners paid roughly 90% of the total taxes in this country. Almost exactly 50% of Americans owe NO federal tax at all, so cry me a river about inequality. Also, the trite statistics about earnings are so skewed as to be meaningless. They don’t take into account many important factors. People with the same level of education and in the same types of positions in the professional world, at least, are being paid on equal wage scales in law, medicine, architecture, business, etc.
As for your white supremacy angle, it seems like you were born in the wrong century. What’s next, an article about the piracy problem in the Bahamas? In fact, 2012 was the first year in which white births were below 50% of the total. I was never this cynical before, but it seems pretty clear that the demographic shift in this country from White to Brown is a concerted effort since the days of Clinton, and exacerbated in these past 6 years or so. There is a deliberate attempt to remake the country in terms of color and ethnicity. The benefits of “diversity” on the basis solely of race, creed or color, as OPPOSED to the basis of merit, has never been explained by anyone, to my knowledge. And, as such, we have inherited so many millions of meek, poor and dependent that cannot be cared for and have nothing to offer this nation in terms of skill or innovation that we are mired in a race to the bottom in an unexplained quest to be “diverse.” Diversity is great for food, music and art, and if it attracts the greatest minds and achievers from around the world, but otherwise all it is currently achieving is creating a society that is a veritable Tower of Babel, with many many different agendas, lifestyles, values, morals, religions and lack of cohesion/continuity that we had before. And why? I live in NYC, the capital of diversity. In the highest echelons of business in which I deal, the real benefits of diversity are apparent. I would argue there isn’t really that much diversity at all – yes, people of all creeds, religions, backgrounds and languages add a flavor – but all are engaged in a COMMON pursuit, are similarly driven/motivated, etc. So the diversity aspect just shows the cream rises to the top, at least in the world of finance, law, medicine, and big business. Either you have the chops and you can do it, or you don’t and you get left behind to opine on the “white settler” racism. You’re a race-baiter without the white robe. Just once, I would like someone to explain to me the benefits of diversity. It’s pitched as being great just for the sake of mixing all these cultures, but I have lived and traveled around the world, and the very societies who want America to be more racially diverse and more sensitive to them are the LEAST sensitive cultures on Earth. Perhaps the REAL agenda is to usurp what is left of American culture and simply make it a reasonable facsimile of the foreign hellhole from which they came.
So, please Matthew, tell me all about the virtues of diversity…what do they add to the culture besides what I mentioned above? Great food, music, art? Ok, how about something really tangible that can elevate a society? I can catalogue the ways in which diversity detracts from the culture in pretty significant ways. Be careful Matthew, it is exactly this kind of thing that can get you in trouble in 25 years from now. Just take a peek at what happened to Muhammed Akil in Jersey City just over the past few weeks. Same youthful hatred and rhetoric, and look how it came back to haunt him. I have a better idea, read a book called the Death of the West. Not only are your wishes actually coming true, but this culture you so detest will be a thing of the past by the time you are 50. What replaces it will not be pretty, but at least it won’t be white. You might look back and wish you had put more energy into being part of the solution, instead of another antagonist with the wrong answers.
Arafat • Oct 24, 2014 at 8:54 am
I mean seriously these get togethers are like a mutual admiration society where participants compete in rendering the most hyperbolized version of a world they make up out of fairy dust.
Arafat • Oct 24, 2014 at 8:52 am
Am I the only one who is sick to death of hearing about these fairy tales presented by biased people with a chip on their shoulder?
I mean what about black supremacy, black hatred? It’s not as if the knock-out game and daily killings in cities like Chicago are not a real reflection on black culture, no?
Am I allowed to write this or has the PC culture hijacked my First Amendment rights?