Higher Learning

And we thought the days when college students raised hell were long gone: Today, student activists speaking out on racism on campus, affordable education and access to higher-ed as part of immigration reform are making us think twice.

Welcome to the Ivory Tower Inc. where the capitalist machine is alive and well and knowledge is sold to the highest bidder. Since higher education is mostly privatized and run like a corporate business universal access is non existent. The U.S. is one of the only self-proclaimed democratic systems with a privatized system of higher education that an overwhelming part of it's population cannot even afford and where most are inevitably sucked into a seemingly endless system of loan payments. Not only is access an enormous issue, but the millions of dollars funneled into both the military and prison industrial-complex under which our great nation operates (specializing in the incarceration of men of color-- there are more black men in prison than there are in college(1)) is also obliterating any chance for comprehensive education reform. A nationwide movement for lowering loan rates for higher education and just bringing down the price tag of higher ed both public and private is a growing agenda for students.

Issues around immigration status and documentation in higher education inspired both undocumented students and their allies in Chicago to start a lobbying and advocacy campaign for the DREAM Act. The DREAM Act, if adopted would become part of comprehensive immigration reform. The Act would allow undocumented students the ability to go to colleges and universities with access to financial aid. Thousands of students from schools across the country marched in a rally in Washington D.C. on March 20th to pressure Congress to pass the DREAM Act.

Race and class are still monster issues and not just in more conservative institutions. No matter how many nouveau self-proclaimed progressive liberals we keep turning out, spaces are still limited and microagressions (definition: people usually think of racism with a big bold red 'R' paired with burning crosses in the mud. But today, racism is commonly more insidious, less bold, more underhanded and most people when hit with today's racism are left standing thinking "What the hell just happened?") occur every day. Our increasing inability to talk about race and class in this country and in our schools and jumping straight to equally problematic models of egalitarianism and colorblindness is causing major tensions on college campuses. "Ghetto" themed parties or nooses hanging from quad trees may not seem like crosses burning in the mud-- but really, they might as well be.

Our dominant model of multiculturalism with it's "happy, happy let's hold hands, dish out colorful food, fun and festivities and pretend that we're not struggling, pretend that we're not being tokenized, pretend that we're not being appropriated" vision of society and cultural space is not the way to transformative change. Multiculturalism and it's post-modern heir "color blindness" has divided communities of color on a national level, but particularly in the microcosm that are institutions of higher learning. Students from under represented communities (communities of color, queer and working class communities) struggle to effectively work together and form proactive coalitions against systems of institutionalized oppression from curriculum and pedagogy all the way down to student groups and organizing.

College campuses in the U.S. have historically been sites for social action and change. Students have marched, protested, organized and mobilized in the thousands against war, racism, sexism and labor among a litany of other social justice issues.

But this isn't 1968, this is 2010 and college students are (hopefully) gearing up and ready for a fight.



(1)About 10.4% of the entire African-American male population in the United States aged 25 to 29 is incarcerated, by far the largest racial or ethnic group—by comparison, 2.4% of Hispanic men and 1.2% of white men in that same age group were incarcerated. According to a report by the Justice Policy Institute in 2002, the number of black men in prison has grown to five times the rate it was twenty years ago. Today, more African-American men are in jail than in college. In 2000 there were 791,600 black men in prison and 603,032 enrolled in college. In 1980, there were 143,000 black men in prison and 463,700 enrolled in college.

The United States of Panic & Hysteria

It's no big secret: conservatives across the country have been in a constant state of panic since November 2008 when Barack Obama against all odds and in the wake of a history of assassinated black and liberal leaders took the stage in Grant Park, Chicago with the first family to accept his presidential victory. Some, having lived through the height of racial tension and violence in the Unites States weren't even sure Obama was going to live to see his inauguration two months later.

But somehow, here we are a year and a half later-- and what a year it's been with a good number of Americans losing their minds at the sight of a black man in the Oval Office. The criticism from every part of the political and public strata was almost instant. The verbal attacks on the Obama administration started even before all his Cabinet members were even sworn in. Tea-baggers and mobs of conservatives delirious with fits of hysterics swept through town and city halls-- grainy video footage we watched night after night on the evening news. But does a plea of collective "Negro-in-the-White-House" induced insanity excuse this???

"Oh, (a resounding) hell 'nah!!!"
The image-- a reflection of how twisted this country has become-- so intent on hastening a "post-racial" era on the backs of people of color and yet just as marked by race as ever. You can't look at this image and tell me race and racism in the U.S. in 2010 is "post" anything!

Yes, people, take a close look. Someone had the audamndacity to portray the President of the United States as the rapist of Lady Liberty and I for one am just sick and simply exhausted by the panic bordering on sheer hysteria that has taken grip over the United States and is turning the image of hope we so ostentatiously ( and albeit naively) held out to ourselves and the world during the 2008 Presidential campaign into an image of a country that finds itself, ultimately.......as divided as ever before. The polarization that has happened within the ranks of the government between Republicans masquerading as the moral protectors of freedom and liberty and Democrats tripping over themselves to try to make things happen and stabilize their tenuous electoral victories, makes a mockery of our so-called "democracy."

Liberals excuse the actions of right wing conservatives and write them off as crazy, irrational bigots. Liberal pundits call racism a mental illness--which does nothing to root out the structural and systemic insidiousness of it. The fact remains that images like the one above and the one on the right are real, they become a poignant trigger particularly in the collective psyche of people of color. I know, I know we allegedly have "freedom of speech" and political cartoonists regardless of political affiliation can exercise that right. Political cartoonists thrive on caricature and often intend to provoke and offend. But despite all this, something still irks me at the sight of this image. Something still feels like someone speared me in the gut with a hot poker. Something still makes me sick. For, no matter how low President Bush sunk, there was never a depiction of him "raping liberty" -- and while there are very uncanny images of Bush as a chimpanzee, there are no images of him being shot or brutalized-- no matter how idiotic his actions, how oppressive his administration's policies (Patriot Act, anyone??). Two and a half years into his presidency and we have Obama the Terrorist, Obama the Anti-Christ, Obama the Psychopathic Socialist, and now, Obama the Rapist.

My purpose isn't to bash conservatives-- in some ways I wish the nation's liberals would be a bit more irrational, a little more militant and a little less politically correct so that maybe we could get the kind of change we so desperately need. But I do want us to interrogate how racism and the oppressive power of representation are still hard at work and President Obama is far from immune.

Oh where, oh where do we even begin? Should we start with the blatantly racialized content evoking the age old fear of black masculinity and the pathologizing and dehumanizing stereotype of black men as rapists- specters of Emitt Till and the countless other black men lynched and brutalized throughout this country's history? Or should we jump to the suggestive language of sexualized violence and the gendered (and equally racialized [as white]) image of Lady Liberty herself, with her torch broken at the foot of the bed-- ominously beckoning the "Dark Age of Obama"? The poster of the cartoon said the the image could not be racist because Lady Liberty was green. I won't even entertain that statement with a response. The cartoon alluding to the passage of the health care bill last week, also preposterously suggests that immigration and environmental reform are also examples of a "rape of liberty." Who's liberty? Who does Lady Liberty come to represent? And really, if healthcare, immigration and environmental reform constitute a breach to liberty in someone's twisted imagination-- we need to seriously consider what we mean by "liberty" in the first place.

Take a look at this Racialicious article on the cartoon (Note: The article does have a "Trigger Warning" for survivors)