2008 Woodie Awards
Students need to reclaim their power for change
Atreese Watkins
Issue date: 4/27/07 Section: Forum
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"What is at stake are no longer symbolic gestures, but real actions. And if it comes to this, you must desert your universities, leave your classrooms in order to carry the word across America…"
"You must now- and you have the physical, material, and intellectual means to do so - you must face life directly and no longer in comfortable aquariums - I mean the American universities- which raise goldfish capable of no more than blowing bubbles."
These are words with which Jean Genet, infamous playwright, addressed an audience of Yale students May 20, 1970 to communicate to them the importance of their political lives related to supporting Bobby Seal.
He warned them, "Your real life depends on the Black Panther Party."
This is what all students as successors of power have yet to realize: that our political lives are our real lives.
As a first-year student I know that Guilford has a rich supply of intellectual compassion that could be harnessed for real change, but I also know that this potential for change is stifled by the emphasis this institution places on tangible achievement and prestige.
In the past nine months, I witnessed structural racism, outright bigotry, ignorance, overt scapegoating, and the classic American gloss-over. As a person who came to Guilford to engage in substantive analytical learning of the world that I have inherited, I am disappointed.
Let's be honest: Guilford has a reputation. I can't count how many times I have heard the phrases "Underground Railroad" and "Accepted Japanese students during internment." That is wonderful, and I did make my decision to come here so that I would be a part of an institution that has a legacy of dissent, but I didn't come here to be pummeled with the philosophy that "that kind of dissent" is outdated and ineffective.
The Black Panthers, whatever controversy they connote, inspire because they recognized that the world could not be fixed "one problem at a time" when it was built on problems creating and perpetuating one another. Yet this year I found the attitude to "allow change to happen."
"You must now- and you have the physical, material, and intellectual means to do so - you must face life directly and no longer in comfortable aquariums - I mean the American universities- which raise goldfish capable of no more than blowing bubbles."
These are words with which Jean Genet, infamous playwright, addressed an audience of Yale students May 20, 1970 to communicate to them the importance of their political lives related to supporting Bobby Seal.
He warned them, "Your real life depends on the Black Panther Party."
This is what all students as successors of power have yet to realize: that our political lives are our real lives.
As a first-year student I know that Guilford has a rich supply of intellectual compassion that could be harnessed for real change, but I also know that this potential for change is stifled by the emphasis this institution places on tangible achievement and prestige.
In the past nine months, I witnessed structural racism, outright bigotry, ignorance, overt scapegoating, and the classic American gloss-over. As a person who came to Guilford to engage in substantive analytical learning of the world that I have inherited, I am disappointed.
Let's be honest: Guilford has a reputation. I can't count how many times I have heard the phrases "Underground Railroad" and "Accepted Japanese students during internment." That is wonderful, and I did make my decision to come here so that I would be a part of an institution that has a legacy of dissent, but I didn't come here to be pummeled with the philosophy that "that kind of dissent" is outdated and ineffective.
The Black Panthers, whatever controversy they connote, inspire because they recognized that the world could not be fixed "one problem at a time" when it was built on problems creating and perpetuating one another. Yet this year I found the attitude to "allow change to happen."
Viewing Comments 1 - 1 of 1
Sharon Howe Cranford
posted 4/27/07 @ 10:32 AM EST
Dear Atreese:
I was once where you are. Learn everything you can while at Guilford -- political science, history, writing, critical thinking -- then come to Washington, DC and work on Capitol Hill, preferably the House side. (Continued…)
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