Author:
This letter is dedicated to everyone who did NOT write a letter to the editor or post a comment on the busy forum underneath Tef’s article from two weeks ago, “Racism Strikes Oxy’s Party Scene Wearing Brown.” I want to thank all of you for being conscientious objectors, opting out of what has a become a hurried shit-flinging festival over whether a certain party was or was not racist.
Whether or not this party qualified as racist, racism does not, primarily, present itself in the form of offensive party themes. Racism comes in many forms, and while this may have been one of them, it pales in comparison to, say, mothers who lose their newborn children: the Population Resource Bureau, a nonprofit, nonpartisan demographic data firm, reports that “In the 1989-1991 and 2002-2004 periods, black babies were 2.4 times more likely than white babies to die in their first year of life…Currently, the lack of access to health care among the poor-especially those of color-places infants from these groups at a considerable disadvantage in surviving their first year of life and robs society of their potential economic and social contributions. Policymakers need to invest in building the human and economic capacity of an increasingly minority youth population that will become our future workers and consumers.”
This is a concrete example of racism among countless others. We will only be able to make any headway in this climate if we begin to look at real, non-petty examples of racism in the political sense. Yes, as we all know, it is racist for someone to call someone else a racial slur or make fun of their culture. But isn’t it a tad bit more racist for that person of color to not be admitted to Oxy for political and economic reasons?
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