It's time we had the talk. You know, the one about
Where-Black-People-Meet-dot-com.
I'm talking about that
dating site with all the commercials, the one that tells beautiful black people how to meet beautiful black people.
I'd be OK with it if it was
Where-to-Meet-Black-People-dot-com. Everybody has personal preferences. That wouldn't be so different from other strangely specific online dating sites, like
Farmers-Only-dot-com ("City folks just don't get it"), that dating site for pot smokers ("Why toke alone?"), or the one for STD sufferers ("Connect and cozy up with fun and flirty singles who share your STD").
But it is different. Because it excludes. On the basis of race.
And that doesn't play, whether on your TV screen or on the campus of the University of Alabama. It is a conversation that divides, that continues to make people think of one another as "us" and "them," and allows dividers to rationalize exclusion – from one perspective or the other – by tradition or past injustice.
It is 2013, and the way we talk about race – the way we react to race – has to change.
Of course this is not
really about a dating site. The University of Alabama is now tumbling through damage control, finally acknowledging its own systemic racism. UA President
Judy Bonner has told sororities to open up rush to "continuous bidding," a move designed to encourage white sororities go back and pledge black girls they already rejected because of race.
It is something. It is a Band-Aid, of course, a knee jerk reaction to media criticism. At best it lets the world wait to see which black would-be sorority girls will return to join a sorority where the door was just slammed in their faces. It is a remedy but not a cure.
It doesn't deal with the fact that there are two separate national Greek councils, one for black and one for white, and integration of neither has been particularly successful. It does not begin to address the issue that both those organizations like being separate, the reality that it is impossible to force people to like each other, and the fact that not everyone, ever, will get into the group of their choice.
If there is racial healing to come, UA will need more than triage.
Maybe it will come. Bonner today finally issued a statement that was not complete milquetoast.
"While we won't tell any group who they must pledge, the University of Alabama will not tolerate discrimination of any kind,"
she said in a taped statement.
"If we are going to adequately prepare our students to compete in the global society we simply must make systemic and profound changes."
Which is good. But if she is serious about removing racial barriers to sororities and fraternities – or any other group – the University will have to do a heckuva lot more than give sororities a mulligan for another racist rush.
The University needs to exert its formidable power to force change. It must educate incoming freshman about discrimination and warn every organization on campus, black and white, Greek and otherwise, that people are people, and that racial discrimination of any hue will not fly.
Racism must become the "targeting foul" of the UA campus.
Break the rule and you are gone. Period. Students who discriminate should be kicked off campus, adults who promote or condone it will be fired or banned. Organizations that willfully discriminate on the basis of race – any race – should have their leases revoked.
Simple. End of that conversation. And the start of another one.
And that's the irony in this whole ... discussion.
The racial divisions on the UA campus blew up only because a black girl wanted to go through rush with her white friends. And her white friends wanted her to join them in a sorority, and plenty of sorority girls were ready to take that step. They were so colorblind – some would say naïve – that they could not imagine a world this ... black and white.
That's the conversation we need to have.
We've heard enough about where black people meet. We've heard enough of where white people meet. We need
people to meet.
John Archibald'
Integration should've never happened, it stunted our growth as a people.
.
