[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 2 (Wednesday, January 26, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: January 26, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                      ``A LOUD SILENCE ON RACISM''

 Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, one Friday evening during recess, I 
had my television set on the news--I believe it was ABC--when I heard 
Roger Wilkins, a professor of history at George Mason University, who 
is an articulate spokesperson for justice and opportunity who should be 
listened to not only by Members of Congress, but also by this 
administration. He told that meeting and the Nation that we have to pay 
attention to the problems of the poor in our country, if we really want 
to do something about crime.
  It was one of many instances I have seen, heard, and read where Roger 
Wilkins calls on this Nation to do better.
  I view him as a great national asset.
  The next day, I picked up the New York times and read an op-ed piece 
by Roger Wilkins on racism, this time against Jews, offered by an 
African-American.
  At the end of my remarks, I ask that Roger Wilkins' statement be 
placed in the Record.
  Whenever we create barriers to understanding one another, we create 
future problems for our country.
  That is true when we ignore the problems of the poor. That is true 
when we fail to reach out to one another across the barriers of race, 
religion, and ethnic background.
  This Nation is fortunate to have Roger Wilkins in our midst. We 
should be listening to him more often.
  The statement follows:

                [From the New York Times, Jan. 8, 1994]

                        A Loud Silence on Racism

                           (By Roger Wilkins)

       Washington.--Khalid Abdul Muhammad of the Nation of Islam, 
     speaking at Kean College in Union, N.J., on Nov. 29, talked 
     of ``Columbia Jew-niversity'' and ``Jew York City'' and 
     suggested that German Jews brought the Holocaust upon 
     themselves. He also took aim at whites generally, the Pope, 
     homosexual and the blind and disabled.
       No blacks on the faculty and staff condemned the contents 
     of the speech, according to news reports. One faculty member 
     sidestepped issues raised by the talk and lashed out at 
     racism on the campus, to which he believed Jewish faculty 
     members had contributed.
       In avoiding swift and forceful condemnation of Mr. 
     Muhammad's bilious diatribe, the black faculty members failed 
     their students, failed their obligations as members of a 
     civilized community and failed to uphold the best traditions 
     of the black struggle.
       While I have never been to Kean College, I have no reason 
     to doubt allegations that black adults on the campus have 
     encountered racial problems. Despite splendid efforts on many 
     campuses to change behavior, populations and curriculums, 
     racism remains alive and extremely hurtful in academia. But 
     this is exactly why black staff and faculty members must 
     display exemplary moral behavior. It is not just the black 
     adults on campus who are harmed by racism; it is, primarily 
     and most distressingly, the students--students of all colors 
     and backgrounds. The black adults have important lessons to 
     teach all students, in the classrooms and outside.
       Most white, Hispanic, Asian and American Indian students 
     get their first sustained exposure to a black adult when they 
     come into our classroom. No matter what subject we teach, our 
     personas can be powerful countervailing lessons to the racist 
     notions that nonblack students bring from their neighborhoods 
     and homes.
       Black students have come already hurt by a disdainful 
     culture into an academic atmosphere of profound ambivalence. 
     Despite the strongest efforts of the best-intentioned 
     institutions, the atmosphere at predominantly white colleges 
     and universities shrieks, ``This is a white space that you 
     occupy only at our sufferance!'' Not too long ago, a black 
     student in Oklahoma told me, ``White people give me looks 
     that say, `What are you doing here?''' I asked him when that 
     happened. ``Every time I walk into a room,'' he replied.
       One of our most important jobs as black staff and faculty 
     is to help these young people, whose sense of themselves is 
     precarious, learn that though it will be psychically and 
     often economically difficult, they can become strong, 
     effective and fulfilled citizens as so many of the most 
     honorable African-Americans have been over the centuries.
       Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, Mary 
     McLeod Bethune, W.E.B. DuBois, Fannie Lou Hamer, Martin 
     Luther King Jr. and Thurgood Marshall were among those who 
     created our best traditions. Their lives teach us that we 
     blacks are much more than simply the sum of our injuries and 
     grievances.
       One of the first tasks black faculty members have in 
     passing on those lessons is to separate, to the greatest 
     degree possible, our teaching from the anger and pain our own 
     institutional struggles have inflicted on us. We have to be 
     able to manage our anger and pain and to use them 
     constructively in order to teach our students how to do it 
     after we are gone.
       Our heroes did that. Though some of them worked during 
     slavery and others during deepest segregation, they were not 
     whiners or scapegoaters. Some of the most courageous and 
     effective allies many had were Jews. They had other white 
     allies as well--some of them Catholic, blind, lesbian or gay. 
     Our great leaders were not immune to pain or anger, but they 
     were not racists.
       It is not weakness to control your justifiable rage, to 
     resist scapegoating, to deal with people as individuals and 
     to use humane values to advance our cause. On the contrary, 
     it is weak to be vile and stupid and anti-Semitic and 
     homophobic and racist. Sometimes it takes strength for 
     teachers to say such things to students when a truly wicked 
     and destructive message has just pandered to their deepest 
     injuries and insecurities.

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