A brief introduction: Last Thursday students at the University of Iowa held a "Black Voices Aren't Heard" Rally. A daily Iowan opinion piece in response to that rally was to be written connecting those events with the events in Ferguson and Baltimore.
Pretty much what happened in the article is that the misguided young man who wrote it asserted that Black Voices are heard. His evidence? We have a black president, a black attorney general, a black businessman visited the IMU, and in February we had a black journalist at the University. So hoorah, systemic institutional racism is cured I guess... What was much worse is that this young man went on to call those who took to the streets in anger in Baltimore "violent thugs" and lecture black people on how to correctly respond to perpetual oppression (yes the young man who wrote this was white and benefits from the oppression he was telling us how to respond to). So here is my response. Enjoy. (BTW I'm linking the article below this sentence so you can read it for yourself.) http://www.dailyiowan.com/2015/05/01/Opinions/42023.html In response to “Korobov: The Power of Peaceful Protest” As a member of the organizing committee of the “black voices aren’t heard” rally, I can reaffirm that after reading Mr. Korobov’s article that Black Voices are indeed not heard. First we must address the fact that white people who benefit from the oppression of black people think it appropriate to tell black people how to react to systemic and perpetual plunder, degradation, and violence. It’s not. Second, Mr. Korobov had no problem calling black people who chose to channel their frustrations into the destruction of property thugs. Anybody who does not understand how racially charged the word “thug” is AND cannot begin to empathize with what they are feeling has no place writing opinion articles on race. Third, the fact that black people who live in a perpetual depression and are subject to constant state sponsored violence, were called “violent thugs” – a neo-racial slur – was personally infuriating While we are on that; if black people who break windows are to be called thugs, my question to Mr. Korobov is: what should we call policemen who break spines, kill innocent twelve year olds, and slam women’s heads into concrete? Finally, the distraction to peaceful protest are not the 300 or so people who took to “rioting”, it is the media’s sensationalization of those people while there were simultaneously 10,000 other people peacefully protesting police violence and general indifference towards black life. I will end with a quote from Dr. King, seeing as Mr. Korobov seems to be a fan of his work: “I must say tonight that a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it that America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met.”
2 Comments
Taylor
5/1/2015 04:10:45 pm
Mr. Korobov insists that peaceful protests are how to make change, then explains a scenario of peaceful protest, but instead of listening to and empowering them for the change he claims they'll make, says simply that their wrong. So many ironies layered throughout his article. Another: the peaceful protest claimed that black voices weren't heard, and the article was a form of silencing black voices. I mourn the fact that it was not satire, but an article that the author authentically believed to be in the right.
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Tay
5/2/2015 11:42:49 am
" I mourn the fact that it was not satire, but an article that the author authentically believed to be in the right."
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