I am accepting Professor Crispin Sartwell’s invitation, offered in his piece “A Difficult Time,” to think about what and who we are protesting against, and why? We are not only protesting against the administration’s response, or lack thereof, to a serious incident on campus. We are protesting the administration and their failure to properly educate young adults about issues such as race and diversity. Why? Because it is 2017 and ignorance can no longer be an excuse. Being 18 years old and not understanding why blackface [Editor’s Note: this claim cannot be confirmed from the picture in question] is wrong is no longer acceptable on this campus, we “social justice warriors,” as Professor Sartwell so mockingly refers to us as, will make sure of it.

It is the job of an institution of higher education to educate their students. If they do not get this crucial education at their predominantly white private high schools, then it becomes Dickinson’s job as an institution to fill that role. We, the social justice warriors, are holding them accountable until they implement policy that will address this gap in knowledge that is so apparent on our campus and in society today. If this student, as a freshman, didn’t realize what he was doing was wrong, there were certainly older players on the team at that party that could have told him. This perpetuates a culture of racism and white supremacy on our campus, which makes the students of color feel unsafe here. If Dickinson cared as much about the well-being of its students of color as their website and advertisements seem to suggest, they would have done more to ensure their safety by now, which includes providing more adequate health and mental wellness resources and the implementation of more racial sensitivity training upon matriculation at Dickinson.

I could write an entire separate piece about the tokenization of students of color at Dickinson, but for now, back to Professor Sartwell’s piece: what really struck me as shocking right away was his characterization of the portrayal of a lynching of a black man [Editor’s Note: this claim cannot be confirmed from the picture in question] as “trivial.” He refers to the blackface [Editor’s Note: this claim cannot be confirmed from the picture in question] and Afro wig as “just a costume” and that there are “real” racial inequalities in this world that are much more worth our time and energy to try and change.

He correctly notes that power structures are hard to change, but incorrectly claims that symbols are easy to change. If by changing symbols Professor Sartwell means changing the meaning behind them, then I wish him luck in his attempt to change the meaning of the swastika back to its original roots as an ancient religious symbol used on the Indian subcontinent (but actually, Professor, don’t attempt this), or his attempt at changing the meaning of the toy gun pointed at a kneeling Colin Kaepernick [Editor’s Note: this claim cannot be confirmed from the picture in question].

Yes, thank you for pointing out that no one has actually been killed with a toy gun… I almost forgot. But, 12-year-old Tamir Rice was shot and killed because police mistook his toy gun for a real one in an open carry state, and mistook him as a grown man who would have been the legal age to possess even a real firearm. A black man was shot and killed at Walmart for carrying around a toy gun, something that I, a young white male, did without fear as a child while shopping with my mother. Colin Kaepernick is protesting the injustice in this country that is the unjustified killings of unarmed persons of color at the hands of law enforcement. So, the picture of a gun being pointed at a blackface representation of a kneeling Colin Kaepernick [Editor’s Note: this claim cannot be confirmed from the picture in question], speaks volumes. It’s not just an attack on Colin Kaepernick. It’s an attack on all persons of color who may agree with what Kaepernick is kneeling for.

This blatant ignorance about the power and rigidness of symbols reminded me of the video Ethnic Notions, which was shown by the Popel Shaw Center for Race and Ethnicity a few days after the Halloween incident. This video examines the history of blackface and highlights how it wasn’t just a get-up white people wore to serve as entertainment for other white people. Blackface was the only encounter that many white people had with any representation of a black person, let alone an actual black person. Since so many people never came into contact with black people, this was their only idea of what they were like: inferior, idiotic, happy. Blackface served the purpose of justifying slavery, and after it segregation, which are just some the root causes of these “real” racial inequalities. It’s not “just a costume” or “trivial.” People wearing blackface today very well could be the lawmakers signing racist legislation into law tomorrow, which worsens the “real” racial inequalities in this country, which Professor Sartwell claims to actually be concerned about.

Yet this is the most unfortunate part of the opinion piece: That an adult with a doctorate degree from University of Virgina can’t make the connection between “trivial” events like the one that happened on campus during Halloween weekend and the “real” racial inequalities we see in society. The former reinforces and perpetuates the latter, Professor.

Thank you to Dickinson students Nina Bethel ’20 and Sydney Collins ’18 for offering me suggestions and their thoughts on this piece.