Tim Wise, an anti-racism activist and educator, spoke to about 500 students and faculty at Emory's 13th annual State of Race address about white privilege, as well as racism across the country and on Emory's campus.
The event was a part of College Council's (CC) Social Justice Week, a new initiative that aims to raise awareness about the treatment of marginalized groups.
Wise spoke at a fast pace for 90 minutes about the history of racism, dominant racial groups in the United States and the social and economic consequences of maintaining these hierarchical structures.
According to Wise, who himself is a white male, members of the "dominant group" have the luxury of being oblivious, which is why "a well-meaning and decent human being" can cite the Three-Fifths Compromise as "elegant," referring to University President James W. Wagner's comments in Emory Magazine.
"I'm not here to judge or make any pronouncement on the intentionality or the decency on the president of this school," he added.
Wise also addressed the reluctance of both dominant and marginalized groups to discuss racism. He said white people avoid the subject because they are afraid of being perceived as racist, and people of color avoid it because they are afraid their issues will be marginalized or rejected as exaggerations.
Wise rejected the reluctance to explore the topic of racism, stating that discussing it "is the indicator of social truth; it is not the cause of social truth."
Wise recognized the difficulty of addressing these issues but stressed the importance of absolving oneself from ignorance as a member of the dominant group.
"There is value in the errors that get made," he said.
Some examples Wise cited included the ignorance of those who are not physically challenged in reference to the difficulty of those who are, the ignorance of men to sexism that women face and, again, the ignorance of white people toward the marginalization of people of other races.
Wise stressed that this ignorance has nothing to do with mal-intent, but simply, the convenience of never being forced to view the world from an alternative perspective.
Some students were concerned that Wise was "preaching to the choir," as College sophomore Ugochi Egbukich said following the event.
Egbukich said after the event that she noticed the faces in the audience were those who are already conscious of these issues on campus.
"This will be good for the people who are already politically charged," Egbukich said. "Hopefully, they'll talk to somebody who wasn't here tonight."
Wise transitioned the speech into a discussion about disparities in the treatment of white people and people of color, especially black and Latino people, in the criminal justice system.
Some examples he cited included the accusation of planted evidence during the first O.J. Simpson trial and the overwhelmingly disproportionate number of black and Latino police stops in Los Angeles as a result of racial profiling.
The problem of racism in this country, according to Wise, is not obliviousness. Rather, he said, it's the denial of certain issues. This denial often continues even after education about the matter has taken place.
A primary example of this idea is the economic gaps in opportunity between races. Wise said black people with college degrees are twice as likely to find themselves out of work than white individuals with college degrees. He added that Latinos are 50 percent more likely, and Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, a third more likely.
Wise made comparisons between what Civil Rights-era racism looked like and the violence brutality associated with it, as well as what racism looks like today. He admitted that even though racism is less brutal in the present, it is not a reason to pretend it does not exist.
"The fact that individuals have accomplished amazing things within a hierarchy of racial oppression says very little," Wise said, referring to the argument that the United States has a black president as evidence for why racism no longer exists.
Reinforcing the existence of racial hierarchy, Wise mentioned another avenue of opportunistic inequality in standardized testing and education in general. The contents of standardized tests to get into college or any level of graduate school are determined by the dominant group, according to him.
Wise concluded his speech with a charge to the students. Ultimately, he emphasized that he is not simply making an academic point about the state of race in this country.
"What I'm saying – it shouldn't be radical," he said. "It is an indicator of how retrograde and limited our conversation is as a country and as a culture that we should think it to be so radical."
Rather, he said that these problems should matter to people of every race because they eventually affect those in advantaged groups as well. He cited the current economic obstacles facing middle-class whites that people of color experienced 10 to 15 years ago.
"We can't survive as a functional society if we remain this unequal," he said.
CC Vice President and College senior Stephanie Llanes said she felt the event was a success, and she was glad Wise's speech was relevant to the controversial issues facing Emory.
– By Rupsha Basu
Photo by Emily Lin
