No Safe Space: Polarized Debates in the Technician

Tony Williamson's one and only editorial for the Technician, this piece denounces Crisp and Rom.

This letter by Jonathan Patrick is representative of some of the inflammatory dialogue about race on campus in the aftermath of the student protests at NCSU and at UNC Chapel Hill.

Yolanda Young's letter responds directly to Jonathan Patrick's letter and defends the burning of the newspaper and the point of view of black protesters.

In the aftermath of Steven Crisp’s angry column denouncing the BAC rally at UNC Chapel Hill, Tony Williamson, the founder of the Nubian Message, wrote his one and only column for the Technician.  In this angry response to Steven Crisp and Jeffrey Rom, Williamson makes an impassioned case for the necessity of an African American Cultural Center precisely to address the type of subconscious racism that Crisp and Rom projected onto the BAC.  Williamson argues that African Americans have been systematically denigrated by American culture in a series of negative stereotypes that have far reaching implications for African American identity, poverty, and opportunity.  Williamson argues that the poverty plaguing African American communities is not an accident of chance, but part of larger problem of racial discrimination in the United States.[1]

Other columns like “Newspaper Burning is a Racist Act” by Jonathan Patrick and “The Reasons Behind Burning and the X” by Yolanda Young continue a tortured and increasingly more polarized conversation on campus between two significant groups of students.  Patrick’s letter echoes the sentiments of Crisp and Rom by comparing black power with the KKK and other white hate groups.  Like many students brought up with post-racial rhetoric.  Patrick relies on charges of reverse racism in questions like, “Why is it that a white person cannot display a Dixie flag (which I don’t agree with, come on folks the war is over) or any other supposedly pro-white material when blacks parade around in shirts saying Black power and other bigoted slogans? And why are blacks allowed to display the X as a symbol of the pro-violence, anti-white teachings of Malcolm X when the X is comparable to the burning cross of the KKK?”[2]

What students like Rom, Patrick, and Crisp did not understand was that many symbols of white pride were made specifically to denigrate and oppress African Americans.  The KKK and other hate groups picked up on white power slogans and the Confederate flag specifically to reinforce African American inferiority and white superiority.  In response, symbols like the X and slogans of black pride seek to correct the assumed inferiority of African Americans, not necessarily to promote black superiority.  However, for students whose very worldview was shaped by assumptions that racism was now over because of the civil rights movement, the need for black pride could only be interpreted as threatening.  Ultimately, the continued racial attacks from both African American students and white students in the pages of the Technician resulted in the founding of the Nubian Message as a safe media space for African American students to present their views and discuss contemporary issues without fear of attack.