Segregated Space, Segregated Knowledge?: The Nubian Message as an Imperfect Solution

Portrait of founder Tony Williamson

Tony Williamson's first column for the Nubian Message, justifying the existence of the paper.

In his opening article for the Nubian Message, founder Tony Williamson wrote, “ At N.C. State, one of our main concerns has been unfair and unjust media coverage of the African American community on this campus. As hard as we have tried, our cries for justice have not been heard and our proposed solutions to our media problems have not been accepted thus far. Rather than sit around and wait for some fair coverage by that other paper on campus, “The Nubian Message has been created to represent the African American community at NCSU totally, truthfully, and faithfully.””[1]

By founding the Nubian Message, Tony Williamson provided a safe space for African Americans to voice their concerns in a campus newspaper without fear of editorial attack within the pages of the Technician.  Yet by doing so, Williamson may also have cut off an important point of interracial dialogue within the pages of the Technician.  While the Nubian Message did not seek to define itself as an exclusively African American publication and welcomed contributions from the larger student body, the identity of the newspaper as an African American newspaper cut off participation and readership from the wider NCSU population.  In effect, the Nubian Message created a safe, but segregated space, to explore issues facing the African American student population at NCSU.

In the fall of 1992, were there real opportunities to start a racial dialogue on campus?  Certainly the letters written to the Technician seem to be representative of a dialogue, in that many were addressed in response to each other.  However, beyond these superficial signs of dialogue, a closer examination of the texts reveals that students on both sides of the racial debate talked past each other and often used inflammatory language to denigrate or make fun of the other side.  The letters in the Technician do not reveal any real attempt at dialogue, but a soapbox shouting match between supporters of the Black Awareness Council and the African American Cultural Center and its detractors.

Could the editorial staff of the Technician have done more to facilitate a more civil and real debate within its pages?  Undoubtedly, the editorial staff made some bad editorial choices in deciding which columns and letters to publish.  However, the very format of columns and the forum letters pages cut off any real thoughtful engagement because they were limited to short, opinion blurbs.  In the absence of any real way to engage in a dialogue, it is little wonder that the writers in the Technician reverted to name-calling rather than argument-making.  

The Nubian Message has fulfilled its role in providing a voice for African American students on NCSU’s campus.  But is the Nubian Message able to reach a larger readership beyond African American students?  In what ways does the Nubian Message marginalize African American voices to the periphery of campus debate by not engaging in the accepted campus publication, the Technician?  All of these questions remain an unanswered and problematic legacy for the future of the Nubian Message and race relations on NCSU’s campus.