Beyond the Name: How to Move Forward?

Hashim Johnson's letter in response to the Technician's editorial, "Black or African American?"  Johnson accuses the Technician of trying to be divisive and lacking respect for African Americans.

For African American students on campus, these debates about name were about far more than the semantics of race.  They revealed deeper concerns about how African American students were viewed and how best to combat racism on campus.  Hashim Johnson’s editorial on April 1, 1991, gets to the deeper problems in the naming debate.  Johnson argued that the very objective of The Technician’s naming controversy was a subtly racist need to label people as different.  By asking how African American students should be labelled, The Technician implied that labelling was necessary.  Johnson argued that the newspaper reflected a larger lack of respect and understanding for who African Americans were and the social and political problems they faced because of race.[1]

African-American student Claxton Graham wrote this column to express his alienation from the larger African American community on campus.

However, debates within the African American community about race inevitably got caught up in the same post-racial rhetoric and culture wars that framed black/white debates about race on campus.  Johnson’s indignation at being labeled went down poorly with other African Americans, like Claxton Graham, who were uncomfortable with overt signs of black pride and viewed strong black identity as an impediment to true equality.  These authors believed that feelings of racial inequality or inferiority existed only within the psyche of African Americans who could not let go of past injustices.[1]  According to Graham, “It seems like the white man for some reason, is responsible for all the black man’s woes.  There are a lot of people out there who are content to blame “The Man” for everything--drug use, single mothers, gang violence, etc.--but unwilling to do anything about it...It’s almost like we are taking advantage of freedoms people like Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King Jr., fought so hard, and even died, for.  We enjoy the benefits and privileges of being able to go to what was once a whites-only school, but we aren’t willing to shoulder the responsibilities that go along with them.”[2]

This article by Greg Jones follows up on the sentiments expressed by Claxton Graham.  Jones blames continued racial inequality on overt expressions of black pride.

For African Americans like Claxton Graham, racial equality was a matter of African Americans being willing to “take responsibility” for their own lives and problems that plagued their communities.  These writers saw little connection between historical injustices and the current day situation of African American communities across the country.  According to another African American student, Greg Jones, “Now I'll admit that my ancestors were brought to Europe by the ancestors of white people.  But first of all, I myself was born and raised in America, and second of all, white people in 1862 might have been responsible for slavery, but the white people in 1992 are not.”[1]  These columnists reflected the depth of post-racial sentiment even for African Americans as well as deep divides within African Americans about how best to proceed with the struggle for racial equality.