Marcus Brown
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A series of protests were held in opposition to racial discrimination felt by African-American students on the University of Missouri campus and came to a dramatic conclusion with the resignation of university-system President Tim Wolfe and the reassignment of Chancellor R. Bowen Loftin to a different position.Complaints against the school’s handling of racial tensions among the students came from a variety of sources from student to faculty members over incidents that culminated in a weeklong hunger strike by graduate student Jonathan Butler and an organized boycott held by the university’s football team.
The resignation of Wolfe in response to the growing unrest on campus is not surprising, as the call for change has been festering on the campus, and further catalyzed by incidents such as the police killing of “an unarmed black man in the state” and my personal favorite “a swastika drawn in feces,” which was reportedly found on the wall of a residence hall. We can put aside the lengths ignorant racists are willing to go to express their hatred for a minute, although I do think we should all take a moment to really reflect on the notion that there are potential leaders of the free world, who while pursuing a collegiate education, scrawl on walls with their own excrement during their free time. What is significant about the success of this protest is what the Tigers’ boycott and the almost immediate effects it had illuminated.
My inner idealist would hope that Wolfe’s decision to step down had nothing to with the prospect of having to pay $1 million to next weekend’s opponents, Brigham Young, if the Tigers failed to play, and that Wolfe genuinely saw the error in his ways upon reflection over the weekend. However, the cynic in me knows that money has way of revealing the intentions of the reticent and motivating the otherwise apprehensive in making any type of meaningful change positive or negative.
The success of boycotts does not reside in the display of solidarity or prevalence of the issue, but rather in their ability to demonstrate economic ramifications for the continuing of unfavorable action or policy. A potential loss of $1 million certainly has a way of galvanizing otherwise ambivalent parties into doing the right thing and illuminating stark realities. As students and especially as minorities, we are told that we are powerless in the face of large bureaucracies and that the only means of changing things is nipping at the heels of those who really do not have our best interests at heart. The Tigers showed that is not the case.
By and large, willful ignorance of racial disparities and residuals of systemic oppression is the status quo, and those lacking a vested interest in changing the status quo seldom feel motivated to do so. Given that paradigm, it becomes imperative to create a vested interest for those like Wolfe who felt reluctant to act until he was forced to. Unfortunately it would appear as those the primary means of inciting interest is not appealing to humanity or decency, as threatening to choke a collective pocketbook seems to have spoken volumes in the leadership of the University of Missouri. Even still, we must use the resources and tactics at hand, because the easiest way to get a boot off your throat is not by pandering to a nonexistent conscience but removing it yourself with whatever is at your disposal.
