Letter to the editor reposted from the East Tennessean. Link to the original can be found here.
To the editor:
Black History Month was first nationally celebrated in 1976, and since then we, as a country, have grown and evolved in our cultural and racial acceptance. However, I believe, as many others do, that we still have a long way to go.
ETSU was desegregated in 1956 by Eugene Caruthers, and since then hundreds of Black students have walked through the academic buildings with one goal in mind – graduate. This goal is no different from any other student at ETSU, but it comes with difficulties.
As a black student at ETSU, there is one major commonality we all face: There’s not many people that look like us in our classes. Every time we walk into a classroom, we are constantly reminded that we are indeed a minority group on this campus. This is neither critique nor opinion – just fact. There is a black student population of less than 7 percent here at ETSU, and that is unfortunate and telling. Our black student graduation rate is even more abysmal – less than 4 percent.
Why is this happening, and what are we doing to change it?
We must do something to reach out to our black student population. We must do everything in our power to keep them here. This also includes black faculty, staff and administration. As a black student, it is difficult to walk into a classroom where many of the students don’t look like you, much less the professor teaching the class.
To our white allies across our campus that see these inequalities as I do, I have for you a call-to-action: Give us the platforms we need to succeed. Invest in our education; listen to people of color rather than counter their personal experiences; educate yourselves on civil rights movements (both historic and modern-day movements) and other efforts that seek to celebrate and encourage black activism.
Also, understand your white privilege. I know, I know … this privilege “isn’t fair,” “isn’t just” and “you didn’t ask for it…” but it doesn’t change the fact that you benefit from it, anyway.
Black History Month is a time to learn for everyone. Let’s do it civilly, critically, and with the intent to use this knowledge to grow and evolve in our understanding of the black experience as a university, as a region and as a country as a whole.
Godspeed.
Keyana Miller, ETSU class of ’19
