Indeed, black youth of today are not on the end of Bull Connor’s fire hose, no… They are at the end of a policeman’s bullet.  

Today black people do not yearn to sit next to a white person and order a Coke at a lunch counter. They do not swoon over the fact that they can ride at the front of a bus. This is not the time of Jim Crow, COINTELPRO, public assassinations, Selma fire hoses and feral dogs. Indeed, black youth of today are not on the end of fire hose, no…

They are at the end of a policeman’s bullet.  When we say “times are achangin’” how much change is change?

Yesterday TV transformed public opinion and fueled anti-war sentiment as citizens watched the Viet Nam spectacle from their living rooms. They watched black students beaten at lunch counters. They witnessed a shooting at Kent State where four students were killed at a protest rally —  white students who never would have believed it possible.

Today we have Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat breaking news stories. Our youth are exposed to smut films on cell phones – videos of police murdering unarmed victims. The world witnesses the brutal assault of a policeman on a black female child in a South Carolina schoolroom because a student captured it on a smartphone. We live in the time of “viral.”

Yesterday Columbia University students, Coalition for a Free South Africa (CFSA) commandeered the administration building on campus to force the school’s divestment from South Africa. Today University of Missouri students boycott a football team and force the resignation of Tom Wolfe, the school’s president.  Yesterday it was about apartheid in South Africa. Today it is about hate speech on campus and safe spaces. No more sticks, stones and apartheid, but words and Halloween costumes that can hurt you. Some think this is much ado about nothing. However, Yale professor and cardiologist Dr. Forrester (Woody) Lee says:

The passions behind voices today and in the 1960s have the common origin in the emotional toil of experiencing racism. In the 60s, the power in the passion came from decades and centuries degradation by law and custom. Individuals could see themselves as trailblazers, freedom fighters, etc. The power of today’s voices comes from those who expected (yes, felt entitled) to be treated equally and with respect. They were at first disappointed and ultimately angered. The internalized anger has now surfaced.

Dr. Lee goes on to say: “The climate of post-racial America suppresses contrary voices.”  Not only is “post-racial” the bitter Obama pill intended to gag dissent,  now critics defending people’s right to be ignorant and insulting of other people’s culture use “free speech” to muzzle protest evidently too shrill for delicate Ivy ears. A Yale News article entitled “Policing Emotion.” by Shyamala Ramakrishna offers this:

Students and faculty who have called for a “civil” discussion of these issues have not “elevated” our discourse, but couched it in the language of respectability politics. They have not merely limited the scope of acceptable perspectives to those that omit real emotional trauma. They have also ignored the ugly truth that the fears of marginalized students are perfectly rational.

Is anybody listening when students demand “safe spaces”? They are asking for spaces free from systemic racism/sexism, nuanced insult, uninformed ignorance, and a bull’s-eye on their backs. Are these just some privileged, entitled children expecting “post-racial” from adults in a world where its “peace officers” have gone postal? Or is the “post-racial” Kool-Aid the nectar of white gods only? Are Yale black students most likely to be caught wearing a Yale tee shirt or one that says, “Hands up. Don’t shoot.”

Mizzou and Yale skirmishes were the result of a series of racial incidents ignored by an administration probably drinking the “post-racial” brew.  An administration that probably did not connect Ferguson with campus unrest. Did not connect the life of Michael Brown with the lives of disgruntled college over-achievers. Did not know that policemen don’t check college I.D.s when they shoot unarmed black and brown people.

Young people can hardly be trailblazers while standing on the shoulders of Tubman, Parks, King, and Malcolm X. But are they the hope of a powerful coalition of black and brown voices that demand justice on the university campus, in America’s schoolrooms and on urban streets?

Now that would be a change.

Note:  Dr. Lee is the brother of Auset.

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