Whether we are talking about Ferguson, Missouri or a South Carolina schoolroom, Yale University or the University of Missouri, we find that violence against people of color by thought, word and bullet is a recurring national theme.  With the issue of Yale white students wearing racist Halloween costumes, free speech is now on trial.

The First Amendment gives people a right to protest, to lobby, to confront an Ivy League school president or a bully cop. It also gives the right to wear the Confederate Flag on a tee shirt. When we start legislating speech, ignorant though it may be, we also take away the rights of people to protest against it.  Therein lies the rub.

Today a racist Halloween costume is a form of free speech. Post-slavery from 1890 to 1920s it was a white sheet. In the time of my grandfather Ku Klux Klan was king and lynching was all the rage.

James Hathaway Robinson, Sr., was the son of slaves Nathaniel and Martha Robinson. In 1911 he earned an A.B. from Fisk University.  He earned a second A.B. degree in 1912 from Yale University and in 1913 he was the first African American to receive a fellowship. Robinson went on to earn an M.A. degree from Yale in 1914 and finished with a Ph.D. in sociology. Apparently part of his political strategy was “bury them with degrees.”

My grandfather grew up in the time of lynching, legal and unpunished. Imagine what his Yale experience was like. Was it taunts and name-calling or simply severe isolation? One thing I know for sure, there was never a complaint or utterance from my family about it. I just knew that my grandfather gave us an ebony piano for Christmas, had a warm and liquid laugh, and made me proud.

My uncle, Dr. Houston Brummit , wrote a book entitled, Talladega Days, Race, Rural Life, and Memories of a Forgotten Legend and Ku Klux Klan Survivor. He told the tale of his grandfather, Dr. William H. Brummit, who was terrorized by the Klan to leave Tennessee because he owned his own drug store and had a medical practice that included white patients.

If slavery was the Era of Chains, and Jim Crow was the Era of the Rope, the Obama era is the era of the dog whistle. A dog whistle has a sound that is silent to the ears of humans and only detected by dogs. The racial slurs and free speech of today fall on deaf ears to white people but shriek in the ears of those described in the Constitution as 3/5 of a human being.

The word “urban” is now used to talk about black people without talking about black people. “Articulate” is for black people who are otherwise incoherent.  “Welfare” has come to mean a black woman gouging the system defrauding “hardworking Americans” (white people) to buy sirloin at the grocery. Republicans don’t say the n-word in public, but talk about “States Rights” which is a flashback for African Americans to the Era of the Rope and that little black girl trying to integrate a school.

Racism today is slick as a conman’s hustle, as invisible as a paper cut. The outrage voiced at Yale and Mizzou was the inevitable reaction to a series of paper cuts — the administration’s denial of a series of “free speech” Molotov cocktails on campus and dog whistles unheeded. However, the national racial tension that surrounds these protests cannot be ignored. I believe that student protests may have reached a tipping point as a result of the police violence against an unarmed female black child in the schoolroom, captured on video for the world to witness. Student unrest reflects the fact that it is more likely that an unarmed black man will become a statistic of police brutality than a police officer charged for the crime.

To muzzle free speech is a dangerous and precarious prospect. “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” This statement is attributed to Voltaire, but actually English author Beatrice Evelyn Hall penned it.

My mind goes back to 1988 and being relegated to a “Free Speech Zone” at the Democratic National Convention in Atlanta. We were free to be penned in an area away from the Convention. I think of the Nazi-style police goons hired to curtail my protest in New York against the war in Iraq. I saw the state-sponsored quarters prescribed for the people’s fight against big government and its Wall Street mistress.

And now free speech is on the line. We want to tell people what to say and how to say it. Personally, I am not afraid of the college student who dresses for Halloween in black face and mimics Aunt Jemima. But from a historical perspective I offer this: better a Halloween costume than a white sheet. I would rather see you coming then wake up with a cross burning on my lawn.