I can vividly remember the first time I felt guilty of racial discrimination.
One Saturday night during my junior year of high school, after shifting through the entertainment section of the paper, my boyfriend and I decided to check out a poetry reading in town. We found the café and walked inside. A friendly African American woman welcomed us at the door and asked if she could find us a table. My boyfriend and I simultaneously noticed we were the only white folks in the place and bashfully, but politely, said “no thanks” and walked out.
Back in the car, we laughed at how we had overlooked the name of the café, Ebony, and searched for a new venture. Yet, I could not help feeling guilty for being so quick to leave, simply because the color of my skin was much lighter than everyone else’s’ in the room. What was the worst that could have happened if I stayed?
The start of the year 2002 marks another year passed since the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. Thanks to the efforts of civil rights activists and the NAACP, public establishments, such as the café I visited that night, became integrated by law. Yet, as I witnessed that night, 50 years later segregation by choice is still the norm in many circumstances.
With the New Year among us as well as a new semester, we often re-examine our lives and our aspirations. Every year we agonize over resolutions to break unhealthy habits such as smoking or over-eating, yet we often overlook the bad habits we have unfortunately become all too comfortable with. Habits that have kept our society still socially integrated almost 50 years after Martin Luther King stood on the Lincoln Memorial and said, “I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slaveowners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood.”
We have come far since that day, yet still have so far to go.
Walking through the Quad to class, sitting in the Union for lunch, or attending a football game, it is not hard to notice that racial segregation is prevalent on our campus.
It is second nature to associate with people we feel comfortable with either by race, religion, or even our major.
The question is whether the comfortable way is always the right way. What would have happened, or not happened, if Rosa Parks was comfortable sitting in the back of the bus?
If Martin Luther King were still alive, he would have been 73 this past Monday. In honor of his birthday, we enjoyed one more day of sleeping in late before starting school this semester. Some of us may have attended ceremonies in his honor to remember the great affect he had on our society. However, without practicing what he preached his words linger behind on deaf ears.
When I chose not to enter the café that night, I was discriminating not only against the people inside, but also against myself. I limited my possibilities simply because I did not want to exit my comfort zone.
For some of us it is our last semester at LSU, for most of us it is one of many more to come. Yet, for all of us here at LSU, this is the first semester in a world that has changed drastically before our very eyes over the last four months.
However, some changes are still long overdue. This year, strive to break down the walls and leap beyond your boundaries. It may not be comfortable at first, but the experiences you will gain are irreplaceable.