End Gun Violence

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Columbine, Virginia Tech, Tucson, Florida, Aurora, Wisconsin…the list of mass shootings continues to grow. Six people were murdered at a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin on Sunday, and our nations leaders remain silent on how they would end the violence. Our prayers reach out to the families whose lives have been shattered irreparably and our thoughts beg for a solution to such atrocities.

It’s past time for action. There is an urgent need for the presidential candidates to present a concrete plan to end gun violence in America.

Police officers cannot combat gun violence alone. Legislators in Washington and across the country should do more to help law enforcement fight illegal guns because the current laws are not working.

Federal law prohibits certain categories of dangerous people from owning guns, and licensed dealers can easily screen buyers with the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS). Nevertheless the system is easily evaded, especially in so-called “private sales” made at hundreds of gun shows around the country every year. Why do loopholes exist in the law that allow individuals who have violent arrest records and history of domestic abuse – like the killer of Trayvon Martin – to purchase and carry a concealed, loaded gun?

The heart of the matter is that gun control is neither conservative nor liberal, not black, white, or brown – it is one of life and death.

Change must also come from our generation. Last spring, I accompanied lobbyists from The Raben Group, LLC, to Capitol Hill to meet with firearms legislative assistants on behalf of our client, Mayors Against Illegal Guns. I witnessed firsthand how lobbyists can educate policymakers on the intricacies of proposed laws and established laws, in the effort to create safe communities nationwide. I learned that I could use an education in law to create safe communities, which is why I will become a lawyer.

Stand up. Stand up. Stand up!

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Marvin Worthy’s charge to the new resident hall staffs on Wednesday afternoon was to stand up and to be a leader in the fight against oppression on campus this year.

That’s a fairly tall order and I’m not as good at inspirational speech as Mr. Worthy.

The truth is there’s a lot to unpack following an afternoon devoted to diversity and oppression, and Mr. Worthy’s charge to stand up—echoed by MSPS—isn’t an easy thing.

It isn’t an easy thing to do: to change a campus culture, to fight oppression on a campus steeped in many years of tradition.

Because tradition, by design, operates counter to change.

And to fight to change will occasionally or always mean defying and dismantling quite a bit of what’s considered tradition.

Are you prepared truly and wholly to do that?

–I have worked in Multicultural Student Programs and Services for five years and I’m still not 100% sure that I can do it 100% of the time.–

(And if you’d like to talk to me about that process, I am always willing.)

Mr. Worthy suggested yesterday that to fight oppression will be difficult, but that “we have to try.”

But I wonder if that’s totally true. We don’t have to try, do we?—not if we don’t want to.

Sure, we can and should respond to negative, discriminatory acts on our campus–acts which we recognize are not isolated incidents, but rather daily occurrences and which are inherent in our world and on our campus.

But that doesn’t mean we have to challenge ourselves to understand these acts on a deeper level. We don’t have to critique our traditions and to work together to fight the oppressive systems that allowed these acts to happen in the first place.

We don’t have to—not if we don’t want to.

It is insufficient to understand our leadership roles as those of doctors and nurses in a hospital treating all patients regardless of their afflictions and regardless of their racial, sexual, gender, class, or religious orientations and identities.

It is insufficient because to tolerate difference—as if difference is something undesirable that we must nevertheless deal with—is to deny the true identity of others on an equal and socially just plane.

Does this make sense?

From the activist Audre Lorde:

“Advocating the mere tolerance of difference… is the grossest reformism. It is a total denial of the creative function of difference in our lives. Difference must be not merely tolerated, but seen as a fund of necessary polarities between which our creativity can spark like a dialectic. Only then does the necessity for interdependency become unthreatening. Only within that interdependency of different strengths, acknowledged and equal, can the power to seek new ways of being in the world generate, as well as the courage and sustenance to act where there are no charters.”

(The larger original is worth reading several times, as well, if you’re interested.)

Lorde is advocating that merely tolerance and acceptance of difference is insufficient.

Rather than tolerance and acceptance of differences, we need to be motivated to acknowledge differences as wholly and intrinsically equal.

If we were motivated to view differences as wholly and intrinsically equal in value, then differences could not be demeaned as the butts of jokes or the objects of insensitive parties or the underlying motivations for hate mail, hate crimes, and hate speech on our campus and in our daily lives.

It is absolutely an issue of social justice to work fully toward achieving a level of understanding that acknowledges that differences should be appreciated as of intrinsically equal value, not merely traits that must be “tolerated,” “accepted,” or “dealt with” passively.

But again, this kind of deep, structural understanding and motivation to change is difficult.

Traditions and familiar ways of doing things might have to die absolutely will have to die for true change to happen.

We’ll probably have to put turf on the football field, too.

And that is because we understand today that there are better ways to do things than before. And that’s OK. And that’s necessary for the survival of our world.

Mr. Worthy rightly suggested that his presentation should not be the end, but the beginning of the conversation. There will be several opportunities to continue to engage with issues of race and identity and class this year through the offerings of MSPS and other sharp, like-minded, action-oriented departments and offices.

Be sure to check those out.

Of course, you don’t really have to—not if you don’t want to.

But like Mr. Worthy, MSPS is calling on you to stand up and do it because you want to and because it’s Right.

 

Why Africana Studies Matters

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I had the privilege over the past weekend of attending a reception in honor of Dr. Richard Pierce, who has just completed his tenure as chair of the Department of Africana Studies at Notre Dame.

And it gave me the chance to think about how much Dr. Pierce and the Africana Studies Department have meant and continue to matter to our work here at MSPS.

Professor Pierce

Professor Pierce has worked closely with MSPS as Africana chair, volunteering his time to present late-night lectures about Jim Crow, to moderate discussions about Civil Rights and panels about race and sports, and to provide invaluable guidance regarding MSPS programming.

And MSPS and I, personally, have much for which to thank Professor Pierce: for his generosity, integrity, cooperation, and especially his scholarship and intellect.

Because the reality is that without the participation and cooperation of individuals like Dr. Pierce and the existence and support of the Africana Studies Department, a multicultural student affairs office like ours could not exist.

Simply put, Multicultural Student Programs and Services survives at Notre Dame because of the work of the scholars and activists and teachers in integrative and collaborative ethnic studies areas such as Africana Studies.

The depth and breadth of possibilities, for instance, to engage multicultural issues of race, identity, class, power, and privilege—which we believe are essential to the personal development of every student at Notre Dame—rely heavily on the research and teaching about history, literature, politics, theology, and cultural theory found in a cross-disciplinary department like Africana Studies.

Africana Studies informs what we do, offering our office significant relationships with passionate scholars and teachers, as well as introductions to critical theory and curriculum, upon which we draw every single day in order to inform our student services, our educational programs, our advising, and our interactions.

And even more than its scholarship, Africana Studies is grounded in the shared belief “that the study of the peoples, cultures, and histories related to the discipline are integral to understanding our country and the world we live in more fully.” This effort transcends the academy by ensuring critical educational content is relevant and made essential for the survival not only of the discipline, but of humanity more importantly.

And that’s cool.

And MSPS couldn’t do what we do without the Department of Africana Studies’ scholarship and commitment to like-minded ideals about holistic, integrative multicultural education for everyone at Notre Dame.

Definitely check out Africana Studies and what they have to offer coming up in 2012-2013.