From an article in today’s Washington Post:
Yelling “Expose racial tension! It’s time to change the system,” a group of students marched across the University of Maryland campus yesterday to the police station with a list of demands.
The spark that set off this demonstration was the police response to a loud party at which several students were arrested. Still, “Expose racial tension!” strikes me as a somewhat curious slogan, at least insofar as protests, marches, demonstrations, etc., are themselves a component of (not to say contribute to) racial tension. Indeed, the article concludes by quoting protest organizer Daniel Lewkowicz, a white sophomore: “‘When things get calm again,’ Lewkowicz said, ‘people get complacent.'”
The most interesting thing in the article, I think, passed over the head of the writer, who didn’t recognize the irony:
“Personally, I tend to give the benefit of the doubt to the police,” said Greg Oberson, 26, a white graduate student. “It was probably a pretty chaotic situation.” But he agreed that the campus tends to split into racial groups. He said sees it in his engineering program, where he doesn’t usually hang out with the Asian students but with other whites.
Presumably there aren’t enough black engineering students for Oberson to hang out with even if he were so disposed.
Dear John,
The slogan “Expose Racial Tension” is ment to highlight the underlying racism that we feel is prevelent at the University of Maryland. This slogan was created in response to the opinion postings that were placed in regards to the first Diamondback article that was written about the situation. Many of the postings that were made by our fellow students at Diamondbackonline.com were very racist and upsetting and we wanted to draw attention to this. So we yelled “Expose the racial tensions! Its time to change the system!” In addition, I would say our protest, chants, and action was ment to bring the issues, that already exists, to surface because we believe conflict breeds resolution. Just tryin to clear that up thanks.
Daniel Lewkowicz
Community Roots
University of Maryland
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