Recent events have prompted discussion among students, and a common question posed by fellow white students: What does it mean to be oppressed?

This past Wednesday, as our students walked down the dilapidated and pockmarked sidewalk of Walnut Avenue toward Hendricks Chapel, our heads high and eyes forward, it became quite clear that we were being watched and jeered at by the petty lords of the land: the blue-blooded brothers of the Greek organizations in their pastel-shaded halls of wood.

I saw the laughter, a cruel mirth bubbling in their eyes, as they smirked down at us. Some of them walked past our humble procession on the sidewalk with the same insufferable grins on their faces. I think that’s what made me most angry — this was all a joke to them, that we were like a spectacle to them.

It was a terribly familiar feeling.

It’s the feeling of being silenced. It’s the feeling in your heart when strangers, your peers, your school, your society makes you feel like your voice doesn’t matter — like you’re less than human, and your identity is second-rate because of your skin color, how much your parents make, your accent, who you believe in or who you love.

It’s like being wrenched away from your mother at birth and being given to a father that doesn’t love you. The only part of you, your Americanized identity, is actually “real.” The rest — the food you grew up eating, the music your parents play in the house when you’re young, the folk stories you hear at your bedside — those aren’t really there; they aren’t real. They’ve been redacted, erased from the public eye, just like the true histories of the Americas before colonization and Africa before imperialism. They’re omitted and replaced with mythologies of civilization triumphing over savagery, and somehow that’s supposed to coincide with the triumph of “good over evil.”

These are blatantly dishonest views of history that frame our views of the world and ultimately divide us against our brothers and sisters.

My only piece of advice to my fellow activists as we move forward is to seek to understand and forgive those who seek to silence us, and to not stoop down to their level. Meet their hate with love. Turn the other cheek, and stick together.

No matter what, keep your heads up — things will get brighter.

Sincerely,

Raymundo Enrique Juarez, Class of 2019

Published on April 20, 2018 at 2:20 pm