Racism not the issue

By Skylar Richardson

I have been a student at Santa Clara for the past year, and to my knowledge no one has treated me differently because of my skin color. On the contrary, I have been a partaker of one of the finest educations money can buy and have been privileged to work with some of the finest human beings in academia.

It grieves me that the fallout from the notorious hip-hop theme party has caused the student body of Santa Clara to reel over accusations of racial prejudice. In response to the many gallons of ink shed on this issue, I would like to offer my opinion, one I know is shared by many.

In our fast-paced college student lives, there are basically two ways we learn about one's ethnic group: literature and radio. These media offer unique perspectives about the cultures they represent, and we get positive as well as negative images from what we read and listen to.

History books about people of color are great resources for the classroom. They teach what great men and women had to overcome so we could enjoy the rights we have today. The only problem I have with this type of literature and the discussions it creates is that -- more often than not -- it glorifies the struggle, not the victory. What's more, victories are never the topic of discussion, but rather the struggle. I would love to take part in a lecture where we not only learn about how the people of color overcame their battles, but how they lived above defeat. I can't help but think that many students leave such classrooms thinking that the struggle is as bad as it was in the 1950s and 60s, and nowhere is this more apparent than in our own music.

Hip-hop is a culture of music founded by African Americans and Hispanics in the 1970s. The music is emotional, political and social. It does not represent blacks or Hispanics as a whole. In fact, it represents a small portion of men and women who became disenchanted with society. They were essentially given a platform to vent and did so in creative ways. Over time, hip-hop became vulgar; it now glorifies crime and brutality.

Listen to the lyrics of most hip-hop and you will hear how women are treated as objects that are to be abused, misused and kicked to the curb. You will hear that crime does pay, that the ghetto is cool and that jail is glorious. I have lived in the ghetto all of my life. I have been around drugs, prostitution and murder. I have seen all of this, and there is nothing cool or admirable about it.

It saddens and angers me when I see my own black brothers and sisters wallowing in that sort of filth. It offends me to hear them calling each other the same names slave owners called our ancestors. And it grieves me further when my peers, white and black, call each other nigga or dog as though that were something to be proud of. Hip-hop has become the biggest medium that defines the black community, and I want to be the first black person to say that it does not represent me.

In the case of the theme party, I think it is unreasonable to blame the girls for dressing up the way they did. They were simply doing what they have seen in the media. They were not being racist or discriminatory, and it is not fair to paint them so because they happen to be white. If we want people to understand who black people are, it will take more than books and music. It will happen in the context of friendships.

Skylar Richardon is a senior English major.