Rally a Beginning, Not an End
By Joey Gaskins
Editor's note: A number of Buzzsaw staff members attended the Erase the Hate rally on April 14, joining more than 400 students, faculty and members of the Ithaca College administration to say that our college does not stand for the kind of ignorance, intolerance and intimidation that has become very public here recently through racist graffiti and the theft of the Gay Pride flag. We were concerned, however, that the rally would become just another end in and of itself, a place for people to go for an hour and feel good about what they did. Would the rally encourage dialogue on the subject and create actual motivation for change? Or would this be just another shallow forum where the administration avows its commitment to “diversity” and voices its distain for “bias-related incidents?” Would anyone be asked to look deeply at themselves and their own thoughts and feelings, rather than just pointing the finger at “those racists over there?”
We decided that some of these thoughts had been better and more eloquently stated by rally speaker Joey Gaskins, a sophomore politics major from the Bahamas and a member of the Caribbean Students Association. Below is a message from Gaskins and the transcript of his speech from that day.
The Erase the Hate rally has been touted as the most successful rally on this campus in two decades. During the planning stages, there was an anxious hope that the rally would draw a formidable turnout, but no one could have foreseen the sweeping effects it would have had on campus. As a speaker, I realized that I had a unique opportunity to have some tangible effect on those who would be listening.
But first, it would be preposterous and insulting to claim that the speech was exclusively a result of my own will and craft. So, to those who helped, I am tremendously grateful. I spent the days before sitting in discussions with some of my politics professors, trying to identify, analyze and solve as best we could the issues that we as a college community are presently facing. I could not go to that rally and shout about the perpetrators and their terrible actions—especially not to a crowd of educated, discerning people. Instead, I felt I had to intellectually engage them, encourage them to think. And if I did not, it would be insulting to them as scholars and affirming to the perpetrators whose goal it was to upset us.
And then the day of the rally came and I did my part. There was quiet punctuated by brief applause, and at the end, a cheer that signaled appreciation and agreement. I wondered though, had I accomplished what I had hoped? I answer now with a halfhearted “yes.”
Why? I think for some the rally was the beginning and end of their crusade to erase hate. I think that some came out just to prove that they are good people. And I also think that some came and experienced the rally as a spectacle, as a show, with no true emotional or intellectual involvement.
To those of us who have shaken off the shackles of apathy and indifference, and have begun to care, and to believe that we can change our present state; to those who have begun their crusade to erase hate by first looking within and trying to rid themselves of their own biases; to those who have decided that this is the time to engage, to learn, and to challenge this speech and that rally, this new move for change is yours. It is not given to you to benefit from, but to have responsibility over, and that responsibility is to make it everyone else’s.
Speech
Today we are presented with a choice, given the opportunity to be unequivocal in our decision and unmovable in our belief. It is simple. This is as black and white as the world will ever be: We can stand silent in the face of our challenge, or we can counter the actions of a few with action true to our cause and rife with purpose and clear objectives.
Those who resort to scribbling hateful sentiments on walls like cave men under the veil of night are not our greatest enemies, nor are the cowards that stole the gay pride flag, a symbol of strength and unity in the face of societal indifference. Rather, we must now fend off apathy, apathy borne out of the illusion of futility, the predilection that nothing can be done to change our present condition.
Specifically, these most recent incidents are markers, signifiers of a deeper, farther-reaching dilemma that we as students, scholars, and members of this assemblage of minds must take steps in our every day lives to unravel. This rally is not an end in itself, but rather the means to encourage political and intellectual reinvigoration, materialized not by the actions or policy of the administration, not by the faculty, but by us, the students.
We must go far beyond this rally, eradicating our internal prejudices and re-evaluating our behavior so as not to perpetuate the conditions that enable the ignorant and the bigoted to affect our surroundings, and to insure that they know that we will not stand for their kind in our community.
It is with this in mind that I will take this opportunity to announce a fresh initiative between the faculty and student body. A forum, coupling these two entities, has been created to systematically understand, and identify the arenas, the institutional processes, structures and relationships that foster or create feelings of alienation among students. The hope is to provide concrete evidence, and solutions to the broader, subtler predicament that minority students, face here at Ithaca College, something that has yet to be done.
The challenge is this, colleagues: with every opportunity, make your voice heard for whatever cause. Engage, defend, challenge, speak up and do not let silence strangle this new movement for change. You need not bang down the doors of the administration; one can affect change in our everyday surroundings, our dorms, as scholars in classrooms, and with friends. Be committed, and change will come. It will not be easy, it will not come quickly, but it will come.
Joey Gaskins is a sophomore politics major who thinks that stupid people are really, really stupid. E-mail him at jgaskin1@ithaca.edu.