UNLESS you've been living in a hole or buried in the Alderman stacks for the last few weeks, it isn't news to you that ten black Charlottesville school children have been arrested for attacks around the University. The more surprising and vastly more complicated part of this story is that two organizations, both claiming to represent civil rights, have squared off on the question of whether or not these attacks were racially motivated.
This is not a column about whether or not the ten youths, all but one under the age of 18, should be charged with hate crimes. Nor is it a column about the idea of prosecuting for hate crimes committed against whites when not all victims are white. Instead, it's a column about the our need to wake up to the reality of race relations at the University and in the larger community.
Living within the folds of the University, it's easy to imagine that the ideals of freedom and equality are paramount, at least in our community. The problem with this assumption is that "our" community is not insulated from the rest of the world. It certainly is not shielded from the other people who call Charlottesville home. Nor is our own community the bastion of tolerance and equality that we would like to believe.
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It is not clear that these attacks should be classified as hate crimes. Regardless, how we handle these attacks will say a lot about our community. Either we will continue to deny the University's race problem or we will address it and attempt to discuss it honestly.
There is no way to continue to believe that the University is immune to its surroundings. Those arrested for the attacks all are part of the Charlottesville school system. The attacks occurred in residential areas populated by University students. After six attacks, it is hard to assume that this is coincidental.
The University and the Charlottesville community both have a large stake in the way these attacks are handled. If relations between the two are to improve, they must learn to work together.
The involvement of the NAACP and the European-American Unity and Rights Organization (EURO) is overwhelmingly positive. Regardless of which group you agree with, the two groups will force us to confront these attacks in a racial context and decide, as a community, how we think they should be handled.
In the discussion of whether or not this year's attacks are hate crimes, the crimes have been assumed to be racially motivated. This is not an unfounded assumption. If nothing else, the attacks should remind us that racial animosity is present where we live. More importantly, the attacks should show that members of any race can perpetrate and be victimized by racially motivated aggression.
Mostly whites were attacked in these incidents. Last year, a series of threats were made against blacks at on-Grounds bus stops and slurs against Latinos were painted on Beta bridge. Unquestionably, countless other offenses go unreported.
We as a community have a tendency to ignore racial tension unless it is overt, and even then we like to attribute it to a small group of people who either aren't "one of us" or who simply don't know better. Discussions of racial tension have a tendency to degenerate into assessing blame. The reality is that relations are far from perfect between races at the University. Laying blame gets us nowhere. Until we realize that, we won't get anywhere in trying to prevent situations like the one we currently are facing.
Forums like the annual "Reflections on Complexions" provide a place for discussion of race. They aren't effective, however, if more people don't get involved.
Show up for these events and say what you think; we won't get anywhere if we aren't honest. Also, make sure that the Charlottesville community knows what you think about the attacks on University students. Write to the mayor or the Commonwealth prosecutor. We are intimately involved in the attacks and we have a responsibility to make sure our opinions are voiced.
The worst thing we can do is to pretend that racism doesn't exist here - to hide our racism behind the facade of Southern gentility or of the modern University. Racial attacks, slurs, animosity and tension are problems and they belong to all of us. It's about time we realize that and actively seek to work together and change our attitude.
(Megan Moyer's column appears Fridays in The Cavalier Daily. She can be reached at mmoyer@cavalierdaily.com.)
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