WE ARE writing in response to the recent events involving assaults on U.Va. students. For the last three years, we have worked in a volunteer capacity at Charlottesville High School and with residents of the larger Charlottesville area. This role has given us the unique position of having access to both this community and the University community. This position has compelled us to reckon with lines of guilt and blame that are being drawn not only on individuals involved in the beatings, but on whole communities. While we are aware of our limitations and have no easy answers, it would be naive to think that this event is not an expression of a much deeper problem between the two communities involved. We now attempt to acknowledge the deeper problem.
This is not an attempt to justify the beatings in any way; however, it is to suggest that the University community from which the victims came must address factors that may contribute to such incidents, specifically apathy toward racial and economic issues. The position of this article is a self-critical one; if we appear to be pointing fingers, it is in our direction as well. Because U.Va. does not exist in isolation from the community around it, a restoration process must start from within and then extend outward. The U.Va. community is in a place to begin and continue this outreach. To begin this process, we first must acknowledge the context of these assaults and their implications.
It is far too easy for us as undergraduates to go through our four years at the University and see the Charlottesville community only within the confines of U.Va. Our limited view overlooks a community whose history is intimately intertwined with the very existence of U.Va., yet whose spirit has been broken by continued racial and economic discrimination. According to online recollections of Thomas Ferguson Inge Sr., when the University decided that it wanted a medical school, the location decided upon was on top of a thriving African-American community, forcing them out of their own businesses and housing (http://www.iath.virginia.edu/schwartz/vhill/inge.html). Inge asserts that the members of this community became economically dependent upon the University and have been stuck in minimum wage service jobs in places such as Newcomb Hall and the hospital ever since. To a certain extent, the successes of U.Va. have been built on the back of this community with little attempt to empower or enrich its members. This is not to discredit University-associated organizations such as Madison House, that attempt to acknowledge the needs of this hurting community. The complexities of this historical context show that there is no innocent party in this situation, including ourselves.
Our exposure to the larger Charlottesville community has opened our eyes to injustice and has changed our attitude toward both communities. We have heard members of the non-University community make comments like, "a cloud of slave mentality hovering over Charlottesville," in reference to the University. We have encountered story after story of individuals whose history with inferior schools here has robbed them of any future. While U.Va. is not entirely responsible for their individual pasts, it has reduced any aspirations for a future beyond minimum wage jobs supporting the University in some capacity for many members of this community. Common responses to the assaults are questions of how and why the perpetrators could do such a thing. We suggest that to understand the context in which the assaults occurred, the question of why they would not do this needs to be asked. We have worked with kids who have a limited and skewed capacity for cost-benefit analysis, who see no logical reasons why they should not assault a community that they see as indifferent to their lives.
While these assaults have further alienated the relationships between these two communities by creating mutual mistrust, they also carry the possibility of hope. Both communities would benefit from an honest evaluation of these events within the larger context of social justice. We want to reemphasize that these events should not be marginalized, and their consequences are very real and painful for those involved. We cannot be separated from them by writing them off as someone else's problem. They are our problems because we live in this community, even if only for four years.
Having recognized our participation in the problem, we no longer are content to contribute to this indifference with silence. We challenge you, as well as ourselves, to change the perception of your surroundings. This could be done by sincerely caring for those who serve you daily, or by stepping outside U.Va. long enough to take a drive down Prospect Avenue (a low-income housing project) and see what you find. You could be changed in your willingness to bring restoration, and in the end we may see a not too distant dream realized.
(Lori Bates is a fourth-year College student, and John Chappell is a first-year in the Graduate School of Engineering and Applied Science. Both are Young Life volunteers at Charlottesville High School.)
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