FOR MORE than five years, I have been able to dodge a bullet headed my way. Bob and weave, I told myself time and time again, but even the fastest man alive can't escape life's ultimate burdens, let alone the burdens of U.Va -- where everyone knows that if you don't speak up, you won't be heard. I'd like to think that the commitment I am making by writing down these words can only be referred to as a photo finish between me and Mr. Jefferson's University. He's finally gotten to me, or should I say, The Cavalier Daily has -- and in essence, I am willing to stop running and succumb to the feeling boiling deep inside that's been longing for a piece of the proverbial opinion action.
Somehow, I feel I've been able to have every possible conversation about what goes on at the University, but maintained the ability to keep it all off the wide-scale printing press until now. Cavalier Daily writers often are met with animosity to the opinions that they express but, finally, I understand that there's no shame in my giving into writing for the opinion section of the school newspaper. There's actually pride in it.
At the end of last semester, I approached a friend of mine who is a columnist at The Cavalier Daily and asked, "What do you think about me writing for those guys?" She said it would be a great idea, and so I pursued, slowly but surely. I found myself intrigued by the possibility of writing about race relations, the University's social atmosphere and a host of other things I felt I had down to a science when it came to this university. I wondered if I could finally use the sound board of writing for The Cavalier Daily as a springboard back into journalism, enhancing my writing skills along the way.
I thought endlessly about stirring up trouble by writing about things I always see but that people hardly ever talk about in The Cavalier Daily -- like interracial dating, the cloud of social conditioning and race dichotomy at the University, the effectiveness of service initiatives in the community, intellectual apathy and the weight of the real world finally coming down on our little bubble here in Charlottesville. All these ideas made me stop and wonder -- why have I rarely seen these issues talked about from a perspective I can relate to in print before now? Why have I rarely heard the voice of a black man in the pages of The Cavalier Daily?
I flipped through The Cavalier Daily for the thousandth time, and ventured to say I could recognize maybe three or four of the names and faces of staff writers, and I knew that off the bat that none of those individuals ran in either my social or intellectual circle. And then it came to me. Aside from opinion columnist Amey Adkins' mug shot this year, I have nary seen a face like my own with a full length column. In all my time spent reading The Cavalier Daily, I would speculate that I've seen a black man's photograph all of about 30 times outside of the sports pages, and of those 30, 20 were criminal mug shots. The other 10 belonged to that spurt of Student Council politicos who crossed over a couple of years back, and in the sake of reporting the news that would be news in our bubbled environment, their faces made it to the cover every once in a while.
Of course, a couple of times I have seen the names of black students here and there in the letters to the editor section or as the author of a guest opinion column, but hardly ever a bright, shining black man's face saying: I wrote this article, and guess what? I will write one again next week. I'm not necessarily writing this column because I feel politically charged, or because the University is in a state of racial discord, but because I am a writer and writing is what I do.
So the bullet hit me. Hard and in the chest. The pain struck a chord in my head and in my hand. I have never been ashamed of who I am or of what I have had to say about life, the world or this university. But honestly, not until now did I realize the impact of when you see the photograph of a writer in the school newspaper -- or when you don't see it. It speaks volumes as to who makes up the population of the University, who is vested in the community, and who has a strong opinion to share. That is not to say that all students are the same, or that one person can represent an entire segment of the student population through one thought. However, it does say that someone out there is concerned, connected and can speak his mind. It means that the most widely heard "voice" of the University -- The Cavalier Daily -- isn't blind to the fact that there are all kinds of people who make up this Academical Village, and that not everyone in this community is apathetic, soft-spoken or disinterested.
I doubt that I am making too big a deal about my little epiphany here. Maybe others will find that their voice hasn't been heard, and feel compelled to pour their hearts out in ink as well.
My thought is that perhaps our eyes will be widened just a bit more when a black man writes his opinion for all of our little world to see. Maybe we'll see just a little bit more than the newspaper's black and white ink.
(Kazz Alexander Pinkard is a Cavalier Daily viewpoint writer.)