We stand as allies of the two brave women who have courageously gone public about a racist attack they experienced last Thursday on the Corner. They have shown admirable courage both in making their trauma public and in openly admitting the costs of having felt the sting of the racial slurs that a drunk white male inflicted on them. By making their trauma public, they give us a chance to stand with them and offer our support. We acknowledge that the doubts, anxieties and pain they feel are real, and we stand with them in that trauma for it is our collective truth. These are wounds that we know are suffered every day in silence by many others, so we particularly thank them for giving public voice to something that the dominant culture would have dismissed and ignored. By going public, these two courageous women make it possible for us all to do something other than what is expected.
We feel that writing this letter is the least we can do, and we feel compelled to do it because of our sympathy and admiration for them.
We are a group of faculty and staff at the University who have engaged with each other through a Sustained Dialogue and through that engagement have learned a great deal about the privilege that a drunk white male hides behind when he chooses to berate someone with a racial epithet and recede back into in the cloak of darkness. We condemn that privilege and are working collectively and individually to confront it and reject it. The fact that the a racist drunk is still anonymous is not an accident, though we know that his anonymity is tied up in his shame about what he has done. In fact, we invite him to come forward, to try to show some of the courage that these two young women (and the witnesses who have filed a formal complaint against him) have shown and to publicly discuss his act and the privileges he needs to renounce.
We are reminded of the famous story of the start of the honor system at U.Va. A professor, dying of a gunshot inflicted by a student, refused to name the shooter because an honorable person would come forward. We invite this man to step out of hiding, to step out of the protection of his privileges and to show he is worthy of being part of this honorable community.
Finally, the Daily Progress reported April 23 that the University administration was dealing with the student who "has a great deal of remorse and plans to make amends." This is welcome news, but we observe that the student himself is still hidden from the public unlike the women who have courageously made their vulnerability and trauma public. We stand with them and encourage him to do the same.
John Alexander\nTim Tolson\nFaculty Sustained Dialogue
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