Even though we at Malcolm-Che do not give political support to candidates fielded and supported by the ruling class regardless of their race, sex or creed; we can still call racism out when we see it, as well as sexism and other prejudices. On discussion boards where this article was posted there are a few people who claim there was nothing racist about this incident. A history of lynching in this country means that anytime a black person’s image is hung or attached anywhere near or on a tree it is going to bring ‘lynching’ to mind. To think otherwise is to disregard a history of racism and oppression, something mainy in the mainstream would like to do.
A sad day at George Fox
http://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2008/09/a_sad_day_at_george_fox.html
A t 5:15 a.m. Tuesday, Prof. Ron Stansell was exercising in front of the TV when he heard the news: A cardboard cutout of Sen. Barack Obama had been found on the Newberg campus, hanging from a tree.
Momentarily, the professor of international studies thought — or hoped might be the better word — that the mock-lynching reflected sheer stupidity. But he quickly realized, “No, nobody’s quite that dumb. There’s malice aforethought there.”
The effigy, strung up with fishing line, included a hate message for minority students in a George Fox scholarship program called Act 6. (The Obama cutout was labeled “Act 6 reject.”) But the approving allusion to mob savagery throughout U.S. history — 28 African Americans were lynched in 1933 alone — was also impossible to ignore.
Painful. Grotesque. And for many at George Fox, mortifying. Also, especially for staunch Quakers like Stansell, a complete nonsequitor in the context of the university’s past, present and future. Founded by Quaker pioneers in 1891, the college is firmly rooted in the scriptural call for justice to roll like a river and righteousness like a mighty stream.
The Quakers, who were persecuted, even executed on American soil for their beliefs, led the Abolitionist movement in the United States and ran the underground railroad; Stansell’s wife’s family had a secret passage in their own home, he said, to shelter runaway slaves.
All of those nuances about the university’s Quaker heritage are likely to be missed, of course, in the national coverage about the incident. And, for the moment, its twisted perpetrators may also eclipse a far more representative “sample” of Oregonians — the crowd of 75,000 who turned out in May to hear Sen. Obama speak in Portland.
What was impressive on Wednesday, though, was the caliber of George Fox’s collective response. Students and faculty rose — literally — to the occasion. By prior arrangement, perhaps a hundred or more of them came forward and stood in solidarity around George Fox president Robin Baker, as he addressed a chapel service.
“It was powerful,” said Melanie Hulbert, an assistant professor of sociology, noting, “We’re very sad, and very distraught … But this act is not representative of who we are or who we have ever been.”
Baker, the college president, denounced the incident in the strongest possible terms and reiterated his vision of a campus that “more broadly represents the Kingdom of God.”
“We absolutely cannot hate those around us and say we love God,” he told the crowd. “It is not possible.”
To Hulbert, the coalescing of students around Baker on Wednesday was deeply symbolic. It meant, she said, that at George Fox, “We are people who won’t stand for this.”
And, equally important, people who stand up to it.
–The Editorial Board
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