Im scared to write this column. As a white person, Im scared of saying the wrong thing. Im scared that a person of color will write an op-ed about how wrong I am or how Ive misread the situation. Im scared someone will tell me I can never understand the trauma that these recent hate crimes have inflicted on those whose bodies and identities are threatened, those who see the repetition of a violent history standing right before them.
And thats true. I can never know how that feels. I can never know how it feels that our university is not only dominated by a white population, but by a white ethos, an assumption of whiteness.
I can never know how it feels to not want to leave my room for fear that there are people roaming around or even living within my community who want to hurt me because of the color of my skin. This crime contained offenses to people of color and Jewish people, but for fear of conflating these offenses, here I want to address the racial element of this crime.
I am choosing to speak. I am choosing to speak because silence is worse. Speaking out can be problematic, because my words will invariably be filled with contradictions and misrepresentations of others experiences, but silence is still worse.
Silence is recognition that Im not thinking about this, that Im not caring about this and that Im choosing to ignore this because I have the privilege to ignore it if I want to.
After receiving the email from Tufts, I felt angry. I went to bed angry, woke up angry, and then went about my day. I was thinking about it, but I wasnt fixated on it. I went to class, I went to TDC, I put this anger in the back of my mind.
Have you done this? Odds are, if youre white, you have. White students at Tufts have the privilege of re-appropriating this hate as a tragic yet non-personal happening. But we must resist that privilege.
Our collective silence as white people is complicit in this crime. That this campus is not welcoming mentally or physically to people of color is something weve always known but rarely talk about. Something we observe but do not protest. Because we dont have to. Our life goes on if we never spend another moment caring about race relations on this campus.
You must choose to speak. You must be a part of the collective voice that says: An email is not enough. Looking for the perpetrators is not enough, because something taught those perpetrators to hate. And there are countless more who have already been taught to hate. White people at Tufts hold part of the responsibility for this heinous crime because we have allowed ourselves to conveniently ignore, latently or blatantly, that a white hegemonic system is built and perpetuated in our very home.
So, choose to speak. Engage in campus conversations. Tell the administration that apologizing to us is not enough. Educate yourself on the fact that this country still actively disenfranchises and others people of color. If nothing else, talk about it, because it cant possibly be worse than not talking about it.
I have no clue if speaking through this medium matters to anyone or helps anything, but I still choose to speak. That graffiti will keep being drawn, both literally and figuratively, if standing idly by is the only response white people can muster. Because under the veil of ignorance and the guise of silence, we remain complicit in the crimes of a white America.
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Alexa Petersen is a senior majoring in political science and peace and justice studies. She can be reached at Alexa.Petersen@tufts.edu.
