Lenore Sobota
The Pantagraph
A legacy of “anti-blackness” continues to have a negative impact in America, but collective efforts and resilience can bring change, a black activist said Thursday in her keynote address to a racism summit at Illinois Wesleyan University.
“Malcolm X is not coming back to save us. There is no Martin Luther King in 2016. There is no single charismatic leader coming to save us or free us,” said Charlene Carruthers, a 2007 IWU graduate who is national director of the Black Youth Project 100.
“But it is within our collective power to do it,” Carruthers told a crowd of more than 150 people at the Hansen Student Center.
“Black folk embody resilience,” said Carruthers, adding that resilience is not just enduring. “We have to aspire to more than struggle.”
Carruthers' remarks came at the end of the first day of a three-day conference, “Summit: New Frontiers in the Study of Colorblind Racism.”
Associate professor Meghan Burke, who organized the summit, said the turnout has been good for the conference-style presentations.
She hopes to “continue to build dialogue between scholars and those working on the problems” when the summit continues Friday with a panel at 9 a.m. in Room 202 of State Farm Hall. It will bring together academics researching racism and representatives of local organizations working for social justice.
In her talk, “The Legacy and Impact of Anti-Blackness in America,” Carruthers said, “Anti-blackness is a belief that there's something wrong with black people.”
She noted that, until recently, blacks in Chicago were 15 times more likely than whites to be arrested for marijuana possession even though marijuana use is roughly equal among blacks and whites.
Carruthers blamed the disproportionate arrests and incarcerations of blacks on the black community being more scrutinized and targeted.
She doesn't believe having more black people serve as police officers will fix the problem.
Carruthers, who lives in Chicago, said, “The new police chief is black. I don't feel safer.”
Instead, “I think we have to completely change how we deal with conflict and harm,” she said. “The system is not working.”
There should be other options when problems arise besides calling the police, such as community-based respondents, Carruthers suggested.
Among those at the talk was IWU history Professor Emeritus Paul Bushnell, who was involved in the civil rights movement and participated in sit-ins at segregated lunch counters in the early 1960s.
He thinks the growth of Black Lives Matter and similar movements is a reflection of the frustrations of those who feel society has not made the progress that is needed. But he sees signs of hope.
“We're getting some more very able black leadership into public life,” he said after Carruthers' talk.
In answer to a question from a recent graduate who wants to be an activist but fears getting burned out in the struggle, Carruthers said, “Take care of yourself. You can't do it alone. … You have to build a community around you.”
She also suggested seeing activism as a craft.
“Just as an artist has to spend hours and hours and years and years developing their craft, the organizers, the scholar, has to do the same thing,” said Carruthers.