Prejudice is a dirty word, and yet it exists in all of us. It is a component of our societal psychology. We avoid confronting it and analyzing it. We avoid talking about it, even though it exists in ourselves and other people.

Though we, the Black Student Alliance (BSA), cannot speak for the entire race, we can speak based upon our experiences. Our experience has been affected by the obvious disconnect between black students and non-black students on this campus. Within BSA, we have extensive conversations about current issues; however, even though we open ourselves up to non-black students (and faculty, staff members, anyone really) we rarely see more than five or six non-black participants out of an average of 40 people. We are forced to ask ourselves: What more can we offer as an alliance, as fellow students? 

The climate of this campus reflects the climate of America. This is a powerful statement, but it’s true. From the national level, where “racial tension” often results in dead mothers and fathers, to the microcosm of St. Edward’s University, the same stress presents a lack of care or conversation.

As a black student collective, we have some uncomfortable issues to discuss and interact with on a day to day, month to month, lifetime to lifetime basis.

Conversation is such an important, impactful tool. It is a part of the solution to eliminate the space between “us and them.” Call it coincidence or divine intervention, but we got to witness the power of this rule while crafting this statement. We were discussing the lack of racial discussion on this campus, not really understanding why our non-black counterparts seemed unwilling to participate in this discussion. Surprisingly, a student came and offered her perspective. She explained why she chooses not to comment on race, saying “It’s [because of] a lack of confidence in knowledge that I don’t comment, not because I don’t care. Also, it does not affect me because I am not black.”

This is the same mentality of most Americans. It is the reason most of us are not aware of anything that does not affect us. It’s the same reason we do not discuss terrorism. Or the presidential election. Or economic crisis, health care, defunding of Planned Parenthood. Or #blacklivesmatter, which results in Americans not looking at world issues seriously if it does not include America. Somewhere in the conversation we asked how she felt now. Her response was that the gap felt just that much smaller. This is the point of BSA.

This is where we stand. We, the black students, the white students, the next generation. It takes a personal initiative to educate yourself on ALL issues.

So, how do we get around this? When the forum is there for questions to be asked, what more can we offer as an alliance, as fellow students?

Despite all of these things, we would not want to be anyone else.

We love ourselves, our culture and our dilemmas — they continuously prove our resiliency to not only ourselves, but the world.