Can someone please tell me why? Before jumping to any judgments or rushing to conclusions, this is by no means a critique of the Black Student Union Executive Board who worked very hard to organize the “March on UF,” celebrating 50 years of integration at the University of Florida on S eptember 15. In fact I give great credit to the new board that thus far has done an outstanding job.
While I understand that we are celebrating 50 years of the integration this year at the University of Florida, and I understand that the brave George H. Starke Jr. returned to campus to lead the march. While I feel that I am personally indebted to Starke and the many others like him who put their life on the line in pursuit of higher education, I thought the march was pointless.
Knowing exactly how difficult it is to garner any type of social and political engagement out of this present generation of youth, Black youth in particular, why would the Black leadership at this university choose to expend the energy and effort of the small, already disengaged, Black student body on a march that is purely commemorative. Why did they not attach a list of demands to the march? Didn’t the original march have an exceedingly political character? Why not commemorate the original March on UF with a march that reflected its original, political nature, instead highlighting the issues we face as a community today.
The 2008 march was an act of intellectual laziness and self congratulation and had no point other than to venerate a past achievement. Can the Black community at UF be realistic and not try to convince itself of the delusion that this march or any other like it, will achieve any of the long-term goals of the Black student body at UF.
I recognize that this is after all a university and that educated black people just love marching for whatever reason (See Stuff Educated Black People Like Web site: Marching, http://www.stuffebplike.com/?p=158#more-158). However, was the march really the best way to break in the new kicks just purchased with all that oh-so-nice financial aid money? Perhaps this is the best use of that financial aid money. It is after all complacency money doled out to a select few “negroes” so as to pacify the future Black leadership.
Seeing as how this march was purely commemorative, I wasn’t surprised to see the university president and other high ranking officials represented. Their presence begs the question though: Where were they during the “Save the African American Studies Program” protests?
Perhaps I am overreacting. The truth is even marches that have an agenda tend to be ineffectual. Marching without economic sanction, political and legislative pressure and major coalition building is political action in a vacuum. The civil rights movement was effective not just because of marches but because of the economic sanction and other social action that went along with it. Even at the University of Florida, circumstances necessitated that marching was followed up by sit-ins and mass student withdrawals.
I wonder, where has the social and political consciousness of the Black elite gone? Why is it that our college-educated brothers and sisters have chosen to perpetually rehash past glories and achievements rather than to purposefully work toward new ones? A constant, backward-looking nation is not one that is going to progress. History is important and knowledge of self is crucial, but neither of these is a desert sand into which we as the future Black Leadership can hide our heads.
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