By ANGELA LINCE Special to the Press-Republican
Mar. 20, 2016
PLATTSBURGH — In 1963, fraternity Tau Kappa Epsilon was suspended from California State University, Long Beach, for singing: “Bye bye, black boy, you better play it cool, or else we’ll bomb your Sunday school.”
The chant, speaker Lawrence Ross told an audience at SUNY Plattsburgh, referenced the bombing of a church in Birmingham, Ala., by the Ku Klux Klan, when four young black girls were murdered.
Ross’s talk, entitled, “Know better, do better: College, Racism and You,” was one of many events held during SUNY Plattsburgh’s recent Diversity Week.
Fraternity and Sorority Life, along with Alpha Phi Alpha, the Inter-Fraternal Council and Inter-Sorority Association, presented the program in the Warren Ballroom of Angell College Center.
BEST-SELLERS
Ross is a lecturer, screenwriter, journalist and author of six books that have won accolades including best-seller lists for the LA Times and Essence Magazine, and the “Fall Must Read” list for the National Association of Black Journalists.
His book “The Divine Nine: History of African American Fraternities and Sororities” has made him a very popular fraternity and sorority lecturer; he has visited some 400 college and universities across the nation.
Ross’s newest book is “Blackballed: The Black & White Politics of Race on America’s Campuses.”
SEGREGATION LEGACY
His multimedia presentation at SUNY Plattsburgh analyzed four topics: The legacy of segregation and different anti-affirmative action laws; campus symbolism and Inter-Fraternity Council fraternities and Panhellenic sororities; and racial micro aggressions.
He spoke of other disgraceful incidents on campuses, including one in which students wore uniforms similar to KKK garb but denied that was the intention.
Also, Ross touched upon the hardships African-American students have had to go through to achieve a higher education.
TICKING TIME BOMB
“Campus racism has been at epidemic proportions for decades,” Ross writes in “Blackballed,” “and it’s time for predominately white college and universities to start looking for effective solutions … before a tragic event erupts.
“And be sure, every college and university in the United States is a ticking time bomb due to the unaddressed campus racism on their campus.
“But before you can get healthy, the first step is to recognize that you’re sick.”
SUNY Plattsburgh graduate student and Residence Hall Director Scott Sheehan attended Ross’s presentation.
“Each one of our different buildings is pushing for multiple programs,” he said of other Diversity Week efforts, “like educational programs that push the envelope on topics of diversity and pluralism this month.”
Ross’s new book, Sheehan said, is quite a “page turner.”
IMPORTANT MESSAGE
SUNY Plattsburgh Center for Diversity Director Dr. J.W. Wiley belonged to the same fraternity that Ross had been part of, Alpha Phi Alpha.
Wiley expressed admiration for Ross’s presentation, especially his message that racism is no stranger to colleges campuses these days.
“Most of us don’t know,” he said.
And talking about it, he added, is a “necessary conversation.”
As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said: “Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”
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