IU community susceptible to discrimination, racism

SAY IT LOUD | Part 1 of 2

EDITORS NOTE The source in this story, Huey Newton, wishes to be known as such and keep his true identity anonymous. This story is part one of a three-part series about race and discrimination at IU. These stories were inspired by personal experiences of other students who said they felt they have faced racism on campus.

Graduate student Huey Newton experienced a rude awakening when he came to Bloomington, and it wasn’t because of something in the water.

“You look at the literature from other places about IU, and you’re sold,” he said. “But then once you get here, it’s a totally different picture from what the brochures portray.”
Newton noticed this change from exactly what is “had” to what pretends to be “had” upon his move to Bloomington from Atlanta, where he completed his undergraduate degree at Georgia State University.

Newton compared Atlanta to Bloomington in terms of aesthetics, noting both cities are unique in relation to their location. For Atlanta, it’s a unique town culture existing within a city, in a whole South that’s been plagued by racism and discrimination. For Bloomington, it’s a place seeming conducive to liberal ideology within traditionally red-state Indiana. Bloomington is also unique in that its town culture holds city aspirations, fueled mainly by the University.

“There is true diversity in Atlanta,” Newton said. “It’s not a fact of numbers, saying we have this many black people, these types of religious observances and so on.”

Newton recalled Atlanta as a place for people to “truly discover or rediscover themselves” without the usage of operative terms such as “diversity,” “promoting diversity” and “tolerance.”

For him, true diversity existed there because it didn’t need to be pushed or strived toward.

Not like Bloomington, where Newton said he believes an intertwining of faux liberalism and false representation creates an especially complex problem.

“Upon coming here, I noticed a lot of white liberals pushing for this whole diversity thing,” he said. “It’s like, what does diversity really mean when you’re minimizing capitalist interests for the sake of having an air of diversity and acceptance?”

This air of acceptance was just that. Since being at IU, Newton, a black Muslim, has noticed subtle examples of racism, such as a white woman visibly shaken when he stepped on an elevator when running late for class and feeling pressured to always act as a representative for his race.

“I’m not gonna drop my backpack and rob you or something,” he scoffed upon recollection.

For Newton, this is all under the umbrella of faux white liberalism, which he said in all its subtle implications of racism and discrimination is worse than social conservatism.

“Subtlety is worse because you can’t quite put a finger on it,” he said. “And if that’s the case, I’d rather deal with overt, hostile racism than subtlety. ... At least in the GOP, as a black man in America, I know exactly where I stand.”

Newton said he believes the adoption of faux liberalism lends its ear to apathy and complacency when it comes to challenging false notions about race and racial issues.

“It’s like we don’t have to exist,” he said. “Non-white people on this campus just aren’t properly represented. Normative diversity issues are only interested in representation, like, ‘How many of this racial ethnic group do we have?’ instead of thinking, ‘What are people different from me about? How can I learn from their cultural experience without exoticizing them?’”

Read part two in the SAY IT LOUD series.