Staff Editorial: Moving beyond racial stereotypes

Racial prejudices are never harmless.

Though it might vary in severity, racial prejudices cannot be expressed without detrimental consequence.

While this fact has been increasingly repeated in our nation’s classrooms and embedded in our national consciousness, it is clear that racial prejudices are deeply rooted, regularly effecting how we perceive and treat others.

On Oct. 31, prejudice reared its ugly head on this campus as a group of African-Americans allegedly used racial slurs while attacking and robbing a group of Asian students outside of Forest Quad.

This attack has sparked discussion of race across campus.

Students have debated whether this incident should be considered a hate crime or if it would be better understood as a robbery in which the assailants and the victims happened to be of differing racial backgrounds.

While the Editorial Board wants to grant investigators the final word in determining the motives behind this robbery, we wish to assert that it would be reckless and irresponsible of this campus to ignore that racism against Asian students is a serious problem.

Racial prejudice toward Asian students often takes a subtle form.

Racially-charged comments against Asian students can seem innocent and insubstantial, manifesting in comments about the relative intelligence of Asian students or in the imitative mockery of Asian students’ accents.

It might be easy to justify comments made about an Asian student’s intelligence, for example, because one could assert that a joke about study habits is not harmful.
However, the association of any particular personality trait or practice with a particular racial group is never commendable.

When personal habits and practices are attached to any nationality, individuality is attacked.

While much of the emphasis on racism in the United States has been placed on the historically rooted black-white divide, racial prejudices against other racial groups are as prevalent and as detestable.

It is time to take inventory of the subtler ways that racism can manifest in our words and actions and to respect the individuality and variety of students on this campus.