Nubian Message, March 21, 2019 — Vigil mourns Christ Church victims

NUBIANMESSAGE NORTH CAROLINA STATE UNIVERSITY | RALEIGH, NC | THENUBIANMESSAGE.COM | THURSDAY, March 21, 2019

vigil mourns Christchurch Victims Page 3

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Letter from the editor We stand in solidarity with all who mourn the lives taken in Christchurch, New Zealand and all who are working to end white supremacy across the globe.

THISISSUE 3

COMMUNITY INTERFAITH VIGIL

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WOMXN’S HERSTORY MONTH KEYNOTE

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JESS HILARIOUS & BIGOTRY

Muslim Student Association hosts vigil after NZ shootings.

Charlene Carruthers unpacks importance of radical protest.

Social media star illuminates bigotry in black community.

cover photo BY minh pham/Nubian Message Students and community members join together in solidarity at a vigil for the victims of the shooting in New Zealand held at Stafford Commons on Tuesday, March 19. The imprompt to vigil featured prayers, poems from students, and speeches from community leaders.

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news

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Vigil unites community, promotes interfaith solidarity after Christchurch shootings

Minh Pham/Nubian Message Students and community members join together in prayer at a vigil for the victims of the shooting in New Zealand at Stafford Commons on Tuesday, March 19. The vigil concluded with a moment of silence to honor the 50 slain and the others wounded.

On Mar. 19, over 120 people gathered at Stafford Commons to attend the Community Interfaith Vigil, an event organized by the Muslim Student Association (MSA) to honor the lives lost and affected by the Christchurch mosque shootings and to create a space in which different communities of faith could stand together in solidarity.

Mohsen Zakaib, a third-year studying nuclear engineering, physics and anthropology, is the president of MSA, and said the MSA put the event together in one to two days.

Zakaib began the vigil with an acknowledgment of strength in solidarity.

“This terrorist tried to scare us,” Zakaib said as crowd members passed the flames of their candles to those unlit. “He tried to divide us, and he tried to utterly crush our wills, and we stand today to show him he accomplished the exact opposite.”

Eleven speakers—ranging from NC State students to the NC Senator of district 38, Mujtaba Mohammed—contributed their words of perseverance against these attacks, support for the Muslim community and

Kennysha Woods Managing Editor

hopeful visions for the future.

“We should be building tables instead of building walls,” Mohammed said.

“We need to continue to unite, to work towards starving out the sickness and recognize that our diversity is our greatest strength, that our world must learn to love fully, care deeply, and most importantly, we must learn the simple act of respect and kindness towards one another.”

Among the student contributors was Sinthia Shabnam, a noted spoken word artist and fourth-year studying political science and sociology, who performed her poem entitled “Where the Heart Is.” Interfaith support was voiced by various speakers, like Rabbi Melissa Simon, the senior Jewish educator and rabbi at UNC-Chapel Hill, and Kevin Singer, co-director of Neighborly Faith, an organization dedicated to helping evangelical Christians accept and engage with people of other faiths.

NC State faculty and staff members like Justine Hollingshead, the assistant vice chancellor of academic and student affairs, and Lt. Timothy Hammonds from the NC

State University Police Department, extended NC State’s support and highlighted useful campus resources for ensuring personal and community safety.

Midway through the vigil, time was reserved for the Maghrib prayer, the Muslim prayer just after sunset. At the end, a moment of silence was held for the victims of the shooting.

Zakaib said the turnout was “absolutely great.”

“That just shows that people care,” he said.

“We saw people from every single background, denomination, religion, race, and everything—from all spectrums. Christians, Jews, Musilms—everyone coming together to heal the community, to heal the rifts created by this crime committed in New Zealand.”

Hanadi Ibrahim, a second-year studying textile technology, attended the vigil and thought it was “big enough to make an impact, but small enough to where people get to talk and know each other.”

She also felt the vigil was helpful to people like her who needed to process the shooting and acknowledge their desensitization to

such tragedies.

“When you deal with those emotions,” Ibrahim said, “The things that you fear and the pain you go through don’t become unknown anymore, and you want to get to know that. When people get to know their fears, there’s a lot more clarity in the world.”

Another attendee, Noor Shehata, a firstyear studying political science, said, “One of the biggest things when it comes to vigils like these is to have a place to grieve.

I know…a lot of people carry these silent burdens that we don’t like to talk about, and events like these create a filter for people to come and speak about these topics and have important discussions about why this happened. And we can deal in going forward from this.”

Shehata added, “Being able to be at this vigil and feel safe to perform your own prayers also creates a channel of support between allies and Muslims. People learn more.

“Learning about the people you’re supporting so you can give them what they need is incredibly important, and you can’t have that without events like these.”

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news

Charlene Carruthers Delivers Womxn’s HERstory Month Keynote “Freedom isn’t always permanent or guaranteed. What I’m after is liberation.”

“Incomplete stories lead to incomplete solutions.”

On Mar. 19, Charlene Carruthers gave the keynote address in celebration of Womxn’s HERstory Month. Carruthers’ speech incorporated the theme of the Women’s Center’s approach to Womxn’s HERstory month— “Our Voice, Our Bodies, Our Stories: Tools for Radical Transformation.”

On their event page, the Women’s Center describes Carruthers as a “Black, queer feminist community organizer and writer with over 15 years of experience in racial justice, feminist and youth leadership development movement work.”

Carruthers is one of the founders of Black Youth Project 100, a nationwide organization that encourages political activism in black youth. Carruthers is also the author of “Unapologetic: A Black, Queer, and Feminist Mandate for Radical Movements.”

Carruthers began her speech by recognizing the recent terrorist shooting in Christchurch, New Zealand and addressing the underlying cause behind the attack, white supremacy.

She said, “White supremacy’s tentacles are not just in the southern part of the U.S. as many believe, but all over the world.”

Carruthers then discussed the idea of radicalism and what it means in our current political era. She states that her radicalism is a choice and takes work.

“Just because I’m a black woman doesn’t mean I’m automatically radical,” said Carruthers, “I’m not interested in surviving. I’m interested in thriving.”

Carruthers continued: “Freedom isn’t always permanent or guaranteed. What I’m after is liberation.”

She used human rights activist Ella Baker to help explain the intricacies of radical protest. She explained that Baker called for radical changes to the oppressive systems present.

“It’s not just about little reforms here and there. It’s about getting down to the rootcause of the problem and starting there,”

jalen Rose Staff Writer

Carruthers said.

Carruthers also explained the importance of intersectionality in the movement and the oversaturation the term has endured recently. She also emphasized why it is still essential for substantial progress.

“Intersectionality is a framework of how we understand how people endure multiple forms of oppression,” Carruthers said. “If I want to change things, it can’t be me in a room with my very incomplete perspectives on the world. Our lives are multidimensional and so our power should be too.”

Carruthers exemplified the idea of identifying the root cause of issues by critiquing the treatment of Black women in the past and sharing her experience. She spoke on the martyrization forced onto black women.

Carruthers said, “We love a strong Black woman until that woman is no longer able to hold your work or carry your bull****.”

She referenced James Marion Sims, the “father of gynecology,” and his unethical experiments on enslaved Black women without any anesthesia because he believed Black women had a higher tolerance for pain.

Carruthers used the Reproductive Justice Movement as an example of identifying the root cause: “Black women are four times more likely to die than white women due to pregnancy-related deaths. We sit in a lineage of people who have been forced to benefit everyone else.”

“Black women aren’t here to save y’all, we’re here to save ourselves.”

Carruthers concluded her discussion by leaving the audience with 5 questions to ask themselves: Who am I? Who are my people? What do we want? What are we building? Are we ready to win?

Carruthers used these questions to better prepare herself for her mission. She knew that in order to make the change she wants to see, people committed to the long-term fight are essential.

“Everybody is an expert of their own experience and sharing it. We need to ensure we are creating a space for others to share it.”

Swathi Karthik/Nubian Message Charlene Carruthers, a writer and community organizer, delivers the keynote speech for Womxn’s HERstory Month on Tuesday, March 19 at Talley Student Union. Carruthers is the founding director of Black Youth Project 100 (BYP100), an organization dedicated to recruiting young activists to solve social justice issues. The event was hosted by the NC State Women’s Center.

features

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Michelle Eley pushes the boundaries of black german studies Keilah Davis Editor-in-Chief “I teach German.”

That’s how assistant professor Michelle Eley responds when strangers ask, “What do you do?” But those three words are a vast oversimplification of the complexity Eley’s work brings to German studies.

Eley is an assistant professor in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures who teaches courses in German and film studies. She studies how the linguistics of films reveal cultural understandings of national identity, race, ethnicity and gender.

“You have to think at every moment what cultural context you’re working in, in that historical moment, and all of the things that are influencing that,” Eley said. “Working with a film in ‘67 in Germany also means thinking about how are the Germans reading about the Civil Rights Movement in the US. What are the newspapers saying about black people?”

She continued, “All the media that Germans are consuming from America about racial tension is influencing the way they see black people in their own backyard.”

Eley’s interest in Germany began in high school after meeting a German exchange student. After graduating, Eley picked up some German while visiting his family.

Marissa McHugh/Nubian Message She entered college with the intention of Michelle Eley, an assistant professor in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, sits at her desk in Withers on Wednesday, attending medical school and took German March 20. Eley teaches German to students at NC State. Over the years, she has lived in various parts of Germany, including Berlin and courses on the side.

Essen.

Eley was also a philosophy nerd. She to me because it made me think about my have black-white issue in Germany,’ so those ble to talk about their experiences in a way recalls this being the “final hook,” as she was own idea of blackness so differently.” black-white issues are American issues. that isn’t marred by this damaged German both blown away and frustrated by modern In the 1980s, Hügel-Marshall and Ayim Germany’s history of colonialism and language,” Eley said. “These terms that just German philosophers. This made her want were part of a group of women influenced Nazism give the word “race” a very different don’t fit because of how they’ve been used in to study the language in depth. by and in conversation with Audre Lorde. connotation than the English word. Thus, the past.”

“I think the real push for me was when I This group coined the term “Afro-Deutsche,” Eley said, this word isn’t used the same way.

Eley’s current work focuses on the pedtook a multicultural literature class,” Eley which translates as “Afro-German.” AccordIn some cases, English becomes the commu- agogy of including diversity in a foreign said. “We read an autobiography from Ika ing to Eley, these women were connecting nal language. language context.

Hügel-Marshall, who’s actually visited State themselves to an African diaspora identity.

“Community, for example, is a word “I try to build short poetry, accessible a few years ago to talk about her autobiogThis term provided the language for many they use in Germany, the English version poetry at lower levels...that we can work raphy, and May Ayim, who was one of these black people in Germany to describe their of it,” Eley said. “I mean there is a German with that has basic language in it,” Eley central women.” unique experiences and history. Language version, gemeinschaft, but it doesn’t have said. “That way people can see writing not Eley continued, “We read poetry by had been, and continues to be, a challenge the same thing, it’s not connected to black only from Afro-Germans but also from [Ayim] and I was just so hit by hearing in black German studies. diaspora.”

Turkish-Germans, Korean-Germans and these black voices in German and finding “For Germans, black people are not In other cases, Afro-Germans create new Jewish-Germans.” this common perspective was like, ‘Oh wait, German, so everything that has to do with ways to describe their experiences.

“I would like people to be able to see that they’re feeling what it’s like to be black in a black-white race issues is an American “ The Black community in Germany is there is more to Germany than the stereodifferent context and I understand it, but I thing,” Eley said. “Black-white racial issues really creating new language, through bortypical and the canonical image that we get.” don’t understand it.’ It’s familiar but someget translated through this lens of, ‘We don’t rowing, through changing, to make it possihow foreign. And that was really attractive

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opinion

Jess the Mess: Bigotry in the Black Community

Yesenia Jones

Staff Writer

Social media influencer, comedian and actress Jessica Moore—also known as Jess Hilarious— received backlash recently after posting a rant via her Instagram story that contained xenophobic comments.

The comments were in reference to four men in turbans who the comedian felt threatened by while

boarding a plane.

Following her rant, the plane was evacuated and reboarded. At that point, the comedian took to Instagram once again.

“So how ironic is it that we boarded the same plane and I don’t see these people,” Moore asked her followers.

Her followers did not find the situation ironic. Instead, many of them notified the comedian of her problematic behavior. She responded with another Instagram post.

“Look y’all I’m not racist and never have

been… we have Muslims in my family too,” the comedian’s post read. “However, I was totally unaware of the different types of Muslim, so yes I admit I am ignorant to the facts. So teach me.”

At this point it is very clear that the comedian’s assumptions about the four men were off base.

The men were not Muslim. They were Sikh, members of a religious group originating in India. So not only did Moore make xenophobic comments, but she also stereotyped the men into a group that they did not belong to.

But what seemed to be most upsetting to fans, was the clear lack of empathy from Moore, who is a person of color and was also wearing a headscarf on the flight. Many

questioned how the comedian could have the audacity to make such comments when she could have been racially profiled on the same flight as well.

Upon continuously receiving a flood of comments regarding her mistakes, Moore eventually posted an official apology.

However, her apology and her later promise to donate to victims of the New Zealand terrorist attack, did not stop the larger conversation surrounding the incident. That larger conversation included the presence of bigotry in the black community, specifically between Black Christians and Muslim people.

While there are millions of Black people who practice Islam around the globe, about

“The generational trauma of slavery created a mindset that religions outside of Christianity are to be condemned. ”

79% of African Americans are Christian, according to The Pew Research Center.

Some of this is due to slavery, which forced millions of enslaved Africans to take on the religions of their white slave masters.

The generational trauma of slavery created a mindset that religions outside of Christianity are to be condemned. This, combined with the American public’s habitual bigotry towards Middle Eastern Islamic people following the 9/11 terrorist attack, often makes Middle Eastern-looking Muslims the targets of bigotry from members of the Black Christian community. And, while Moore brought this issue to the forefront, this is not a new phenomenon.

Furthermore, while Moore may have seemed genuine in her apology her initial comments were rooted in ignorance and her predetermined perspectives formed by society. Thus, leaving fans with one question: Was she genuine in her apology or was she just trying to save her career?

opinion

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College Admissions vs. Privilege Once again, we have been shown the true nature of America’s privileged.

Last week, 50 people were charged for their involvement in a nationwide college admissions scandal. It was revealed that parents were paying jalen rose large amounts of money Staff Writer to ensure their children were accepted into specific colleges. The 50 people prosecuted included college coaches, college prep administrators and wealthy parents (including two Hollywood actresses, Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin).

Stories like this are constant reminders of the current state of our country. This is a country where the wealthy and privileged can cheat the system for their benefit—a country where these same people will willingly put themselves ahead despite disproportionately disadvantaging the less fortunate.

More-deserving students were denied acceptance into these schools to make room for students who did practically nothing to earn their spot.

It wouldn’t be fair for me to focus my criticism on the students, especially since many of these students were unaware of how their admissions decisions came to be. My frustration is directed towards the parents and their egregious actions.

These parents are guilty of setting a poor example for not only for their own children, but for the millions in children misinformed on the reality of our nation. As a parent, it’s your responsibility to teach your child the values of integrity and equity. These parents did the exact opposite.

They showed their children that if you have money, you can get your way. This is a clear indication of moral corruption—a trait we tend to see in a lot from America’s wealthiest class.

What’s most upsetting about this situation is that none of it is surprising.

Making donations to a fake charity is not the only form of privilege found in college

admissions. For decades, many colleges and universities have given preference to legacy students. If a student has at least one parent who graduated from the school, they are automatically more likely to be accepted.

This system is inherently designed to benefit affluent white students. White people have been the majority in college demographics for generations, therefore allowing them to benefit more from the implication of legacy admissions and leaving minorities at a disadvantage. This policy also directly affects first-generation students and their chances of admission.

Last year, The News & Observer reported that both Duke University and NC State University currently consider legacy status as a factor for admission. Implementing legacy status in admissions decisions can only increase the wealth inequality present in higher education institutions.

Despite these very real forms of privilege, minorities are the ones accused of benefiting the most from admissions, especially black students. Through affirmative action, colleges can implement race into their

admissions decisions in order to establish a more diverse campus community and offset the racial discrimination many schools held against minority students in the past.

Yet, some people would rather simplify this policy as “racist.” They claim the program racially discriminates against “other students” (a blanket-term for white students) and denies these “more-deserving students” (or rather, privileged) spots into the university.

Parents are paying their children’s way through admissions and literally taking the spots of actual deserving students, yet people of color are the ones accused of cheating the system.

It’s easy for the typical American to think that they don’t benefit from privilege in this country. It’s easy to hear about this scandal and establish a distance from the reality of it. It’s easy to claim ignorance and opt-out of advocating for substantial change. What’s difficult is recognizing how close in proximity this reality actually is and understanding the moral duty we have in order to fix it.

Bernie Sanders Continues to be the Answer The 2020 election cycle is starting to pick up speed and with it comes the revealing of the Democratic Party’s talent pool. This pool of potential candidates is already shaping up to be the most diverse in the history of our country. kevin moye The field contains more Staff Writer women and people of color than ever before, some with intersecting identities that make the group even more historic.

While I am highly impressed by the diversity of the field this year, I have become increasingly disappointed by the narrative surrounding one candidate in particular: Bernie Sanders. A surface-level look at Sanders would lead one to believe that he is the prototypical old, white male candidate, but his underlying policy plans prove that this cannot be farther from the truth.

The trope of him being just another old, white man running for president is a gross

mischaracterization of who Bernie Sanders actually is. Characterizing Sanders as simply a white guy undermines his actual identity of being a Jewish man with family ties that were deeply impacted by the Holocaust. To call him just a white guy erases this Jewish heritage which Sanders proudly wears. A Sanders victory would be historic in its own right as he would be both the first ever Jewish president and presidential nominee.

When it comes to policy, Sanders is still far and away the best candidate in the field.

His initial run for the presidency in 2016 arguably initiated the current tide of progressive politics that have manifested since the beginning of the Trump presidency.

Once thought of as “pie-in-the-sky” policies like universal healthcare and free access to higher education have become hallmarks of many Democrat platforms.

One of the biggest challenges the senator faced in his 2016 presidential bid was capturing the black vote during the primaries.

Sanders handily lost the South to Hillary Clinton as a result of his inability to appeal

to black voters in the region. The senator has reconciled with many problems his 2016 campaign faced in attaining the black vote which comprised of diversifying his staff and putting an extra emphasis on achieving racial equality in addition to economic inequality. As a result of these direction changes, Sanders is now the second most popular candidate among black voters falling behind only Joe Biden.

Rival candidates like Kamala Harris, Cory Booker and Elizabeth Warren are certainly appealing when looking at the diverse perspectives they bring coupled with their left-leaning platforms; however, the policies that Sanders advocates for still appear to be the most uplifting for the black and millennial communities. Sanders continues to campaign on a platform that finally sheds light on some of the most marginalized communities in our society.

Harris has already drawn the ire of many progressive voters for her policies she advocated for during her time as California’s district attorney. Her recalcitrance in

legalizing marijuana within the state as well as her truancy laws which disproportionately impacted low-income families of color are evidence of a problematic legislative record. Cory Booker has also been scrutinized for his close connections with Wall Street special interest groups. In 2014, it was reported that Booker received the most Wall Street funding of any other Senate candidate that year. Black Americans have taken note of the questions surrounding these two, with Harris and Booker polling at 14 percent and 6 percent among black voters behind Sanders’ 28 percent.

As the Democratic candidates encounter more questioning of their issues, it becomes increasingly clear the Sanders leads the pack as the champion for leftist politics. After four years of nauseating far-right politics taking the helm in our country, it is time we shift the country radically towards the left.

Bernie Sanders is just the candidate capable of bringing our country the radical change it needs to heal from its history of injustice and inequality.