#ConcernedStudent1950: But Please #StayWoke!!

On November 9, 2015, after continued protests on the campus of the University of Missouri, one of the major demands from protesters was met. President Tom Wolfe resigned his position. We here at R3 wanted to collect some reflections of this event from our readers. If you would like to share a reflection or thought, please email us at [email protected] or reach out to us on Facebook or Twitter

It is paradoxically interesting that so many people cannot define systemic oppression and systemic racism, yet will argue for why Mizzou’s president stepping down was harsh, or why racism isn’t as bad as “those” “sensitive” people make it out to be, or why we live in a post-racial world where colorblind ideology will save us if we can just stop talking about race and focus on our similarities. Those of us who experience this everyday can smell your lack of knowledge, understanding, and bullshit miles away. If you can’t speak the language, STOP TALKING AND LISTEN!-Amber Johnson

Journalism is dead, and its body is already being covered over by pay walls and elite narratives. Oh, sure, we’ll have these “conversations” every once in awhile — something will circulate through social media that allows all of the First Amendment armchair quarterbacks to parade out their righteous indignation and talk about how “journalism is just in their blood.” But give it a couple of days and folks will go back to not caring. And they should. When these protests were breaking, nobody turned to the big media outlets. We turned to ‪#‎ConcernedStudent1950‬. Marginalized people don’t need you to tell their stories. They can tell them just fine without you. And anyway, as one of the protesters noted, “You’d just get it wrong anyway.”-Amanda Nell Edgar

As proud as I am (and I am VERY proud) of ‪#‎Mizzou‬, I see it as an indictment on every apathetic black person who refuses to bond with the revolutionary potency of black unity. There is NO established institution in the U.S. that does not owe its existence, in part, large or small, to the black people of this country. So please stay off my TL with pseudo-congratulatory ‪#‎Mizzou‬ posts that posit that economics is THE ONLY way to propel change in social action. It’s over simplistic and myopic. It took weeks of poignant protest, concerted confrontation, and engagement with numerous public sources, who responded with international support, to have the fortitude and credible potency to make that threat and make it sufficiently catalytic to force change.

Folks, this is a multi-frontal war. We have been attacked on every side. It will NOT be won solely and directly by monetary means. Think bigger. You don’t want to do right? We will shut this whole institution that is the American project DOWN!-T Max McMillan

Surreal: Watching Jonathan Butler receive tweets from white “allies” stating that they’re “praying and camping out for him in solidarity” when said allies, supposedly understanding the system that is oppressing Black Mizzou students should have been the ones using their privilege & placing their bodies in distress to bring attention to the racism on campus. Again, it took the students with the most to lose (the Black Mizzou football players and Concerned Student 50) to stand up for justice. The events on the Missouri campus reflect how the majority of White Christians think the call to stand against racial injustice is kumbyaya prayer circles and camp outs in solidarity. Jesus wept. –Joseph Boston

This ain’t gon’ be popular, what I am about to say! — I am encouraged by the “We Shall Overcome” moment at the University of Missouri because it has many good implications. BUT, I am troubled because the expectation will be that these young MEN will get a tacit nod as the leaders of the millennium movement while the SISTA’s of Black Lives Matter will be expected to accept their place in the back by media and respectability politics. I am slap happy though when I think that these young women will no more allow themselves to relegated to the fringes than we would expect a starving jack ass to back up from a barrel of oats! When we as a people are hungry enough for freedom then we will appreciate that it will take us all to gain it!-T Renée Crutcher

Remember last week at Memphis when I explained to the grad students that football would be the next arena for social protest despite the fact and because of the fact that it is a plantation economy? When you have a massive economic structure that distorts every single state budget (because every football head coach at the land grant schools makes more than every governor in every state in the union), you have the potential for collective resistance. And when that massive plantation economy, like football, structures black bodies, black pain, and white spectatorship, it is ripe to turn against white supremacy in a neoliberal institution like higher ed.-Lisa Corrigan