Black Voices

Issue date: 5/12/08 Section: Features

A time when you never had to ask if anyone was going to Blacks in Action's Hip Hop Poetry Night or 100 Black Men's Slow Jamz, and when organizations held annual executive board elections that were actually competitive.

In the past, organizations such as the NAACP and the Black Women's Caucus were the pillars of black mobility, intellectualism, scholarly achievement and civil rights. Individuals joined these organizations because they were shut out from the predominately white ones.

But today at USC these organizations are inactive, overlooked and soon to be forgotten if the current attitude does not change.

Many feel that the resolution will be detrimental to black organizations because most of these organizations request funding for food at their events (a request that is shunned upon by the funding boards).

Some student leaders are afraid that the USC's funding boards won't consider their requests as rational spending and that their events won't get funded.

The only way to fix this problem is for black student leaders to "step up their game." Given the current apathetic attitude amongst organizations on campus, "stepping their game up" seems like a huge feat but it's either that, or face extinction.

Maybe there's no longer a need for special interest groups such as the Black Student Assembly. Perhaps black students should assimilate into the predominately white organizations from which they are no longer barred.

Clearly the Jena 6 and subsequent noose fiascos are a testament of the continuing need for black activism and the various special interest groups that make up BSA. But even present activism seems inconsistent.

Everyone got riled up for a few weeks because of the Jena 6 but how many students fervently followed the story after signing a petition and wearing all black for a day?

"Individuals are beginning to think that we've gone the distance, that it is okay to ignore the [larger] problems facing the Black community," said Glen Ford, a veteran journalist and executive editor of BlackAgendaReport.com, a weekly journal of African-American politics.

Continued...

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