The faculty and staff in the Department of African American and African Studies (AAAS) at The Ohio State University write to express our outrage about the racially motivated hate crimes which took place on our campus and to stand in solidarity with the students, faculty, staff, and community members who have been advocating for racial justice at OSU and across the nation.

In the early morning hours of April 5, an unidentified criminal spray-painted “Long Live Zimmerman” on the side wall of the Frank W. Hale, Jr. Black Cultural Center—a clear reference to George Zimmerman who killed young Trayvon Martin in Florida. Martin was unarmed and was clearly not engaged in any criminal actions, yet Zimmerman was not charged with the murder for forty-four days. There has been widespread indignation about the Martin case across the country, and Ohio State students gathered on the evening of April 4 to participate in a silent vigil commemorating Trayvon Martin’s life and the life of Shaima Alawadi, a Muslim woman whose murder has raised the ugly specters of Islamophobia and domestic violence in American society. During the course of this vigil a small group of white counter-protesters exposed gun holsters in a clear attempt to intimidate students. It was not until one person was detained by police that it became known that the holsters were empty. Later that same night, the words “Long Live Zimmerman” were sprayed onto a wall of the Black Cultural Center. The following day, on April 6, in the Weinland Park neighborhood southeast of campus, a mural celebrating the election of President Barack Obama was spray-painted with swastikas and the “N” word. These events were, unfortunately, only the most recent in a series of attacks that have been launched against the Black, Muslim, and Jewish communities at Ohio State since January.

Over the past several days, in response to these events, OSU students, faculty, and staff have held community meetings, vigils, marches, demonstrations, and sit-ins, all in an effort to send a clear and unequivocal message: we will not tolerate hate, and we will not bow to racist intimidation. The faculty members in AAAS want to make clear that we stand in solidarity with these principles. We also believe it is important to place the vandalism at the Hale Center within the broader context of continuing racism and the disturbing upward trend in ethnic intimidation in the United States. Racism structures opportunity and assigns value based on the social interpretation of race; it unfairly advantages some individuals and communities and unfairly disadvantages others, thereby undermining the strength of the whole society through the waste of human resources. Few could argue that the deep, structural roots of racism in America have been eradicated. Despite this nation having elected its first Black President, the fact that racism is still alive and well in America is made abundantly evident by the unprecedented level of disrespect that has been demonstrated toward President Obama in his first term of office.

As a community of scholars who devote a good part of our lives towards understanding the societal structures and knowledge production that produce racism and intimidation, we understand that the recent hate crimes are designed to prevent people of color from seeking the dignified life-affirming aspirations espoused by the country’s founding beliefs. We also understand the implicit threat in the words directed at those of us who consider the Hale Center to be our home on this campus. The language “Long Live Zimmerman” that was used to deface the Hale Center is a call to murder because it celebrates a man who killed an unarmed Black teenager and encourages others to do the same. It is a call to debar African Americans from seeking comfortable places to learn, work, and play. And it is an attack on the Black community and on all members of the OSU community who embrace equality, democracy, and civility.

The very existence of the Frank W. Hale Black Cultural Center on the OSU campus is the physical symbol of not only Black creativity, but also a critique of the Euro-Western system of knowledge that for so long assumed the right to define, name, represent and determine how African descended people and other peoples of color can be known. The Hale Center, along with the Department of African American and African Studies here at OSU, exists because of the struggles waged by Black students and Columbus residents in the Civil Rights Movement. The Civil Rights Movement was not merely about emancipation at the level of social and political rights. It was also about emancipation at the level of knowledge and culture. This is a struggle that requires that we all shake off the mental and cultural legacies of the distorted representations of the histories, societies, cultures and contributions of African descended people and other peoples of color to both the USA and to the world; that we challenge and resist the Euro-Western domination of knowledge that seeks to marginalize or erase the realities of African descended and other people of color from counting as legitimate and valuable sources of human creativity and knowledge. This struggle is not over. Today, across the United States of America diversity in education is under sustained and systematic attack. From efforts in Tennessee and Texas to restrict the teaching of minority experience in American history, to the banning of Ethnic and Mexican American Studies in Arizona, assaults on diversity in education are being waged across America, right now, today in 2012. It is this awareness of the times we are living in that leads the faculty and staff in AAAS at OSU to understand the recent racist hate crimes on the OSU campus as a local manifestation of that larger sustained and systematic attack. Both are attempts to reassert the domination of an exclusionary and discriminatory vision of America that amounts to an attack on the rights of people of color and women, as well as religious and sexual minorities.

However, while racism, hate, and intimidation remain alive and well across the nation, another key factor also remains; namely, our ability to analyze and change the structures and processes that foster racism and other societal oppressions. The first step in remedying these social ills is acknowledging their existence. The second step is appreciating that the reality experienced by those privileged by race is not the same as that of those disadvantaged by it, and bringing everyone into respectful dialogue is a necessary step toward social justice.

We in the AAAS Department at OSU stand ready to move forward the vanguard that offers sustainable strategies for improving our condition and creating a just society. The achievement of eminence of The Ohio State University hinges on the pursuit of diverse and inclusive perspectives that consider the politics of knowledge, understand the imperative of social activism for an improved society, and wield the courage and moral leadership to stand up beside the progressive students at OSU who this week have unambiguously declared and demonstrated that there “is no room for hate at Ohio State.”

In conclusion, the staff and faculty of the Dept. of African American and African Studies at OSU stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the Hale Center, the OSU Black Students’ Association, the NAACP, and with all progressive peoples in opposing this attempt to recolonize the academy, re-segregate the OSU campus and defile not only the Frank W. Hale Black Cultural Center, but the very principles of American society and democracy. We call on the whole community to support the ongoing local and national mobilization efforts aimed at ensuring that no more Trayvon Martins should have to die so that only certain people in America can live. And we urge the relevant law enforcement agencies to mount an unrelenting search for the individual/s who sprayed the death threat in Zimmerman’s name on the Hale Center building.

We encourage you to demonstrate your solidarity on this issue by signing the petition at the following website: http://www.thepetitionsite.com/948/827/720/response-to-frank-hale-black-cultural-center-vandalism-at-the-ohio-state-university/

--The Faculty and Staff of the Department of African American and African Studies at The Ohio State University