KKK at oberlin college shows we have a long way to go

Marcus Atkinson

HispanicOhio.com editor

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Oberlin College, known all over the United States as a place of acceptance and higher learning is confronting racism and hate, which many thought was abandoned but now we all battened prejudice is alive and well in the North.

Monday, March 4 students reported someone in a Ku Klux Klan robe late at night, once reported classes were canceled and since then the student body has shown solidarity in the condemnation of the act.

The KKK siting was just the latest white supremacist showing on the college campus, according to the Oberlin Review, there have been racist signs and posters singling out Blacks, Jews, and homosexuals.

Certainly this happening in any college in unacceptable and shocking, but it is particularly surprising considering Oberlin College was the first in America to allow Blacks to enroll (1835) and the first to enroll women in an accredited bachelor’s degree program (1841).

The occurrence should be evidence that our nation has not moved forward enough in accepting all races and creeds as equals.  Amongst small circles, one prevailing thought on racism is that the country will just have to wait until the “the old guard dies out”, then we will truly be a nation of acceptance.

Well how old do you think the people were that creating posters and signs with the “N” word, the “F” word (for homosexuals), and wrote on an elevator wall, “N***** oven”?

Our country is more divided then united; we avoid people that are different from us, refusing to learn from our past and refusing to learn from one another.  Too many children grow up in communities where the true value of diversity is not understood, where the importance of knowing people of different backgrounds and learning from different cultures is unimportant.

If young people were to be raised exposed to people of different faiths, backgrounds, and ethnicities, events such as what happened Monday at Oberlin college would be drastically reduced, and young college students wouldn’t be hanging “white only” signs above water fountains in 2013.