white supremacy

Only by openly admitting and reflecting on past mistakes can we move forward to create the campus students have desperately been demanding for years. 

W.E.B. Du Bois suggested more than 80 years ago that the United States chose white supremacy over democracy. Today we have an opportunity to correct that.

It felt like if I could think of it, then it had to be wrong. It was no longer a judgment of my skill, but my own condemnation of myself within the space.

Being an ally means showing up when it counts. It means uplifting Black voices rather than trying to drown them out for the sake of appearing “woke.”

It took me a long time to challenge Eurocentric beauty ideals. But now, I am able to look in the mirror and see a real person, a person who is no longer submissive to European ideologies. I am now able to face myself.

I will no longer allow white supremacy to control my life and will continue to be a critic of its different manifestations. I will continue to decolonize myself by changing old attitudes and habits. Ultimately, ethnic studies fundamentally changed the way I view the world. It empowered me by showing me how I was being oppressed and how I was oppressing others.

It’s worth noting that “BlacKkKlansman” is very emphatically not just about Colorado Springs, nor is it just about the 1970s.