Carolina blue skies, basketball championships that make you cry, the Daily Grind coffee and the Panthers at Super Bowl 50. Two thousand and sixteen was a great year to be a Tar Heel at the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill, often lovingly called the “Southern part of heaven”. Famous structures on campus include the Bell Tower, the Old Well and the Silent Sam statue by John Wilson, which commemorates a Confederate soldier. Aside from being visually arresting – the young soldier stands far above the heads of passing students, rifle in hand, hat at an almost comically off angle and with a troubling blank stare – it also nods to an important history about the foundation of the university, as a large number of its founders and alumni were supporters of the Confederacy.
The erection of the statue in 1913 serves as reminder that it was the duty of students to leave their studies to fight for a war they believed in. Surrounded by the beautiful red brick that one would typically see in movies set in and around an all-American university campus, we were also surrounded by the less-glamorous reminders of the foundation of the US and its past and present role in racial violence against certain bodies. Precisely because of these living and breathing contradictions, Chapel Hill is a fascinating and perplexing place to visit. How can the South be famous for both Southern hospitality and incessant racism? How do students on a liberal campus in the oldest public university in the US reconcile their past with present ideas on morality?
As a visiting student for the year, I experienced all the best the university had to offer. The weather, the US college experience, the sport games and the racist statue. Curiously absent from our standard campus tour, I remember learning about the statue and its history from friends in stories recounted and retold. In 2015, the statue was graffitied with the words KKK and Black Lives Matter as a result of growing frustration amongst students of colour, in particular black students who felt that not only was Silent Sam a reminder of the violent subjugation of black bodies (when the Confederacy fought for slavery as a white man’s right), but that it retraumatized black students who were now facing the same system of oppression in the form of police brutality.
If the university is not proud of it, why not get rid of the Silent Sam? Many argue that the names of buildings should be changed (and some have been changed), since some were named after Confederate leaders and one is dedicated to a Ku Klux Klan (KKK) leader. Those who speak in opposition to alterations argue that everything should remain the way it is as a preservation of history and free speech, indeed the cornerstones of any real American reasoning.
The need for free speech also enabled pro-Confederate groups to come on to campus to hold a protest against the “vandalism” of the monument earlier that year. Bearing Confederate flags and banners like arms, two groups from Alamance County arrived on campus in October 2015, while students were warned in emails to stay away from the area on Sunday as a protest was happening, and that it was legally protected by free speech laws on a public university campus. Many organised and took part in the counter-protest, myself included.
It seems that freedom of speech in the US is often used as an instrument to spread fear and hate, distorting an important concept to instead justify hate speech. Those in power could use it in ways to further traumatise students in what should be our home, our university. Police arrived and barricaded the statue, effectively protecting Silent Sam and the protesters from students who saw this structure and these people as intrusive forces in our lives. If our universities are bastions of progressive ideals and supposedly safe places for education, why is this safety and protection not awarded to all students? It seems that in the modern US, a racist history is still worth protecting more than the livelihoods of the minds of young black students.
There was a designated area for relaxation at the protest. While at this healing station, I helped two black women who were in distress from the trauma of seeing all of the flags held by an all-white crowd on their campus. It is difficult to see how authorities and school officials could diminish the importance of their black students’ health by allowing forces of hatred on to campus. Those who claim the Confederate flag is about Southern heritage and pride should know that one protester had a noose tied around their flag on campus that day – a noose that harkens back to the lynching of black people, a horrific practice that only ended in 1981, according to government records.
Pride in one’s history should be celebrated, but if that history is deep rooted in the oppression of other bodies, it should not be protected at the expense of the wellbeing of young students. These protests and counter-protests did not occur in isolation. Across the US, there is a continuous need for the Black Lives Matter movement, as we see the same process occurring and reoccurring. Police and national guards are called in to protect big businesses and banks, just like they are called in to unilaterally protect the free speech of certain citizens on a college campus. Most recently, this occurred in Charlotte, North Carolina, where a state of emergency was declared following protests against the shooting of another unarmed black man, Keith Scott.
When preservation of a racist history precedes safety of the students, there is much need for discussion and change. Last year was the centenary of the UNC Student Store, including an independent bookshop and the Daily Grind Coffee Shop, which hired many students and was beloved by all. However, it has since been sold to Barnes & Noble. It appears the notion that we must protect our histories ends when it proves to be less profitable. It is the students who suffer as hate speech parades itself around campus under the guise of free speech, vulnerable and unprotected. In the US, I learned that being student of colour and wanting to love a university in a country that does not care for you is a difficult task to undertake.
