A full auditorium applauded Tim Wise, anti-racism author, Tuesday night as he walked on stage in the Martha Street Culp Auditorium to deliver his speech: “But Some of my Best Friends and My President are Black: Challenging Racism in the Age of Obama.” Wise was asked to visit ETSU as part of the Race Relations Dialogue Task Force that was formed last year after a blackface incident occurred at a fraternity party.

“I graduated college 19 years ago and even when I was a senior in 1989 and ’90 these kinds of things were happening,” said Wise before explaining that two crosses were burned on Tulane University’s campus when we was a student there.

“In this case, I think we have to judge racism based more on impact-how it is experienced-rather than on what the intent of the actor is,” said Wise in an interview before the lecture.

The author began his lecture by telling a story about living with nine people in one house.

“I was tired of living in the funk,” he said of a roommates decision to leave food on the stove overnight. Another roommate also failed to clean the food, saying that he was not the one who made the mess.

“It is not about guilt, it’s about responsibility,” he said, relating his story to racism in America.

“The first thing is acknowledging the problem,” Wise said. “It’s going on in the larger society, which we sometimes don’t acknowledge because we want to believe that this stuff is in the past.

“We really want to ‘move on’, so we often times deny, deflect, project and divert attention.”

Wise has been meeting with campus groups this week to discuss the topic of racism and will be helping the task force by compiling a list of information he received in the workshops.

“I think there were a significant number of students of color who thought that the university was making a good step,” said student representative for the Race Relations Dialoge Task Force, Ash-lee Henderson. “We want to make it a priority for this campus to be a safe place for students of color.”

Henderson also spoke with white students who were touched by Wise’s lecture.

“I’m really hopeful that’s going to be a really huge step toward racial equality at ETSU,” she said.

For more information, contact the Office of Equality and Diversity at 423-439-4445.

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