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GAINING
BLM protests took place in Harrisonburg during summer 2020 as a response to a national outcry over racial injustices.
Graphic by Kailey Cheng
Students respond to national and local racial injustices
D
ukes took to the streets of Harrisonburg to protest racial injustices this past summer after police officer Derek Chauvin killed George Floyd by kneeling on his neck for 8 minutes and 46 seconds. Floyd’s death, Breonna Taylor’s — who was shot in her apartment by police — and many others’ ignited a worldwide conversation about systemic oppression and racism. According to a research article titled, “Risk of being killed by police use of force in the United States by age, race-ethnicity, and sex,” about 1 in every 1,000 Black men can expect to be killed by police. Additionally, the same study found that Black men are two and a half times more likely than white men to be killed by
law enforcement during their lifetime. In another criminology study, “A Bird’s Eye View of Civilians Killed by Police in 2015,” Blacks people who were fatally shot by police were twice as likely as white people to be unarmed. These events have also opened up a forum for conversation here on campus. JMU is classified as a predominantly white institution (PWI) with over 70% white students enrolled in fall 2020. Some students believe JMU and organizations on campus need to do better with implementing diversity and standing with Black students. “Our sorority only made statements the week of [Floyd’s] death,” Deija Bowden, a social work major, said. “And then after that, it was nothing. And then when I addressed
that in front of our chapter facilitator, one of them goes … ‘I can see the negative effects of that on the business side; we can’t just make those statements every week.’ It’s disgusting.” Jessica Goodman, a theater major, said being from Baltimore, Maryland, the Black Lives Matter protests felt surreal to her living through the Freddie Gray protests in 2015. She attended an all-Black theater program at her community college and said she learned about Black oppression as the only white student. Going to the Black Lives Matter protests, she felt like she could take the information she learned and apply it to current events, and help educate her friends at JMU. Goodman said that from her experience
in the theater program, her Black peers told her she should be using her voice and privilege to elevate the Black community. “I think hearing that from them … that really changed my perspective on the movement and my perspective on my role as a white person in order to push forward and to elevate black voices,” Goodman said. “I was happy to use my privilege to help educate people.” Bowden said she doesn’t think the Black Lives Matter movement has been addressed well at JMU. She believes that campus organizations want to protect their image. “That’s what their fear is,” Bowden said. “It’s political to the point where they don’t want to say that or do the right thing because they don’t want to lose their main funding.
