While I enjoyed Carmen Cerra’s cartoon, I’d like to point out that there were no “losers” in the debate over the naming of Catt Hall except perhaps an administration that presented itself as out of touch and uninterested in marginalized groups.

Those on all sides of the Catt Hall debate learned quite a bit about controversial discourse in a democracy—how it’s supposed to function and what happens when it gets derailed.

I am concerned, however, whenever I see white supremacy equated with the Ku Klux Klan.

By reducing white supremacy to the symbolism of the most radical fringe, we are able to avoid discussing the less obvious and supposedly more “civil” ways in which white supremacy functions in our society.

White supremacy isn’t limited to the dragging death of James Byrd in Texas; it also exists in a system that perpetuates white privilege by institutionalizing it.

For instance, white students graduating from ISU can be reasonably certain that the people with the power to interview and hire in the corporate world will be people of their race, and that being white will not work against them in the job search.

That’s white privilege—the unexamined ways in which being white makes things easier for those of us who, through no fault of our own, have been born into the privileged side of the racial divide.

If The September 29th Movement has a single most valuable contribution to make to ISU, it is in the way we have consistently asked ourselves and those around us to examine the previously unexamined, and to challenge our assumptions.

As a side note, I recently saw a “Quick-E” that wanted to know where former 9/29ers were since, being English majors, we surely couldn’t have jobs yet.

Of the alumni group I’m in contact with, we have one working as a journalist, another has a position with a Black Theater group, a third is in law school, one is teaching and another is on a creative writing fellowship at a major midwestern university.

I’m wrapping up coursework on my Ph.D. and promoting my first book.

Obviously, commitment to political action hasn’t been a handicap.

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Kel Munger

Alumna

Columbia, Mo.