Last Wednesday, I went to a talk with House Fellow Judge Scott Miller. The talk started off great; not only was his story towards jurisprudence inspiring, but every anecdote he shared was as interesting as it was amusing. We filtered between topics such as constitutional law, school, and Ithaca in general. Judge Miller offered an informal atmosphere in which the students were encouraged to ask questions and engage in dialogue that was prevalent to today.
As the talk came to the end, Judge Miller wanted to highlight the current political climate, saying that the US government was built with checks and balances that ensured the preservation of the country. Judge Miller made it clear that his comments were very general and that he neither endorsed nor disapproved of the current administration. But projecting my own beliefs onto his words, I think his comments served to energize us in the sense that the state of the US will not always be as it is today, whether for better or for worse.
But I’m not too sure if I agree. Trump as president is more than just 4- and potentially 8- years of sexism, racism, and homophobia. His election has served to normalize these traits into what is already a sturdy structure of institutional and systemic oppression. He is not the beginning of these problems, and he is surely not the end. When he does leave office, there will be just as many racist people in the country as there was before, and thinking that things will be better at the end of his term is too idealistic to have credence.
Considering the things that have happened on Cornell’s campus in the past two days, things have not gotten better. And Cornell loves to say that they are in support of diversity, but when push comes to shove, little is done to protect our communities. A black man was hospitalized because five white men in a frat decided to call him racial slurs and jump him in the dead of night. No one has been taken to jail. No one has issued warnings to other students of color. No one has listened to the concerns of our community. No one affiliated with Cornell has released a statement of solidarity with the people of color on campus.
So where do we stand after the next 4 years? The same place we were before, and the same place we are now: in a country that was founded on the oppression of the ‘other.’
I admire Judge Miller’s optimism, but hope is hard to maintain when there’s no end in sight.
This is a great point. The current political climate definitely enables terrible actions, and it’s hard to talk about justice in a system that is often biased against people most in need of it. I liked what that Martha Pollack was honest enough to say, “I will not tell you ‘this is not who we are,’ as the events of the past few weeks belie that.” A lot of times official try to brush these kinds of things off as the work of separate individuals actions and beliefs, but it’s important to recognize that we all as part of the Cornell community enable that kind of behavior by not talking about it and denouncing it.