Our image is on the line, so now it’s time to fight

Let’s face it, we’ve become apathetic.
Hundreds of our ancestors and forefathers fought and bled in this country so we could procure the opportunities that many of us take for granted today, like obtaining a higher education and sitting anywhere we damn well please on a bus!
Even some of our parents were part of sit-ins and marches that got their voices heard during a time when no one cared about what they had to say.
Through riots, lynching and segregation, black people stood strong and untied with one another against a world that looked down upon us as underdogs, less than humans and unfit to be afforded the rights this country bestowed upon us from birth.
And with the deconstruction of those oppressive walls came the birth of a new generation…us. A new subculture of minorities who wouldn’t have to march to go to school with whites, or feel the harsh reality that darker skin could bring on a poor man or woman just trying to provide for his or her family.
We could sit anywhere we wanted, go anywhere we wanted, date who ever we wanted and not be lynched, or judged or jailed because we told a white man to “Go to hell,” if he called us out of our name.
But as with everything that can be good in life, freedom has a price, a price that we are paying right now, here at Southern University.
That price is apathy.
We’re so quick to not exercise our right to vote, because we figure, “our vote doesn’t count.” But no matter if the person who will best benefit us as people gets elected into office or not, we should always feel our vote counts because there were men and women, not much older than we are today, who bled and died for us to have the simple freedom of casting a ballot that could change the future.
Yet in still we turn our backs on their struggles to use the minute it takes to vote to text our friends and find out what time the next “Perfect 10” party starts and how much they’re going to charge us at the door.
Do you think our forefathers and ancestors would be proud of us as a generation? Or are they turning over in their graves because they fought for a life for us that we seem to be throwing away because we somehow think we’ve been accepted by “them” because Oprah has her own multi-million empire?
Recently, blood has been spilled on our doorstep, and again the outside world wants to use that blood to further perpetuate the stereotype that although “they’re enrolled in college, they’re still nothing but a bunch of ignorant niggers and minority trash that doesn’t deserve to receive scrupulous coverage in the local media.”
Our student government leaders have taken notice of our apathy, and the local perception of our university and its students. And now they are asking us to stand with them and march to show Baton Rouge, and the rest of the world, that there’s more to us than “the baddest marching band in the land” and “Pretty Wednesday.”
We are our forefathers’ children, so it’s time for us to stand up and fight for our image, and the image of Southern University, to shout that we’re just as good, and decent and proper as “those” who want to call us security risks to justify shutting us out of their world.
There’s no more important thing to do on Wednesday than stand up for your image, because in the end, it’s all you have against the world.
Do you want to be remembered as the school that was overcome by local violence, which tainted the reputation of the institute your degree will hang above the mantle of your fireplace? Or do you want to be remembered as the school that decided not to let the local violence ruin its reputation, and stood up against everything the world around it wanted it to be?
Image is everything, and right now our image is on the line.
You might not think a march will produce change, but what if our forefathers and ancestors thought the same thing when they marched to end segregation and oppression? Would we even be here today?
We feel you all know the answer to that.