STARKVILLE — At noon Wednesday, a half hour into a student sit-in on the front steps of Lee Hall, a small group of reporters were led through a side entrance and up to the fourth floor of the beautifully-renovated old building where the office of Mississippi State University President Dr. Mark Keenum is located.
There in an adjoining conference room, speaking over the muffled chants of the students below, Keenum responded to the protest calling for the removal of the Mississippi flag from all campus locations, along with nine other demands sent via email to the president on Monday.
He agrees with the students on the flag issue, he said, and wants the current state flag, with its conspicuous Confederate imagery, replaced.
What really separated the mostly-black students on the steps below and the President high above was not so much philosophical as strategic, Keenum insisted.
“We have the same goal as those brave students out there,” Keenum said. “Why would we want a symbol that is so divisive? But we have to work through the process. We have to be respectful of the process.”
While he has often publicly stated his desire for a new state flag, Keenum has not followed the path of the administrators at the University of Mississippi and the University of Southern Mississippi, where the state flag has already been removed from campus.
While Keenum’s efforts to disassociate the university from the flag differ from those at Ole Miss and USM, they are consistent with his nature — discreet and diplomatic.
As evidence of his position, he offered reporters a copy of the letter he sent to the Governor, Speaker of the House and Lt. Governor urging them to change the flag through the legislative process.
Keenum is a good man, thoughtful, fair-minded and genuinely interested in the welfare of all students, regardless of their differences. But, in this case he is wrong.
We are all the product of our life experiences and Keenum is no different. He believes in the process because he has seen it work. Throughout his life, both in academia and in government, Keenum has worked within the confines of “the process” and it has served him well. The arc of his professional career is a compelling testament to the power of working through the proper channels. That is his genuine story.
But there are other stories, too, and this is where the disconnect between Keenum and those black students emerges.
For generations of black Mississippians, “working within the process” has achieved little. The history of the Civil Rights movement in our state clearly demonstrates that virtually all meaningful progress has been made not through working within the system, but from challenging the system, defying it.
Be patient, Keenum, urges. Respect the process. Believe in the process. Work within the process. It is all he knows.
But to what end?
Keenum’s letter, it should be noted, is dated March 24. That’s about a month after no fewer than 22 separate “flag” bills presented in this year’s legislative session died in committee. Nothing could be more obvious: The legislature has neither the desire nor the will to change the state flag.
At some point, the issue will go to the voters where it will likely meet the same fate as the 2001 vote, where voters rejected changing the flag by roughly a 2-to-1 margin along racial lines. No surprise there: A popular vote produces a popular result and in Mississippi, a state still powerfully divided along racial lines, the will of the white majority will prevail, popular, yes, and yet unjust.
Why delude ourselves then?
Be patient? That plea has echoed through the generations. The young students who gathered on the steps of Lee Hall seem to understand this. It is as much a part of their historical narrative as faith in the process is to Keenum. It is different, but no less true.
In his poem, “Harlem,” Langston Hughes captured the cruel emptiness of that unfulfilled promise.
Here on the edge of hell stands Harlem. Remembering the old lies, the old kicks in the back, the old “Be patient” they told us before….
So we stand here on the edge of hell in Harlem and look out on the world and wonder what we’re gonna do in the face of what we remember.
Wednesday, we saw what a small group of black students and a handful of their white allies intend to do.
Meanwhile, Keenum retains his faith in the process, placing his hopes in the hands of a group of state leaders who are unworthy of that trust.
As I looked into the faces of those young students, two competing emotions crowded in on me: sadness and respect.
Courage is not simply getting up after you have been knocked down. It’s getting up after you’ve been knocked down, knowing that you’re going to get knocked down again.
Maybe those young students don’t realize that just yet.
But they will.
Be patient.
Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].
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