Michelle Chikaonda: The disturbing reality of racism on Penn's campus

"It's a gorilla!"

My walking slowed momentarily; for a second, I hoped what I heard was, "It's a girl!" because my androgynous dressing has often made people believe I am trying to be male.

But then I heard:

"It's a gorilla... yep, it's definitely a monkey!"

All my doubts as to what this young, white and intoxicated male had just yelled at me, a black female, vanished.

Saying nothing, I continued walking, in shock as to what I had just heard. Had I just heard it? At Penn, that beautiful place where racism doesn't exist?

Apparently so.

Brief history lesson: the racial slur "monkey" comes from the belief a long time ago that "because of their high cranium, blacks were close cousins to primates." Monkey as a derogatory term is also defined as "inferior or menial... used to refer dismissively or contemptuously to underlings or errand-runners, etc."

When this inebriated, Spring-Flinging man yelled out "monkey," he definitely did not mean it as a compliment.

I have a problem with the belief held by many Penn students that racism doesn't exist here because if it didn't, then what happened last Saturday night shouldn't have happened. Hell, I would love to believe that racism doesn't exist here: I'd love to believe that being at Penn shields me from the real world.

However, that night's events told me one thing -- we have a long way to go.

Racism and bigotry are the odorous, unattractive next-door neighbors we all continually hope will move out. Some people at Penn sincerely believe that racism and bigotry have already packed up and left; when asked about them, they scratch their heads in confusion, thinking that they have long fled for the hills.

"Bigotry? Naw, we don't know him -- try a couple of houses down the road."

"Racism? I've got neighbors who've been here since the '40s; maybe they can tell you something... I think he moved out in 1965. We don't know him either."

But racism and bigotry didn't move out; they never moved out. They still live next door, feeding off the "video ho" images of black women, nurtured by pictures of black men as drug-pushing, gold-toothed thugs. When they excrete, their fecal matter manifests itself as a white person crossing the street because a black man is walking in his direction, or a white peron calling a black woman a "gorilla" and a "monkey" because it serves as some twisted form of amusement.

Racism and bigotry are right here.

What convinces me that racism is a concrete reality at Penn is the fact that the perpetrator of this offense had enough nerve and bravado to call out such a racial slur on a crowded street in an area that is most definitely Penn's campus. Granted, he was drunk. But this doesn't absolve him of his culpability -- the fact remains that he still said it. His words didn't lose their malevolence just because he'd knocked back a few beers. They still bit, hard. And I can't excuse that kind of offense against me or my skin color -- under no circumstances can I do that.

Penn prides itself on its diversity and multiculturalism; yet, there are still people who will yell unquestionably racist remarks on a crowded campus street and know they will go unchallenged. I get exhausted at times, always feeling I am on a racial warpath, only to have its existence subsequently denied; to have people tell me that this warpath is my own creation and that black people just need to get it together and stop complaining.

Well, let me post a challenge to those people: when you are 6 years old and you have to sprint as fast as you can back to your house because the boys next door are hurling stones at you while yelling "brown sugar"; when you see your father's face spat on and called "nigger"; when you have insults like "monkey" and "gorilla" hurled at you because of your race -- come back and talk to me.

Otherwise, I don't want to hear that racism doesn't exist, and certainly I do not want to hear that it is "out there," but that Penn is the exception.

Because it is alive, and it is well.

Michelle Chikaonda is a freshman in the College.

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