Apathy from Prairie View students and the black community as a whole is threatening to undo the efforts of our forerunners. A democracy only serves the needs of the people who make their voices known, and from the Prairie View community, there is hardly a squeak from the student population. Why is it, we must ask ourselves, so difficult to tear ourselves away from our individual ambitions and social lives and take responsibility for our community and our future? Have we so descended into the doldrums of political lethargy that we are going to allow ourselves to roll over, while the powers that be take everything our ancestors built away from us?We’ve heard it in our political rhetoric, we’ve agonized over it while listening to reruns of the O’Reilly factor, and yet when it comes to counteracting the anti-affirmative action sentiment in this country, black students across the country seemingly have nothing to say. There are forces at work in the political realm which have made their purposes known; we could be seeing the end of the HBCU as an institution in the United States. With all this danger looming overhead, how many of us have taken the time to actually go out and vote? One eigth of us? 1000, 2000 perhaps out of 8,000? The scales are weighted against us; other campuses around the state of Texas have early voting programs and voting booths in their student centers. In some cases, other campuses have multiple programs encouraging students to vote and informing students on upcoming issues or candidates. We are behind, yet nobody seems to notice and nobody seems to care. If HBCUs are made a thing of the past, opened up to everyone, and have their standards adjusted, we might be seeing the end of the education of black people in the United States.
I recently had an opportunity to speak with a man who has acted as a supporter of young people getting involved in politics and the democratic process. Judge Dwayne Charleston, who is running for re-election this year, had a great deal to say on the issue. On the day of the ‘Great March,’ for example, many students, because their registration cards had not been electronically filed, were unable to vote. In response, Charleston said, “The failure of Waller County officials to properly process voter registration cards is a form of voter intimidation and harassment,” pointing to the corruption in the county municipal districts and their voting policies, which have been criticized in the past as being one of the worst places to vote in America. Voter intimidation is not the only corruption that has proliferated in Waller County over the past few years. Charleston referenced one instance wherein the FBI skipped over his authority in the jurisdiction of Waller County and went to another judge when a student at Prairie View was classified as a threat to national security. There is overt discrimination against black elected officials, and there is nothing black students are doing to stop it. Is this really the direction we want to take the political atmosphere in Waller County?
We can blame the hip-hop culture, we can blame the media and we can blame the stereotypes black people in this country constantly have to face or defy, but in the end, all of the blame rests squarely on our shoulders. How many of us skipped voting over the last few days, but attended the events hosted by BET and the weekly Prairie View hump day? If we continue to let the government run over us, and we refuse to allow our voices to be heard, we may not even have a hump day to look forward to. At that point, we will have no right to complain when this country takes away our voting rights altogether. Impossible, you say? Remember African Americans have only had full voting rights for a few decades, and it wouldn’t be a far leap for this country to revoke those rights if we are ignoring the precious opportunity our ancestors died for.
Time to wake up, Prairie View.