Potter: Stand up to Confederate flag

[ This commentary by President Earl H. Potter III originally appeared in the St. Cloud Times on Nov. 21. ]

No one can ever truly walk in someone else’s shoes and know how they feel.

If I put your shoes on for a day, my feet may have a different arch, or they may be wider or narrower, or larger or smaller. Even if we walked the same paths, our experiences would be similar but different.

As a white man, when I see a symbol like the Confederate flag or hear racist speech, I can’t have the same personal reaction as an African American person whose heritage dates back to slavery in this country. I will not have the same experience. I can understand it – my own family background in the south during the Civil War helps me understand – but I will not have the same experience that they do.

My grandfather’s uncle, from the north, was trapped during the Civil War in Charleston, South Carolina, with his wife and family. Their son was beaten to death by his classmates in high school because of their northern sympathies. My own family has experienced something of the tragedy of that conflict, yet I cannot say I have the same experience as a person of color when I see the Confederate flag.

I can’t have the same personal reaction as a Latino or Somali family who is experiencing racism after moving to a new country and/or a new community. Nor can I fully understand what it’s like to be a first-generation international student experiencing varying degrees of hate while thousands of miles from home.

I know that I inherently occupy a position of white privilege simply by my birth, and I know that to gain an understanding of another experience, I have to listen.

As a university leader, it’s important sometimes to be vulnerable and open, to be able to listen and hear with compassion. I recently had this experience when a group of students from multicultural backgrounds met with me about personal expressions in our community by someone who intended to hurt our students.

(Video by students Alphonso Scott and Rebecca David.)

It was an assault on our campus – and that’s the way I see it, as an assault on our culture, an assault on our community. Certain members were hurt more deeply by this, but we were all hurt by this.

It was hard to listen to them, to hear how the experience of speech and expression left them feeling unsafe and unwelcome. It was hard to hear that on our campus and in our city, where great things are happening to grow diversity and a global community, our students felt under attack.

I wasn’t angry to hear their message. I wasn’t frightened of hearing their message. I was grateful they had the courage to come speak with me.

I’m proud of these students for sharing their stories, and not with anger but with compassion. By sharing what it was like for them, we can achieve understanding by listening. By our choice to be present together in those spaces, we show we care and are committed to creating a model for being inclusive together.

It’s also important to understand when our campus is assaulted in this fashion, the response of the president is only part of the whole. We need to be prepared as a broader community to deal with these things when they happen.

Some people have heard that response as suggesting that we push students out front and let students deal with this. That could not be farther from the truth. I recognize that students are going to want to do something and students are going to have a response. What is needed is a collective response that we shape together to be able to respond as a community.

There will always be evil in the world – always.  The only thing that needs to happen for evil to triumph, is for good people to be silent. We should make statements to the world. We should explain our position. We should tell people why we’re doing what we are doing. We should tell the world why we find this behavior despicable. We should, I should, be able to tell the world why that behavior makes me angry.

Dealing with these issues will give us the moral authority to create leaders in the 21st century that will help our city, our state and our nation find its way.