Spelman receives third bomb threat, second during Black History Month
Side entrance of Spelman College. Credit: Halle Jones
Other threats occurred on Jan. 5 and Feb. 1
Spelman College’s Department of Public Safety has closed campus to all visitors and vendors as they respond to yet another bomb threat to the school.
“I know that it is difficult to receive this news and not to be unnerved by it,” said Mary Schmidt Campbell, president of Spelman, who confirmed that a “Spelman Alert” notified students and faculty of the threat earlier this morning. In her statement, Campbell said that Public Safety received the call around 10 a.m. The school immediately asked Atlanta Police Department (APD) for assistance.
Spelman College. Photo by Kelly Jordan
Having to experience this during Black History Month, in addition to several other Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Spelman has received numerous bomb threats at the beginning of this month. Last week, the FBI announced they are investigating six juvenile persons of interest who are “tech-savvy.”
“The [APD] is currently on campus conducting a thorough sweep,” Campbell said.
She said she notified Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens of the situation and requested additional patrols. As a result, Campbell canceled classes today. Students will remain in residence halls.
It has always astonished me how Black people could be brutalized and told they were not welcome — while they, as a people, had been violently forced to the U.S. from their African home as slaves. In Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved, the narrator notes that, like the South, the Civil-War-era North also hated Black people but happened to hate slavery more.
After 35 years of news consumption, I’ve found that a disturbingly large number of categorized people, however precious their souls, can be considered thus treated as though disposable, even to otherwise democratic nations. When they take note of this, tragically, they’re vulnerable to begin subconsciously perceiving themselves as beings without value. (I’ve observed this in particular with indigenous-nation people living with substance abuse/addiction related to residential school trauma, including the indigenous children’s unmarked graves in Canada.)
I wonder, when will there be reparations for the abovementioned peoples?Report
Irrational racist sentiment is too often handed down generation to generation, regardless of color or creed. If it’s deliberate, it’s something I strongly feel amounts to a form of child abuse: to rear one’s impressionably very young children in an environment of overt bigotry — especially against other races and/or sub-racial groups (i.e. ethnicities). Not only does it fail to prepare children for the practical reality of an increasingly racially/ethnically diverse and populous society and workplace, it also makes it so much less likely those children will be emotionally content or (preferably) harmonious with their multicultural/-racial surroundings.
Children reared into their adolescence and, eventually, young adulthood this way can often be angry yet not fully realize at precisely what. Then they may feel left with little choice but to move to another part of the land, where their race or ethnicity predominates, preferably overwhelmingly so. If not for themselves, parents then should do their young children a big favor and NOT pass down onto their very impressionable offspring racially/ethnically bigoted feelings and perceptions, nor implicit stereotypes and ‘humor’, for that matter. Ironically, such rearing can make life much harder for one’s own children.
One means of proactively preventing this social/societal problem may be by allowing young children to become accustomed to other races in a harmoniously positive manner. The early years are typically the best time to instill and even solidify positive social-interaction life skills/traits, like interracial harmonization, into a very young brain. Human infancy is the prime (if not the only) time to instill and even solidify positive social-interaction characteristics into a very young mind.Report