While campuses such as University of Missouri and Ithaca College have witnessed large-scale protests over racial tensions, Buffalo State College has been home to more quiet symbolic demonstration and dialogue on race, inequality and social justice.
The college has been hosting what is known as the Black Cross Project, which includes a display of 300 small black crosses forming a makeshift graveyard in the Rockwell Quad. Project organizers say it symbolizes the estimated number of unarmed people of color believed to have died at the hands of police nationwide over the past three years. Those crosses, which were installed last Sunday, were scheduled to stay up for the week.
Meanwhile, the project has also included a series of lectures and discussions on continuing racism in the nation.
As part of Thursday's panel discussion, speakers addressed the rallying slogan "Black Lives Matter" as well as the countering slogan "All Live Matter" introduced by some. "Black Lives Matter," say supporters, is intended to increase dignity in the lives of African-Americans in light of acts of injustice, from housing discrimination to incidents involving police.
Dr. Alexander Means, an assistant professor in Buffalo State's Social and Psychological Foundations of Education department, suggested while a few people have used the phrase "All Lives Matter" with good-minded intentions, others have used it as a means to discredit the movement behind the "Black Lives Matter" slogan.
It wouldn't be the first time an organized African-American movement would cause such a backlash.
"It's an old story, and the denial of Black Lives Matter and the attacks on it, and the miseducation of the term, that's done strategically. On purpose," Dr. Means said.
Professor Steve Peraza told the audience that previous movements succeeded because they stayed on focus. He suggested Black Lives Matter must do the same.
"If you do look into the past, civil rights activists stayed on message," Peraza said. "They withstood the criticism. They stood there when the backlash happened, and they kept with their strategies."
While racism is learned, speakers said, it can also be unlearned. Some of today's prejudices, it was suggested, come subconsciously based on how one was brought up and educated on the matter of race.
"It's learned," said Dr. Amitra Wall, assistant dean. "It's so learned that we don't realize when we do it, or some people don't, whether we talk about prejudice or individual acts of discrimination."
The lecture series was scheduled to conclude Friday morning (10:30 a.m.) with a group discussion on the installation of the Black Cross Project, hosted inside the Butler Library.
