Trees on campus are clear reminders of past racism

Childs is a Ph.D. student at UC Berkeley and a graduate of
UCLA.

By Dennis Childs

Whenever I mention in conversation that I am a UCLA graduate, I
am usually reminded by the person to whom I am speaking of how
“beautiful” my old campus is ““ how UCLA reminds
them of a resort. Indeed one aspect of the grounds of my alma mater
always comes to mind when I have such discussions: the assortment
of trees from around the world that one can see on any given day
while strolling through campus. It is this aspect of the Edenic
scenery of campus that always makes me question, however, just how
“beautiful” my old campus really is.

One reason for my chagrin regarding UCLA’s landscape is in
keeping with the spirit exemplified by African American novelist
Ishmael Reed, who in “˜Mumbo Jumbo,” gives the label,
“Centers of Art Detention,” to Anglo-European museums
which have hoarded the cultural artifacts of non-western peoples
for centuries.

Indeed UCLA’s practice of acquiring representative plant
life from nearly every locale on the globe marks our campus as one
of the nation’s prime “Centers of Arbor
Detention.”

But it is one such tree in particular ““ actually about 20
to 25 of them ““ outside Macgowan Hall that signals the
repressive history that underpins such a pristine climate. If you
happen to have time today, take a walk to Macgowan Hall (home of
UCLA’s theater department), and as you approach the building,
stop at the line of trees just outside the main entrance. If you
look at one of the metal placards nailed to approximately one
fourth of the trees, this is what you’ll see:

“Erythrina caffra

KAFFIRBOOM

CORAL

PEA FAMILY

SOUTH AFRICA”

For some of you this sign will seem innocent enough: there is
the typical scientific and colloquial name for the tree, and the
geographical region from which it is derived ““ no big deal,
right?

But I am also sure that some of you are as appalled as I am by
what you immediately recognize in the word
“kaffirboom:” the word “kaffir,” the Dutch
Afrikaans equivalent to the word “nigger” (In case you
were wondering, the last part of the word, “boom,” is
Afrikaans for “tree”).

And if you think you are disgusted by the fact that your own
coveted institution had the audacity to import these trees, using
university money to pay for the etching of the word “nigger
tree,” then imagine the sentiments of a black South African
professor of mine who, after coming across these eye-sores, had to
go through with conducting our master’s seminar.

This revolutionary poet and scholar had to flee from his
birthplace decades before because he had reached adulthood, at the
height of the apartheid regime. Like any other well-informed person
of the world, Professor Kgositsile had no idealistic notions that
his arrival to the United States meant an escape from race terror.
In fact, he arrived during the time period in which this
government’s own form of apartheid ““ Jim Crow
segregation ““ was still a reality.

I am positive that as he remained here he was also aware that
major U.S. corporations such as Coca Cola and Bank of America
(otherwise known as “Bank of Apartheid”) continued to
invest millions of dollars to support the very structure which led
to the torture and murder of his people and his forced removal from
his place of origin.

But from the look on Professor Kgositsile’s face that day
in our seminar, it was clear that despite his awareness of
America’s own long-standing support and performance of racial
repression, he was still shocked. And how could he not be shocked
that a U.S. university ““ an ostensible haven for
“higher learning” ““ could ask him to come to work
as a teacher every day, while within his line of sight he could see
himself being referred to as “kaffir?”

I have given this brief excavation of UCLA’s tree museum
because of the symbolic import of these placards in this time of
historical amnesia.

It never ceases to amaze me that people continue to believe that
institutions such as slavery, apartheid, legalized segregation and
the like have no substantive effect on millions of people’s
lives today.

Despite the existence of such institutional reformulations of
past race/class subjugation as the prison industrial complex, and
de facto global slavery by U.S. corporations such as Nike and Gap,
people continue to maintain that we all just need to “get
along” ““ that we need to forget about the past and move
on.

It is this sort of liberal pathology of eliding the past which
makes me dread the prospect that the knowledge of racist placards
adorning a group of trees on campus will only be understood for its
face value. I am left to contend with the idea that students,
faculty, and yes, even those caretakers of “equity” and
“diversity,” the UC Regents, will ignore the fact that
the tree is no mere residue from a time when anachronistic
“old stuff” like racism had real effects on social
relations.

Yes, something needs to be done about these trees, but our
society is in need of a much more radical face-lift.

I am utterly disgusted by the prospect that most people reading
this in the post Proposition 21/209/187 epoch will not see that the
metal placards outside Macgowan are avatars of present wrongs, not
merely the racist “theater” of the past.

I am however hopeful that there are readers who join me in the
resolution that the not-so-democratic moments in U.S. history such
as slavery, genocide, and Jim Crow segregation are not
prehistorical phenomena.

The symbolic import of the existence of such trees on campus
indicates a mandate for action on the part of those who recognize
that the aftershocks of historical disgraces to humanity are still
being felt on a global level ““ even at places that are made
to look like Eden.