Editorial: Re-enactment effective way to address racial violence

You can see all kinds of unusual things by taking a stroll down
Bruin Walk. But anyone who was on campus Wednesday at around noon
may have seen something especially alarming: an angry group of
white students threatening to lynch a black one.

It wasn’t a harbinger of racial violence at UCLA. In fact,
it was an attempt at the exact opposite: The mock lynching was put
on by the Black Graduate Students Association as part of a Black
History Month panel that occurred later Wednesday and addressed
violence directed at the black community.

The sight may have shocked ““ or at least surprised ““
some people. After all, a lynching mob, even a pretend one, is not
a common part of your typical midday Bruin Walk thoroughfare. And
certainly the event may have angered or upset some viewers.

But if it came off as shocking or theatrical, it is because it
was an innovative and interactive approach to addressing an issue
that is all too real in modern society: racial prejudice and racial
violence. And if this is what it takes to get college students
talking about those issues, then ultimately the event can only be a
good thing.

It is true that lynching ““ defined as the execution or
punishment inflicted by a mob on someone accused of a crime ““
may seem a bit antiquated nowadays. But not too long ago it was one
of the more brutal ways that whites asserted their authority over a
disenfranchised black community.

Between 1882 (when reliable numbers were first kept) and 1968,
about 4,743 people died of lynching, close to 3,500 of whom were
black. While “classic forms” of lynching are generally
accepted to have stopped in 1968, the black community continues to
deal with scars from it today.

Getting that message across to students, though, can be
tough.

It is unfortunate that when a student group with a worthwhile
cause wants to get information out to the campus, it often resorts
to tried tactics like fliering on Bruin Walk, speaking at Meyerhoff
Park or holding panels in classrooms.

These tactics can work. But usually students will tune them out.
Fliers can be crumpled up and recycled, and speakers ““ even
in a public space like Meyerhoff ““ can be ignored with a
flick of the ol’ iPod volume-control wheel. And as for panel
discussions, event organizers have to appreciate that it can be a
stretch to expect students to show up to class, let alone expect
them to seek out extracurricular lecturing.

But by combining a visually and emotionally arresting event
““ such as the mock lynching ““ with the forum to talk
about those images and emotions afterward ““ the evening panel
““ the Black Graduate Students Association has come up with a
refreshing approach to the cliched idea of “raising
awareness.”

By putting the event in the middle of the campus in the middle
of the day, the association put the issue before UCLA students in a
way that is impossible to ignore ““ much as it is to countless
black people today.

It goes without saying that something like a mock lynching needs
to be carried out with the appropriate degree of sensitivity and
given the proper context.

But when it is done responsibly ““ and it was ““ it
can be an effective educational tool.