The challenge of eliminating the worst vestiges of human nature is that there is always some form of profit to be gained from imperfection. Behind every group of people rallying for a cause that creates a burden for another group of people, you’ll typically find a small minority of individuals stirring passions for political or financial gain.
This appears to be the case with Kentucky State University Biology Professor Narayanan Rajendran, who yesterday published an editorial in the Frankfort State-Journal on how executives at his place of employment were unwittingly promoting hate speech through the alleged use of a hand sign branded by members of Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity, Inc, which in recent years has been co-opted by right-wing domestic terror groups.
From the column:
“It appears that some people are spreading hatred with prior knowledge of using the “OK symbol” (in which the thumb and index finger touch while the other fingers are held outstretched). But some are spreading it without knowing the meaning of it…”
Recently, a picture circulating on social media was brought to my attention. It depicts Kentucky State University President Christopher Brown, Board of Regents member Ron Banks and a few others showing the OK symbol in public when they made an out-of-state school trip.
I understand it would have created a buzz in the college and community here and elsewhere, that those hand gestures were not displayed correctly according to the organizational instructions.
I know President Brown and I am not trying to defend or oppose the K-State president — he is a member of a Black Greek fraternity expressing the organizational hand gesture. He, himself, posted it on a social media site a year ago. I don’t think it depicts hate crime.
The rest of the editorial takes a chopped and screwed route to basically say that the Kentucky General Assembly’s recent effort to denounce anti-Semitism and hatred is an honorable task that shouldn’t be diminished by harmless, unwitting people who don’t know any better than when using hate symbols. Put aside the sheer stupidity of a college professor calling out his boss and his boss’ boss in a daily newspaper as an unaware purveyor of hate speech. Never mind that he referenced a photo from a year ago in which his boss, a member of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc., was allegedly throwing up the Kappa sign with a university trustee.
It isn’t the boldness of the effort or the sting of its inaccuracy; it is the irony that a non-white HBCU professor swapped cultural insight in exchange for political backing to leverage white patriarchy against Black self-agency in a lazy attempt at taking on white supremacy in Kentucky.
If a million white supremacists started using symbols originated by any non-hate spurred group, it doesn’t grant those supremacists full authority over said symbols. Better intentioned people and organizations should not be censored by the actions of terrorists, much in the same way that residents of Asian descent should not be harassed or attacked by terrorists with anxiety about the COVID-19 pandemic, and residents of Middle Eastern or Indian heritage should not face discrimination or hatred because of terrorist attacks on American soil launched a generation ago.
The professor is a community member with an opinion and a right to share it, but somehow, misses that his right to warn against symbols in the name of protecting community is the right of Black folks to use symbols in the name of celebrating community.
This isn’t the first time we’ve seen this kind of reaction from people outside of Black America in the media. In 2014, former Missouri State Highway Patrol Captain and Kappa member Ron Johnson was accused in a media report of displaying gang signs in a photo. Johnson helped to return calm to Ferguson, MO after the killing of Michael Brown in Aug. 2014.
No one gets to tell Black people to hit pause, delete or play on our culture to help America better address its cultural schisms. Our culture, from 1619 until this very moment, is a carefully constructed habitat of spirit, designed to allow for occasional reprieve from the generational effects of institutional racism and trauma.
Sadly, and at the attempted expense of HBCU leaders’ integrity and the rich history of Black Greek organizations, there’s profit to be made from the professor’s commentary. Some people in the legislature, in the Frankfort community, and maybe throughout the region might appreciate the value of a brown face drawing weird parallels between white supremacists and HBCU executives.
The symbolism of the message is very easy to spot, and heartbreaking to see it come from within our own community.
But Divine 9 members are experts at handling this exact kind of pressure and excelling in the face of it. At times like this, all of us owe those men and women a hand of support and appreciation whenever we can lend it.
