In a featured opinion piece in the October 21 edition of the New York Times, Tiya Miles, professor of American culture and history, argues that as college campuses in the U.S. wrestle with how to respond to acts of racism, words alone will not accomplish the change we seek to make.
Miles suggests that while words matter greatly, formulaic statements issued by committees of professors have limited impact in addressing racist incidents. More effective is the kind of creative corporeal protest exemplified by Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr., who both used “riveting and consequential” actions to reinforce carefully chosen words.
Click here to read more of Tiya Miles’s “Fighting Racism is Not Just a War of Words.”
