A “Brentin Mockery” of black issues

We need more black students writing for The Pitt News. We need more black editors. We need… We need more black students writing for The Pitt News. We need more black editors. We need more black photographers. We need black students actively engaging themselves in the determination to change the process with which they routinely find fault.

These words, written by now-graduated, now-professional journalist, former Pitt News columnist Brentin Mock, have sat quietly in our office archives for the past two years. Did his dream of a more diverse college newspaper come true? Hardly.

At present, we’ve got a strong set of columnists. We’ve definitively handled a bevy of topics ranging from serious to satirical, political to academic. Yet I say we could be doing more from a university-wide social perspective. The sad fact is that The Pitt News hasn’t had a black issues columnist in three semesters – a full year and a half – and so we don’t properly represent this campus. Within this section, I think we should be addressing all of our university community.

As descendents of those who suffered U.S. government-sanctioned slavery, legal lynching, Jim Crow and were barred college entrance due to skin color – among many more injustices – we are entitled to certain provisions, laws, amendments, policies and rules that correct what was unjustly done in the past.

I began to understand a black person’s plight through Mock’s columns. I learned to understand why black pride is still so desperately important today. I learned to understand someone who isn’t just like me. Just because black issues of campus segregation, black retention and graduation, racial profiling and minority visibility aren’t being dealt with as openly today as in Mock’s columns, it doesn’t mean that these issues simply solved themselves.

We need a voice in the newspaper to represent the frequently under-represented, commonly unappreciated, historically subjugated minority so in danger, because of the low retention rate at this school, and make that voice a regular part of our public campus forum. Doing this wouldn’t only aid a specific group, but would bring more dimension and range to our paper. We would open our community. Additionally, there are just some issues that a black columnist would have more insight into – even this column.

White students hold the Homecoming coronation as pure folly because for hundreds of years they’ve grown accustomed to seeing people that look like them win it. We of the minority races and cultures have only just begun to experience what it feels like to see someone like us win it. So yeah, it’s a big deal.

Two years ago, Pitt was rated “the 11th worst university for racial and social interaction” out of 331 U.S. colleges by the Princeton Review. Since my first year here, I’ve very happily watched this campus socially desegregate substantially – that rating is no longer true – and I think this had something to do with people like Brentin Mock, who openly addressed important racial issues, who increased the black voice on campus, who saw the lack of minority visibility as a problem and did something about it.

The Opinions section doesn’t have a sign on it saying “No Blacks,” visible or invisible. Let’s not let the voice of the black columnist fall silent.

You know what? I graduate at the end of the semester. So please, apply and try to take my position. I won’t be needing it when I’m back at my parents’ house. Brentin Mock’s dream could some day come true – and that day could be as early as this January.

Benjamin Rubin, aka Dirty B. Ducates, aka Sassy Slice, aka White Mist, congratulates Brentin C. Mock on his newest masterful cover story for Pittsburgh’s City Paper.