Chapel Hill-Carrboro NAACP leaders, students gather to discuss black issues

For the black community, help must come from within.

That was the conclusion reached by a panel of black professors and the president of the Chapel Hill-Carrboro chapter of the NAACP at the “State of the Black Union” discussion Wednesday night.

A mostly black crowd of nearly 200 students gathered in the Upendo lounge in the Student Academic Services Building.

The event was based on Tavis Smiley’s now-defunct State of the Black Union, although there is no official connection between the two.

The discussion, moderated by seniors Emeka C. Anen and Jessica Lynch, began with a discussion of the nature of the black agenda and whether President Barack Obama should be pursuing it.

“I don’t think he should embrace a particular agenda that’s specific to the African-American community any more than any other president of the United States,” said Michelle Cotton Laws, president of the Chapel Hill-Carrboro branch of the NAACP.

Panel members, while not criticizing Obama to the same extent as Smiley did, said attention should be paid to the black community, which they said has higher levels of unemployment and less access to government services.

Panel members also called for increased levels of personal responsibility within the black community.

“Why is it that we as a society have this tendency to abdicate our own individual responsibility for the state of our community to our elected officials?” asked Geeta Kapur, an adjunct UNC law professor and civil rights lawyer who practices out of New York and North Carolina.

Next, the panel discussed education, the discussion’s main theme.

The talk covered subjects like the disparities of education between white and black students as well as the lack of representation of black men on UNC’s campus.

Kapur said that for each black man in college, there were four times that number in prison. Less than 20 black men attended the talk.

Parts of the discussion focused on the decision of the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools district to expand its honors programs, which panel members said has a lower proportion of black students.

The NAACP protested that decision in February, saying not enough had been done to close the racial gap.

Students were also urged to give back to their communities.

“Go into these communities to make sure that you are showing those kids the positive messages and symbols that they are not receiving,” she said.

Dekory Woods, one of 10 members of UNC’s chapter of the historically black Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity, called for increased discussion of black issues within the community.

“How can you expect uneducated people who are uneducated to have this conversation when people who are educated only do it once a year?”



Contact the University Editor at udesk@unc.edu.