Data skews black history, expert says at African-American History Month lecture

History repeats itself is how the saying goes.

For Khalil Gibran Muhammad, this is a defining reason that racism is still prevalent in modern-day America.

Muhammad, director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, spoke Tuesday night about why racism persists in the U.S. 50 years after the peak of the civil rights movement.

The event, the 11th annual African-American History Month lecture, was originally scheduled for February but was rescheduled for April due to complications with snow.

Muhammad spoke about racial stereotypes and police violence regarding the events that occurred in Ferguson, Missouri and other cities across the nation. He said racism stems from racial disparity.

“There is a liberal idea that the nation has solved racial problems,” Muhammad said.

However, he said, this can be inaccurate.

“We are having the exact same debate we had 100 years ago regarding race and crime,” Muhammad said. “The history that we remember and that we teach is that every generation is better than the last.”

Muhammad is the author of “The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America.” He said the events in Ferguson were not an exceptional case but an example of what is occurring across the nation.

“Why are we so committed to deciding whether police violence was legitimate based on the character of a single individual?” Muhammad said.

He said misrepresentation of data, such as the statistic that 93 percent of black murders are committed by other blacks, is largely to blame for why racism is still prominent.

“Data got us into this mess. Data is not going to get us out of this,” Muhammad said. “It is our ideological commitments to production of certain kinds of data that make Ferguson exceptionalism the history of Southern exceptionalism, which again is America’s history and the story of now.”

Morgan Tate, a sophomore advertising major, attended the lecture to get credit for one of her classes. She thought the event was beneficial for everyone to attend because it’s important to be a part of this conversation.

“It’s a timely conversation that students especially need to be a part of so that we can be more sensitive to the race issues that are so prevalent in society today,” Tate said.

Anne Prendergast, a freshman exercise and sport science major, also attended the lecture for one of her classes.

“I didn’t really know what this lecture would be about, and obviously he is a really smart man and made some awesome points that get you thinking,” Prendergast said.

“It is definitely important for people to be discussing this topic, because conversation is how you get people to be motivated to do something as opposed to being passive about the information they receive.”

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