Ta-Nehisi Coates lecture highlights challenges of being black in Iowa

IOWA CITY - Fellow students have told University of Iowa senior Justin Roberson that before coming to the university, they had never even seen a black person.

'When you first get to Iowa as a black student, it's rough,” Roberson said at a community conversation Wednesday following a lecture by Ta-Nehisi Coates, national correspondent for The Atlantic.

Coates, who writes about race in America, penned the 2008 memoir 'The Beautiful Struggle” and numerous articles and essays, including 2014's, 'The Case for Reparations.”

He spoke to a full house at The Englert, telling the audience Americans need to acknowledge the legacy of centuries of institutionalized racism that helped build this country.

'I'm not that educated about being black in Iowa,” he said. 'But I know what it is to be black in America. I know there are certain rules that transcend state lines. What you experienced here in Iowa is not a particular shock to me.”

He was referring to a Dec. 5 incident when UI assistant professor Serhat Tanyolacar placed a Ku Klux Klan effigy screenprinted with articles about racial violence on the Pentacrest.

Tanyolacar said the piece was art meant to start a discussion on racism. Some students said they felt threatened by the statue, placed without signage on the spot where an anti-police brutality vigil was held the night before.

'The symbols of racism and white supremacy can become kitsch for us,” Coates said. 'There's a kind of distance that we get, and we feel like we have license to mock things. But the Ku Klux Klan and its allies ... were the most lethal instance of homegrown terrorism in American history. They terrorized black people.”

A coalition of students called Black Hawkeyes formed after the incident. UI Chief Diversity Officer and Associate Vice President Georgina Dodge said Coates' visit, organized by the student-run UI Lecture Committee, is part of an effort to respond to black student's calls for more support and engagement.

'This is part of an ongoing effort to open dialogue, to have people get into the mode of listening,” she said. 'Because listening is difficult.”

She said that dialogue includes hearing and acknowledging the experiences of people of color.

'What I'm hearing is pain,” said panelist Kendra Malone, a UI staff member, in response to stories panel and audience members shared.

Stories of feeling isolated and misunderstood, of dealing with years of snide, ignorant, and racist remarks.

'We have yet to find ways to talk about that pain and let it air itself out,” Malone said.

Panelist and UI associate English professor Michael Hill noted there are only about 835 African American students on a campus of more than 30,000 students total.

He said if the UI wants to be a top-tier educational institution, it has a responsibility to educate those 30,000 students on racial and cultural issues they may have little personal experience with.

'If you have students arriving on campus who have never seen a black person ... you have to assume they are bereft of that knowledge,” he said.