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U.I. Dialogue Intake Session |
RetireTheChief
The following transcript is from the 4/14/00 Chief Illiniwek dialogue "intake session". It is an unedited excerpt from the original U.I. document.
MR. DINO POLLOCK: Good afternoon, my name is Dino Pollock, I am a graduate student. I address you today as a present day student and an alumnus of this University and a former Division I student athlete playing football from 1986 to 1990. I address you today as someone who is extremely devoted to racial justice. As a man -- as a conscience man of African descent, I find the continued use of the Chief at this University absolutely reprehensible, repulsive, extremely racist and for you to sit up there and continue to condone the use of this symbol severely compromises your moral authority to discuss anything on this campus relating to anybody's behavior.I have found through my study as a conscience African man in this country that ethical and moral appeals to white institutions and white people are in vain. They do not work. Emotional appeals do not work for you. Logical appeals today, people who are far more scholarly and informed than I am have come before you today to offer you logical reasons why this ridiculous mascot should be eliminated. So logic doesn't work.
It seems like the only thing that white institutions and white people understand is either litigation or violence. And that is when pressure is placed and that is when you throw out a few bones, to put the people back to sleep so that they will not rise up and continue to fight for justice. Because the issue you have is, as Martin Luther King said, injustice inflicted anywhere is inflicted justice everywhere. We exist in a state of war on this campus, in terms of the war between justice and injustice.
And right now, we are losing that battle as a university. You as the Board of Trustees, contrary to popular opinion, are not the final authority on this issue. We do not come to you to ask you for anything. The final authority on this issue is going to be a power much higher than you. And if all of us profess to be the good Christians and Muslims or Jews, or people that practice traditional religion and we know that there is a higher power, you know that you are going to have to answer for your vote on this issue.
This campus was founded in 1867, the next year 77 white men enrolled, 77 white men. How many white women on this campus when it was begun? As a person who is the descendent of people who have had to have five constitutional amendments just to bring us within the purview of the laws of this country, I find it absolutely disgusting that I have to come before you again today and say the same thing over and over and over and over again.
If litigation or violence is what you want, you will continue this Chief. And I am not threatening violence, I am not threathening litigation. I am saying that those are the only two things that seem to have got people of color any type of remuneration in this country in terms of justice.
Doctor John Clark said that the art of civilization is about the art of being civil. What I suggest today is that you take the step, the one baby step in the journey of a thousand miles and be civil to indigenous peoples and eliminate and kill swiftly this Chief Illiniwek. The U of I should become a member of the civilized world of the 21st century and dismiss Chief Illiniwek. We are not here to be toilet paper to be wiped upon.
See the U.I. Dialogue on Chief Illiniwek page for more transcripts and information.