On Tuesday, April 19, at 6PM, Biola students found out a swastika placed on the door of a Black student’s dorm room.

       

      I wish I could say I was surprised. My three years on this campus, though, have made it impossible for me to feel surprise about racism—it happens all the time. I experience constant, gut-wrenching reminders that racism is still alive and well, that this was not an isolated occurrence, it is a graphic demonstration of an anti-Black sentiment plaguing Biola's Black student body. 

This reality can be hard to grasp. So I want to invite you to walk with me through some of my journey. I hope these stories will open up your hearts and minds to the other stories that will be shared on this website.

 

      My first year was filled with micro-aggressions, slight racist comments, and more racial tension than I had ever felt before. During freshman orientation, a white student came up to me and touched my hair. She enthusiastically told me that she wished she was Black. She said, "Black people can be business people and hood rats." After I probed deeper she continued by matter of factly stating, "It's not socially acceptable for white people to be hood rats." Those are words I'll never forget. In that moment I realized my peers still view me as inherently less than. They see me and not only expect the worst, but don't anticipate anything more than that from me. There have been so many moments like this. They remind me of my place in the Biola Bubble.

 

      One day, I was on campus at a prayer vigil held for Black men killed by police. At the event, Black students mourned together, grieved together. For that hour, we were not alone. We finally had space to express the pain of social inequality. We held this space, and we were together. We left a memorial there, but before the sun had set the posters on the memorial were stripped off the cross we’d built up. They were thrown away, and replaced, and thrown away again, and replaced again—over and over. This happened three times. The last time they even knocked over the candles by the cross. We worked vigorously each day to reprint pictures, paint posters, and repost the signs, and they were taken down day after day. The second time I saw the vigil torn down I called my mom. I told her how heartbroken I felt by my fellow students—Christians—and how they refused to mourn with me, even if they couldn't grasp why I was mourning. I sobbed into the phone. The prayer vigil, that place I’d felt heard and understood, that night of mourning and grieving, had been destroyed. Again, I was left voiceless.

 

     The climate, though, the trauma, the ignorance, the hatred, the apathy—extends beyond my conversations with white students, beyond the hope that my fellow Christian students would allow us space to grieve, to online. Last semester there was a post on Yik Yak asking why Biola allows ghetto students to attend Biola. One of the comments said, "because they play basketball."

We Black students have a thousand stories like mine. A friend told me today that during a Biola mission trip—a mission trip!—a fellow student once gave him a gallon of watermelon Kool-aid…as a "gag" gift.

 

      Living in a community that treats you as less than and an outsider is detrimental to the educational success and overall psyche of students. We can no longer afford to struggle in silence.

The lack of cross cultural competency and rampant subconscious and conscious bias has plagued Biola. We must not only create forums to discuss race but, we must also require students to engage in these discussions. It should be a requirement to take a first year seminar class specifically on cross cultural engagement and social inequality. Our history classes must go in depth about Japanese Internment camps, the Civil Rights movement, Slavery and treatment of Native Americans. We should have a Bible requirement that teaches about the parallels of Jesus ministry and modern day social justice. Lastly, SCORR should be a required conference for all incoming student leaders. Diversity is a part of the gospel that Biola can no longer afford to leave out when teaching and shaping students. 
 

Sincerely, 
Stephanie Lindo

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