The art of inhumane hypocrisy
Shattered dishes in Jewish homes during WW II.
Mrs. Butterworth’s, Aunt Jemima and other food products with racial undertones.
A painting that depicts the Stonewall riots.
These images and others were seen at Eastern’s Museum of Oppression, a visual and auditory experience that showed how social and racial minorities have been oppressed throughout history.
Mark Hudson, director of Housing and Dining, said this event was an open forum of ideas where university students could get a broader prospective about life that would open discussion.
A few days later, that discussion was opened in a negative article about the museum written by Erich Gliebe, chairman of The National Alliance.
What Gliebe opened was a Pandora’s Box of polar ideas that will grapple for the reader’s opinion on what is the current race relations in America.
In the Feb. 7 article titled, Museum of Oppression Returns to EIU, Gliebe criticized the event as being subversive propaganda to disregard the white race.
Gliebe wrote how the museum’s Race Machine, a device that changes a student’s face into six different races, weakens white students positive racial identity.
Alliance member Don Smith agreed with that statement.
“What I see in this is a broader movement by education and the media to criticize the heritage of white males,” Smith said. “We are considered to be homophobic, sexist, patriarchal, racist. Anything that is considered negative today, we are the cause of that.
“All races have been a part of atrocities, and I think the white race gets its fair share of criticism.”
Quiana Stone, chair of the social justice and diversity committee of Housing and Dining, said that the museum does not focus on these accusatory issues.
“The Museum of Oppression, more often than not, has the majority of the exhibits affecting more than just one group of people,” Stone said. “Of course, there are some that are really specific.
“We talk about body image, that is more of a humanistic thing. We talk about ablism and homelessness, which are across the board. There was also a veterans experience with all people of different backgrounds shown.”
Hudson said Smith and Gliebe have a right to their way of thinking, even if he does not agree with their position.
“He is entitled to his own opinion,” Hudson said of Gliebe’s article. “I think it is great for him to have his own opinion. What we do as a department is we try to do programs that make people aware of different perspectives so people can make up their own minds instead of us changing their minds.”
