In an article on Teen Vogue titled, Colorado State University Tour Incident Is Nothing New for Native Students, Adrienne Keene co-writes with Amanda Tachine about two Mohawk youth, ages 17 and 19, whom were singled out on a campus tour of their dream college, Colorado State University, for which they drove 7 hours to arrive to. These young men, Thomas Kanewakeron Gray and Lloyd Skanahwati Gray, were more than excited to finally get the chanvce to tour the campus of their dreams after researching it endlessly. However, a moment that was supposed to be special and critical in their decision for college was taken away from them when they were racially profiled by a parent that was also on the campus tour. The parent called 911 stating that they were ‘definitely not part of the tour’, leaving the brothers to be brought into the police station to be questioned and then released, missing the tour they were there for in the first place. After this dehumanizing moment they were forced to drive home the seven hours with nothing but a traumatizing experience of how horrible people can be. In efforts to make right, Colorado State University offered them to come back for a VIP tour, still leaving the Gray family understandably upset at what occurred. Tachine and Keene write about the efforts to stop discrimination as such on Natives and how often it really occurs.
When I read this article, the story seemed way too similar to many other stories I’ve heard before in the media. The only real difference is the race and the names. Too often people are racially discriminated against and the people whom are the victims of this instance are always the one punished rather than the person who had put this issue into place. One specific incidence that is similar to this is in Philadelphia, PA, two black men were racially profiled and had police arrest them while they were in the Starbucks waiting for friends to arrive. This is an example of how everyday life is complicated for people of color due to the hateful actions of others. Although Starbucks shut down all stores for a day in order to have anti-bias training and Colorado State University gave these two boys a VIP tour, one thing remains constant; you cannot change the fact that these two group of boys were basically given the message that even when you are doing nothing wrong, you are still the first one to be confronted as if you are. Keene and Tachine did an amazing job on this article as it describes a very understanding narrative that this occurs too many times to not consider it an issue.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/02/us/starbucks-arrest-agreements/index.html
Adrienne Keene 