In honor of Black History Month, MALIK Fraternity, Inc. held an informative presentation in the Stony Brook Union on Friday, Feb. 8 from 7 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. The event, titled “Institutionalized: A MALIK Presentation and Discussion,” aimed to educate attendees on the societal factors that perpetuate racial inequalities.
Torian Smith, the president of MALIK Fraternity, Inc. and a sophomore double majoring in business management and psychology, displayed a graph that showed Black Americans have one of the highest poverty rates as compared to other races. To understand why this is the case, he separated the presentation into four different parts.
The four segments were “Housing Segregation,” “the Black Panther Party,” “Into the Modern Era” and “White Guilt.”
Smith opened with the Fair Housing Act of 1968, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, religion, sex and national origin during the rental, sale and financing of housing. He explained that even with this act in place, there were several barriers that Black Americans faced.
Smith showed a video published by Newsday in 2021. The video focused on a study conducted to reveal the racism of real estate agents’ practices when searching for housing for clients. The study consisted of 39 pairs, and each pair went to the same real estate agent and requested the same parameters for a home. The testers would immerse themselves into their characters with fake names and memorize their income information, credit score and whether they were pre-approved for a loan or not; the only distinction between each pair was their race. The study showed 49% of Black buyers faced more inequality than white buyers.
During the second half of the presentation, Smith spoke about the “Black Panther Party,” a Black political organization founded by Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton. He explained that many misconceptions were created about the Black Panther Party, specifically that they held hatred for white people and were unnecessarily violent.
In between the late 1960s and early 1980s, many news articles depicted the Black Panther Party in a negative light. Smith referenced journalist Edward P. Morgan, who wrote a chapter in the novel “In Search of the Black Panther Party.” In his chapter, Morgan analyzed articles written about the party and over the course of 11 years, he claimed that “there isn’t a single article that focuses on the community-building aspect of the Panthers.”
After Smith concluded his section focusing on the Black Panther Party, he asked attendees if they believed the Black Panther Party could exist today; he then asked whether they believed it should.
Imani Studdard, an attendee and a senior majoring in health science, said organizations like the Black Panther Party should still exist.
“I think a lot of people are definitely using [the party’s] philosophies in the way they move today. I think we see a lot of parallels with the struggles that Black and brown people have to face during that time as to what is going on today … I think that, honestly, things like that should still exist. I think it was a good movement [that provided] good programs for the community, and other organizations still do those things,” Studdard said.
Afterward, Smith moved onto the third part of his presentation, which examined the misconceptions from racist posts on social media, microaggressions and the differences in mortality rates due to police brutality. He displayed a chart from the Washington Post that compared Black mortality rates due to law enforcement misconduct with those of other races over the span of nine years. The data revealed that Black people had the highest mortality rate in the United States.
Smith also showed a chart with examples of microaggressions and the implicit messages behind them. He explained one of the chart’s concepts titled the “Myth of Meritocracy,” which is defined as “statements which assert that race, class, gender, abilities or sexual orientation do not play a role in life success.” The chart listed examples of microaggressions that fall under this concept, which led Smith to ask attendees whether they had ever experienced any microaggressions.
Alani Brathwaite, a junior majoring in health science, shared her experience where an older white woman accused her and her family of attempting to steal her bank information.
“’I was at the bank with my family in Manhattan, [N.Y.] and [an older] white woman came up to us while we were putting in our bank information. She said, ‘Why are you watching my bank information? Why are you trying to steal?’ and [we were] like ‘you came up to us […] you need to leave us alone, you’re bothering us and you’re in our space,’” Brathwaite said.
During the final part of the presentation, Smith touched on “White Guilt,” which refers to a phenomenon when a white person feels a sense of responsibility and guilt in regard to racial inequality and the privileges they derive from it — even if they were not personally responsible for any acts of injustice. He referred to Shelby Steele, the author of “White Guilt: How Blacks and Whites Together Destroyed the Promise of the Civil Rights Era,” who believes victimization is the greatest hindrance to Black Americans. More specifically, Steele does not support affirmative action, leading Smith to ask attendees for their thoughts on affirmative action.
In response, Brandon Fednard, a junior majoring in psychology, shared that affirmative action can often be misunderstood. He said that it can sometimes be seen as an excuse to hire minorities to make a company look more diverse as opposed to hiring individuals based on their qualifications.
“But [people] don’t really understand that when the playing field is not fair, you have to level [it], it’s about giving everybody the same opportunity to be able to be in different jobs, or whatever positions,” Fednard said.
Smith shared that it took an immense amount of time and research to ensure the information presented was accurate, understand the historical context behind these racial barriers and try to see every perspective.
“I want to see other perspectives in the Black community … Something big and grand like this [presentation], I think [is] helpful to understand where we can go forward, how we can further help our community,” Smith said. “That’s why I put all this together, to really understand how I can be a better community member and how I can [learn] more.”
