On Feb. 15, in large lectures and intimate classroom discussions, historian and journalist Jelani Cobb spoke to the Lakeside community about how race and racism have left their mark throughout American history and why he believes talking about this is not divisive but essential for moving the country forward.
Cobb's visit was made possible by the Mark J. Bebie '70 Memorial Lecture, which features speakers on topics related to the environment, technology, education, and other subjects. Cobb is a staff writer at The New Yorker and teaches in the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. He was formerly associate professor of history at the University of Connecticut, where he was director of the Africana Studies Institute.
Cobb started the day at the Middle School, where he spoke to students, faculty, and staff about his father, who didn't graduate from elementary school but raised a son who is a professor at Columbia; about the importance of free public libraries, "the great equalizer"; and about becoming a journalist through his love of rap. "[He was] thoughtful, measured, inspiring, and honest," said Middle School Director Elaine Christensen. He also addressed topics students have been exploring in their affinity groups, she said. "He spoke candidly ... about positive racial identity, empathy, privilege, and how optimistic he is because of all the young people who have the potential to change the world."
Cobb began his late-morning presentation to Upper School students, faculty, and staff by addressing why he writes about race. Talking about race is not divisive, he argued, but the opposite: "I write from a place of attempting to get us to open our eyes to a reality that has confronted us since the inception of this country, in an effort that we can move beyond it ... You cannot understand this country without understanding race." In exploring the roots of today's divisive climate, Cobb touched on how racial hierarchy was written into founding documents like the Declaration of Independence, in the form of the fugitive slave clause, three-fifths compromise, and the allowance of the slave trade until 1808. He touched on examples throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, including the concerns about immigration that led to the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, and the Immigration Act of 1924, aimed at limiting the number of Italians, Irish, and Eastern European Jews entering the country. That act was ended in 1965, almost 20 years after the United States denied entry to Jewish refugees seeking sanctuary in 1938 and 1939, many of whom were returned to Nazi Germany.
Cobb ended his morning address talking about how his experience growing up in Queens, New York – statistically, the most diverse place in the United States – influenced his approach to his work as a historian and a journalist. "The only way that democracy can exist is if we are able to see ourselves in each other," he said. Evoking Martin Luther King Jr.'s concept of the inescapable network of mutuality, he said that the "recognition that we are all connected to each other... [has] become a forgotten part of our contemporary conversation about politics, and race, and ethnicity, and immigration."
In addition to the assemblies at the Middle School and Upper School, Cobb spoke to students taking U.S. History classes, as well as the history elective Sexuality and the Law and the English elective Fiction Writing. Many students had prepared by reading New Yorker pieces by Cobb, including a recent article about the trial of Dylann Roof. Students asked questions about Cobb's experience as a journalist and whether journalism matters in today's context of fake news, as well as ethical questions like how to respond to unkindness when we are taught to be kind.
His evening lecture for the larger Lakeside community, "The Half-Life of Freedom: Race and Justice in America Today," focused more explicitly on current events and Cobb's work as a journalist. He held the audience spellbound in describing the weeks spent covering the Roof trial in South Carolina, and how the effects of that crime have played out across the country.