When the Rev. Al Sharpton arrives on the University of Colorado at Boulder campus tonight for a speech, he will likely provide one more indication that CU and Boulder are fast developing reputations as symbols of racial division.
Sharpton, founder of the National Action Network and a forceful voice in the dialogue on race relations, is aware of recent problems with race and diversity in Boulder and at CU, his spokeswoman said.
He plans to address those issues – which have included racist e-mail, racist fliers and a possibly race-related attack on a CU student, as well as concern for the lack of minority students – in his speech, she said.
This comes a week after CU interim chancellor Phil DiStefano directly acknowledged the university’s negative reputation on diversity during a state-of-the-campus speech.
For Boulder and CU, the emerging reputation takes a hacksaw to the two communities’ long-standing reputations as bastions of tolerance and liberalism. But those most active in the debate in Boulder disagree over to what extent the perception of Boulder as a racist place accurately describes the problem.
“You can’t just make that generalization,” said Karen Shimamoto, a CU junior who is director of diversity for the student government and a member of a blue-ribbon commission at CU studying diversity issues. “However, a certain number of people actually do feel unsafe in Boulder, and they have every right to.”
Shimamoto said the lack of diversity – this fall, only about 4,000 of the more than 28,000 students enrolled at CU were minorities – is a serious problem, and she said CU’s administration must work quickly to make the campus environment more welcoming to minority students.
Media reports of race-related incidents at CU have, at least partially, fostered the false impression that CU is rife with racism, she said.
Rob Smoke, chairman of Boulder’s Human Relations Commission, said Boulder’s problems lie less in overt racism than in gentrification that keeps poorer people out of the city. Boulder, he said, has never been very racially diverse. And with the median home price now around $460,000, it won’t become so anytime soon.
“I think there’s a lot of people who try hard here, but the reality is that this is just not a community that functions with a lot of racial diversity,” Smoke said.
CU alumna Jessica Peck Corry, director of the conservative Independence Institute’s Campus Accountability Project and a member of the blue-ribbon commission, said CU and Boulder are getting bad raps.
“I think what’s going on with this campus situation is that the Boulder community and the campus specifically is letting a few bigots define the campus environment, which is truly progressive, open-minded and fair,” she said. “The majority of the CU campus is not racist.”
Staff writer John Ingold can be reached at 720-929-0898 or jingold@denverpost.com.
