With every class that enters Saint Louis University, we recognize the never-ending process of opening up the truths of our world to a new class of moldable new minds. I personally know how large the challenge is, only because I can now look back at where I was during the fall of 1997, and be amazed at how far I have come.

My political opinions, purchasing choices, my diet were all based on a view of the world that I gained from life in a sheltering and healthy middle-class family and a college prep all-male high school. College served to take that narrow view and expand it- to show me the world.

While I often let alone other opinions, I must take this chance to provide an opposing view to a fellow writer’s thought.

Last week, Matt Emerson was correct to assert that racial progress has taken place, resulting in a greatly improved situation for many African Americans in our society. But he was grossly in error to suggest that Dave Kvidahl’s argument that black men and women still suffer from the effects of racist structures, was a “folly” or “satire.”

Emerson claimed that Kvidahl’s commentary, which included the line, “Because one man’s body produces more melanin than another, does that make him less than human,” refused to acknowledge the “13th and 14th amendments to the Constitution, Brown v. Board of Education, and the 1964 Civil Rights Act.”

Kvidahl’s commentary was not ignoring these advancements. If Emerson had a practical understanding of the historical steps that he wrote about, he would join Kvidahl in recognizing that his points were true and made more unfortunate because of those points of progress.

What I hope Emerson learns in his next three years of political science classes, as well as from his core liberal arts education, is that despite what advancements the law has made toward race relations, our society as a body is far behind.

Emerson points to our current government as a symbol of improvement, pointing out that three Presidential Cabinet members and one Supreme Court justice are African American. I hope that through his perusing of political texts and from lectures of his professors, he realizes that these men and one woman by no means represent their race. Secretary of State Colin Powell even made a point of the fact that his involvement with the Republican Party does not mean that said party represents blacks effectively. His remarks were understood to mean that he acknowledges that his experiences as an African American is not the typical experience of American blacks.

He calls political correctness “bogus” and claims that black rap artists and Jesse Jackson’s extra-marital affair are examples of how blacks are holding themselves down. He seems to ignore any structural or blatant racism in our culture.

I hope Emerson takes a class in urban affairs. I hope that there he is taught about the segregation that exists in our public schools despite the attempts of Brown v. Topeka Board Of Education, which can also be discussed in his Constitutional Theory class. I hope that in those classes he learns about the hard facts that show that blacks receive less-educational opportunities because of the process that finances predominantly black schools.

My concern is the attitude his commentary seems to exude. While I certainly support recognition for the advancements of the harmonious relations we have achieved, it is ignorant to say that any commentary on what more needs to be done is “uninformed analysis.” Beyond ignorant, it is dangerous.

I hear this similar attitude from the mouths of the young kids at the overly funded high school near my house. It is this attitude that runs rampant through the minds of people who have never dared go near the inner city or educated themselves on who is truly poor and why. They refuse to believe that our nation is still reeling from structures that take prejudice away from personal image of the KKK and places it on the abstract, unstoppable systems that place blame on no one.

It is this attitude that kills the validity of a group of blacks and whites who are looking to improve their communities. It kills any initiative in many of our citizens to put effort into improving relations. And it allows voters to blame blacks themselves for suffering from problems that have supposedly already been solved.

I am hoping that Emerson does not leave college before being introduced to the world in which a majority of Americans live. After my experience at SLU, I am looking forward to meeting Matt Emerson the senior, and I am optimistic that four years at a Jesuit university will open his mind as much as it did mine.