Payton Head speaks to a crowd Monday, Jan. 23 to tell his first-hand account of race-driven hatred. Photo by Ian Keel/Photo Editor
Anthony Roney
Campus Reporter
On Monday, Jan. 23., Payton Head, the former student body president at the University of Missouri, came to the Hill Student Center to give a lecture on the importance of inclusion on college campuses. Head is an African-American, LGBTQ rights activist and a self-proclaimed “change-agent.” After one of his Facebook posts went viral, he caught the attention of the media and like-minded people on a national level. Now, he tours cities and holds lectures about his experiences as a queer African-American in today’s society.
“We can celebrate the diversity but we also have to be champions of inclusion, too,” Head said. “We’re all coming from different spaces and identities but, at the end of the day, we’re all human beings.”
Head also said that just because diversity was visible on college campuses, it still did not mean that everyone was treated the same. He wanted people to do everything that they could to make sure people felt like a part of the community. However, Head said he believed that it would not be easy to convince people to do this.
“I strive to make people uncomfortable because I think that we grow the most when we’re uncomfortable,” Head said. “It challenges every single thing that we believed before.”
Head’s opening statements were simple. He greeted the audience with a “hello,” stated his name and explained who he was. However, as the audience prepared to listen in on his lecture, Head asked them to talk to one person they did not know for five minutes. Head intended for the audience to experience a community discussion, instead of a conventional lecture.
The opening of Head’s discussion described his first experience with being continually called the N-word. He said this jostled him to become more involved with the university and community by running for student body president at the University of Missouri. He succeeded in this goal and immediately sought for changes in the system.
However, nearly the same exact racist incident happened to him again, and that is when he said he needed to speak publicly about it. On Facebook, he described the events that had occurred. He wrote how important it was to stand up against acts and behavior of this nature and to be active in the community. As he read this post aloud, a silence fell over the audience. This was a firsthand account of race-driven hatred.
Head told the audience he went to sleep that night and woke up the next morning to find that the Facebook post had gone viral and national news stations had been calling him all morning. Head said he was surprised to see his post make the news.
“Why is this news?” Head said. “… These are the experiences that you don’t read about every day, you don’t hear about every day, but you heard about mine because I was a student body president. I had a privilege of having a platform in which to speak.”
After he posted his comments on Facebook, the student body protested against the University of Missouri’s administration and called for the resignation of the president and chancellor of the school. These protests continued for months until their goals were achieved.
“Breathe. Fight. Repeat,” Head said in response to an audience member’s question of how he dealt with the stress of the protests.
Head said that people focus too much on issues at a national level rather than the ones at a local level. He also said the younger generations should start running for office. He expressed how voting for your local members of congress and representatives was just as important as voting for the president.
Head viewed the racial problems on college campuses first hand. Now, he is on the road to make every student aware of the problems he experienced in order to prevent them from happening again.
Anthony Roney can be reached at [email protected].
