On Tuesday, Jan. 18, Director of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging Donique McIntosh spoke to the Kingswood Oxford community during an assembly dedicated to Martin Luther King Jr. From topics ranging from microaggressions to hate crimes, she discussed the continued racism in this country and beyond.
Dr. McIntosh began by sharing the total number of hate crimes in the United States in 2021. She urged the community to recognize this and the fact that many hate crimes go unreported each year. Therefore, the total number of cases, in reality, might be much larger than the amount that reports provide.
When preparing for this speech, Dr. McIntosh compiled research and thoughts from a book of every speech that MLK Jr. ever gave. She knew that most students would be familiar with his famous “I Have A Dream” speech and “A Letter From A Birmingham Jail,” so she also highlighted other, less widely-known writings in her remarks.
Martin Luther King Jr. was an avid advocate of civil rights and equality. Dr. McIntosh discussed this in her speech and also emphasized the significance of his assassination. “For Martin Luther King, there’s a holiday, and he’s up on this pedestal, but many people at the time did not like him,” she said. “So there’s also, for me, some value in being able to point out these other pieces about who he was and how he was received to highlight the costs associated with social justice and trying to create change and do something different.”
Dr. McIntosh’s speech also focused on the current challenges we face as a society. She wanted to present these works of MLK in an altered form and highlight the legacy of racism and how exactly individuals see racism manifest itself today. Although Dr. King’s speeches are from the 1960s, Dr. McIntosh believes they are still relevant at present. “We are still wrestling with some of these messages: misogyny and racism,” she said. “I hoped that people would be uncomfortable on some level with what I would say. Because I feel for us to actually do something different, or get somewhere different, we need to be uncomfortable with the way that things are.”
So how exactly can students make a change? Dr. McIntosh wanted to touch upon this very question. In the reports and statistics that Dr. McIntosh read, she noted that our generation is the most engaged and interested in social justice. Dr. McIntosh hopes that her speech will inspire students to be the change that they want to see in the world. “I see myself as an advocate for you all, and as a nurturer of people who want to go out and change the world, even if changing the world is starting at your home,” she said.
Sophomore Ally LaCroix thought that Dr. McIntosh’s speech was crucial for the community to hear. As someone interested in social justice, this speech greatly impacted her. “Martin Luther King Jr. Day is a necessary event,” she said. “I appreciate that KO is speaking about the continuation of racial injustice in our societies. This speech brought a lot to my attention, and I hope that it did for others as well.”
KO students can take away many things from Dr. McIntosh’s speech, but perhaps one of the most important messages is to honor the legacies of influential change-makers by continuing to fight for what you believe in.
