On Feb. 13 Elgin Community College’s MAGIC held it’s third Targets of Hate event of the year. The event took place in the ECC’s  dining hall, located in building E at 6:30 PM, and went until 9:00 PM. At the event, attendees watched “13th”, a documentary about incarceration, in particular as it pertains to African-Americans.  MAGIC is the Multicultural and Global Initiatives Committee.

The film was introduced very quickly, and attendees were invited to partake in food and drinks that were provided at the event. The documentary was shown in its entirety. The film covered issues of discrimination against African Americans from the 1960’s, like segregation and the integration of African-Americans into what were then all-white schools,  to more modern issues of today such as the Stand Your Ground laws and American incarceration policies.
The room was filled with a variety of different people. There were ECC students and faculty, and a group of Elgin police officers in attendance.  Proceeding the film, a questionnaire was passed out to each table, with questions on it relating to the movie and people’s reactions to it.

After the film ECC professor, Joyce Fountain spoke about the film and issues of race in America.
“When we have these discussions, we’re looking at what our real issues, are,” Fountain said,  “we are all learning things about ourselves and about the other, it depends on which of the others you are, life can be very different in this culture, and so I challenge all of us to not so quickly dismiss what we’ve seen. There is a lot to the history of this nation that for whatever reason has been eliminated or taken out of the story, and so don’t be so quick to make sweeping assumptions about different groups of people.”

Attendants then shared their views on the film.

“I feel ignorant to this topic,” said Lori Pickering, an ECC student. “I think this is a great opportunity for people to see it, but I also think that maybe it should be in a classroom, but not just a history class, it should be in many different classes for so many different reasons and I think everybody needs to be better educated.”

Lt. Sean Rafferty of the Elgin police department shared his views as well.

“I absolutely learned something new, that’s the reason why I come to events like this,” Rafferty said. “To help in understanding what other people are dealing with. Hopefully everybody can get a better understanding of what’s going on, self analyze, be self aware of what’s going on in their lives, the questions that were asked at the end, whether or not you’re looking at these situations from the eyes of someone who might be white or black or Asian or Hispanic or otherwise or whether you look at it the eyes of a male or a female we all should be looking at it from the same eyes, of getting a better understanding of what everybody’s going through.”

After the event was over, ECC professor Clark Hallpike shared what he hoped the event would achieve for the students and attendees.

“I want to help our students understand some of the history and culture in the United States because quite often these students don’t get that exposure from K through 12. There’s so much we don’t know about what happens in America,” Hallpike said.