It is not that I have a problem with organized events about race. I swear. I have a problem with those events when they do not address the issue. The panel at the 1941 room in Cro on Wednesday came dangerously close to this but managed to avoid it.
It was a REF event, organized by the REAL staff with a panel of four professors and two students, Ramata Diallo ’17 and Maurice Tiner ’17. The panel started with Professor David Kim of the Religious Studies department asking us a few questions: which ones of us are comfortable talking about race, who is not and where do we do it? There was a scattering of hands at the first two; I raised mine on both. Then, it was mostly student led, with people contributing personal narratives, political opinion and feelings.
Lamiya Khandekar, ’17, talked about how race and religion stratify her as the “Other.” She spoke about having difficulties about expressing herself in class while talking about issues like ISIS because she knows that her opinion is going to be perceived as “the Muslim opinion.” In doing so, she pointed out a very important facet of white privilege: white people are not looked at as representing their entire community. Their opinions and feelings can be personal and are usually not generalized or used as a standard for other people.
Deion Jordan, ’17 was also an active part of the discussion; he expressed some discontent at the fact that we were talking, or as he put “just talking” about race and not doing anything. While I understand the frustration in sitting around in a circle and having only occasional events to discuss something that should be a part of our deeper consciousness, I also feel (as I pointed out) that even the act of talking about race in a public forum is useful in some way. Nothing can start without critique, and we critique things to make them better, or at least, I would hope so.
The discussion passed its two hour mark pretty easily; between getting food and setting up the room, we were already pretty late. We were still talking in abstracts, though, as Professor Nathalie Etoke, of the French and Africana Studies departments, pointed out. She wanted us to start at the micro level, inwards. I agree with her: race as a construct is so huge, with so much historical baggage, that the most efficient way to deal with it is within your own community. She also mentioned that we consider the segregation of Harris, an issue that I had brought. And talking about it does help, because it converts the distant political into the very real personal.
The real meat of the event was an incident that happened between a black student and a white student. The white student called the black student “eloquent” when talking about them, and they were offended. The discussion kept circling back to this incident and as uncomfortable as it made me (and I’d imagine, most people in the room), it kind of made the whole issue much more real. There was an obvious lack of context there; the history of that particular word and it being used as a surprised, “Black people can talk too” kind of phrase. And I don’t begrudge the white student because I know they didn’t mean harm, but they got very defensive. There was a staff member there, an older white person, who then started defending the student, and then left. Professor Audrey Zakriski, professor of Psychology, pointed it out well when she talked about how to deal with one’s own internalized biases. If you do something racist, admit it, apologize, move on and then maybe never try to do it again.
When the black student talked about how that word has baggage for them, the white person’s response was a dispassionate, “that sucks” absolving themselves of all responsibility. This is where the event became real for me; the discussion and the panel were interesting, but they were far away. They didn’t address the issue the way an organic conflict could. It was interesting when students started talking to each other and not the professors (which one professor did not like) and called each other out. The aim of this event was to teach white people how to talk about race because people of color already talk about race – it affects their lives on a daily basis. And that is fine. But the event should be advertised differently. I know that this College is majority white and they want to learn about race and racism, but the event should be explicit about its intentions.
Personally, I was frustrated with white people telling stories of how they confronted their privilege. Good for them. But the fact that they thought this event catered to them is beyond ridiculous. People of color can apparently not even discuss their own systematic oppression without white people making it about themselves. This is why the talk frustrated me. The fact that you have to confront your privilege somehow superseded that you had that privilege in the first place. People of color are not better off because they don’t have to confront their privilege, they’re just not privileged as you are. That event taught people how to confront their internalized racism, though, which is good and productive and useful. This is why I believe the talk worked: not because that was in its structure but because of the feelings and thoughts it provoked. •
