Here is a small but fascinating story from the University of New Hamp****re:
"Black Family Weekend Exemplified Multiculturalism," reads the headline in
the
New Hamp****re, the student newspaper. The headline actually underpromises.
The
story delivers an elegant synecdoche for race relations in America.
Black Family Weekend was an event sponsored by UNH's Black Student Union,
"designed to help connect students of color and their families with the
UNH
community," re****ts the paper. It was in many ways a success, according to
the
BSU members quoted:
"The main goal of this weekend is being able to not only
connect students of color's family and community with UNH,
but also being able to engage in a real sense of multiculturalism
and inclusion," said Ava Fields, chairwoman of the Black
Student Union. . . .
"It has been extremely well organized," said Tristan Striker,
a junior and BSU volunteer for Black Family Weekend. "It's a
big example of what a university brings in terms of diversity.
A big step forward in bringing diversity to the university in
a more approachable and entertaining way." . . .
"People need to see students of color and students of color
need to see themselves in programming and curriculum," said
Cait Vaughan, a member of the BSU. "Students of color need
to be able to take up space and be heard. Black Family Weekend
is part of that."
But in one respect, the event fell short:
The biggest criticism from the weekend seemed to be the
under-representation of white students at many of the
weekend's events.
"It's said that the majority of UNH students feel that these
events weren't meant for them or their enjoyment, when the
goal of the BSU events are for everyone to enjoy them," said
Fields.
Her sentiment seems to be carried by others.
"I hope white people around here start getting it together
and step outside their privileged comfort zones to meet some
amazing people and make life at UNH what it could be if we
all were less individualistic and more committed to true
change," said Vaughan.
We suspect Fields said "It's sad" rather than "It's said." In any case,
let's
look at this from a different point of view. Imagine that you are a
"typical
white person" at UNH, to borrow a phrase from a prominent racial
reconciliator. You see fliers around campus from the _Black_ Student
Union--whose logo [1] features a fist raised in the _black_ power
salute--for
_Black_ Family weekend. Not being part of a black family, you reckon that
the
event is not for you, so it doesn't occur to you to go.
Then, after the fact, you read in the paper that one of the event's
organizers
is disparaging people like you for not going, stereotyping you as taking
refuge in "privileged comfort zones" and saying you need to "get it
together."
Does this make you feel as if you would have been welcome at Black Family
Weekend, as if it had something to offer you, as if you should have gone?
The Black Student Union apparently wished to achieve two conflicting
goals: on
the one hand, asserting a separate identity as black or "of color"; on the
other, gaining the attention and approval of white peers. From the paper's
account, the BSU seems to have focused entirely on realizing the first
goal.
If the second goal really was im****tant--if the BSU was interested in
attracting white students to its event--then this was a failure of
conception
and marketing. Interpreting it as a _moral_ failure on the part of the
absent
whites is a misunderstanding, one that only perpetuates black resentment
and
white indifference. A familiar pattern, no?
The Tartan, the weekly student newspaper at Pittsburgh's Carnegie Mellon
University, re****ts on an event that bears some similarity to the UNH
Black
Family Weekend. It seems that Michelle Obama, Barack's better half, held a
campaign rally at CMU last week:
While the crowd was indeed diverse, some students at the event
questioned the practices of Mrs. Obama's event coordinators,
who handpicked the crowd sitting behind Mrs. Obama. The Tartan's
correspondents observed one event coordinator say to another,
"Get me more white people, we need more white people." To an
Asian girl sitting in the back row, one coordinator said, "We're
moving you, sorry. It's going to look so pretty, though."
"I didn't know they would say, 'We need a white person here,'
" said attendee and senior psychology major Shayna Watson, who
sat in the crowd behind Mrs. Obama. "I understood they would
want a show of diversity, but to pick up people and to reseat
them, I didn't know it would be so outright."
"I'm not sure there's any real reason for outrage here," opines Politico's
Ben
Smith:
Every campaign, at least implicitly, includes race in the
staging of events like this--even a campaign whose sup****ters
chant "race doesn't matter." But they don't usually get caught
doing it this explicitly.
We tend to agree with Smith that outrage is an overreaction. The Obama
campaign is merely acting in accordance with liberal orthodoxy on race,
expressed 30 years ago by Justice Harry Blackmun in University of
California
v. Bakke: "In order to get beyond racism, we must first take account of
race.
.. . . And in order to treat some persons equally, we must treat them
differently."
When a supposedly postracial campaign is proclaiming, "We need more white
people," perhaps the time has come to ask if encouraging
hyperconsciousness of
race is really the way to get beyond racism.
[1]: http://www.unh.edu/bsu/blackfamilyweekend/
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