COLUMN: How to foster racial harmony

From Lee Bailey's, "The Immaculate Perception?," Fall '96 From Lee Bailey's, "The Immaculate Perception?," Fall '96 We live in an era in which integration is not only desirable but fashionable. Benetton has seen to it that we accept images of people of all races cuddling, holding and licking one another. Calvin Klein tells us to just "be" and accept our differences. Films like Clueless and Lethal Weapon depict black and white characters shopping and shooting in racial harmony. So why does life at Penn more closely mirror Spike Lee's ridiculous Higher Learning than the multiracial images presented by other films and ad campaigns? Recently, one Asian freshman I know confessed to me her problems. Having attended an almost exclusively white high school, she is accustomed to socializing and interacting with whites, although she had some Asian friends in high school as well. In the past months, however, she has receviced a hard lesson in racial segregation. Other Asians have condemned her for "selling out her race" by befriending whites. Although disgusted, she continues trying to find more open-minded Asian friends, although she admits she does not want to be channeled into living exclusively among Asians in what she described as "High Rise South Korea." It seems that blacks and whites aren't the only groups on campus facing racial issues. What is the problem here? "Can't we all just get along?" Why do I have a black friend at Princeton who, as a junior, has chosen to live with one other black student, an Indian and two Caucasians? Why don't we see such melting pot social circles more often at Penn? While these questions are undeniably difficult ones, certain facts are obvious. First among them is that by ignoring the existence of other races, one will never come to know or understand them. Individuals of every color -- including African American freshmen who seek social shelter in DuBois -- are guilty of this social crime. In a DP article earlier this week, one black freshman claimed he selected DuBois because he "just wanted to be around black people." Wonderful -- I hope he is able to find an all-black firm in which to work, an all-black restaurant in which to eat and an all-black elementary school for his children to attend. Meanwhile, the rest of us try to use our time at college to prepare ourselves for the real world, which includes blacks, whites, Asians, hispanics -- and many others you won't find in DuBois. Some opponents of randomized housing say that if whites want to find out more about blacks, they are welcome to live in DuBois, too. Why make things difficult? Blacks may not be comfortable in predominately white situations, and vice versa. Why run from discomfort? Why not at least give a freshman the chance to overcome barriers he has discovered everywhere outside of the world of Benetton? As a white student whose freshman-year roommate was black, I highly recommend randomized housing. While that roommate and I are not best friends, living with him made me a lot more open about approaching and meeting individuals of other races. I moved out of our room at the semester's end because I couldn't take two episodes of The Simpsons a day from my roommate's TV, not because of "cultural differences." Still, I was thankful for the chance to meet someone from a background like my roommate's. I wish I had had the opportunity to interact with more people like him on a daily basis. Even if integrated housing doesn't make bosom buddies out of students of different races, what harm is there in giving them a start? Who is hurt? An apt comparison to the situation of racial minorities at Penn is the situation faced by women, another group identified as having "special needs." While the Penn Women's Center is certainly controversial, at least it allows women the opportunity to mix with men. What if pre-freshman were given the option of living in a dormitory designed to "explore the culture and literature of American women?" Would many men choose to live there? Would the women who did learn much about men? Probably not. Why can't DuBois simply be a non-residential entity like the Women's Center? In this column, I have probably raised more questions than I have answered -- because I am absolutely bewildered at the failure of Penn's administration to design an undergraduate experience that promotes racial interaction and capitalizes on the University's wealth of cultural diversity. Presently, the situation at Penn is archaic, and honestly quite disgusting. It is time for some restructuring of a social kind.