COLUMN: Gaining through difference

From Michael Pereira's, "The Raw and the Cooked," Fall '97 From Michael Pereira's, "The Raw and the Cooked," Fall '97 University officials talk about minority permanence, yet Penn's limited diversity should be evident to anyone on Locust Walk. Statistics depict a surprisingly homogenous campus and efforts to remedy the situation often come wrapped in red tape. Race matters are frequently caricatured at Penn. Disagreement is exploited, while the occasional note of reason is muffled or ignored. Half-baked opinions are declaimed as fact and rebuttals seem rash and visceral -- the victory of outrage over reason. Bad press gets the most press; our appetite for rudeness and fisticuffs is not easily satisfied. Letters and opinion pieces often turn newspapers into boxing rings, as opposed to forums for discussion. And some will say this is positive: Fight the good fight and eventually a winner will emerge, scarred and half-triumphant. But someone will also lose. Ultimately, the casualty of any civil war is everyone. So what now, when it seems like everything has been tried and given up? Have we agreed to disagree? Is there an answer? I suggest we stop shouting and start talking. That's all -- talking. To many, race is a matter of appearance and phenotype, a collection of misconceptions, silhouettes of stereotypes. It is among the keenest weapons in any American demagogue's arsenal, a concept frequently abused and rarely understood. Pseudo-scientists reduce race -- a subtle, subjective concept -- to numbers and hard data; they institutionalize ill-will. Lacking imagination, many hide behind pre-packaged notions of self and other without really knowing either. Our dialogue becomes an exchange of cliches, key-phrases, watchwords and mumbo jumbo. In public we pretend to understand one another, behind closed doors we complain, and rarely, we sit down to talk. Even then, taboo usually dictates bland euphemisms and reinforces ignorance. We can imagine what it means to walk in someone else's shoes, but we can never know for sure. But we can ask -- if we're not afraid to ruffle some feathers -- and maybe learn to imagine more accurately. Discussion, honesty and patience are the enemies of ignorance, but they do not happen by themselves. They require a concerted effort. They require talking and listening and going out of your way. They require five minutes, and most of us don't have five minutes... While honest talk has the power to raze barriers, it is also difficult and at times disturbing. To the "great silent majority," nothing is so unsettling as a powerful, unified voice of opposition. W.E.B. DuBois College House -- which has been singled out (for some unknown reason) as the proxy for all specialized housing -- inspires fear and awe, but only rarely visits from its detractors. In discussion with residents, I have heard it called an extended family, a refuge; yet it remains, by choice, an enigma to those comfortably ensconced in majority, unwilling or uninterested in the many shades of reality on campus. The motive to complain is stronger and easier than the desire to understand. "Wait it out" is the static credo. It will pass. The response to unsettling questions is usually a deafening silence in hopes that the questions will be forgotten and answers will not be necessary. Without individual initiative, culture -- potentially one of the best educators on campus -- may remain an untapped resource. Yet cultural symbiosis, while positive, is not mandated behavior for any member of the Penn community. It is not the duty of students or faculty members of color to represent their race in a classroom or any other setting, just as no white student or faculty can be expected to represent whites. Further, no individual can represent a race, even if she wants to. One is first an individual, then a member of a racial group. Cultural awareness is a matter of personal consent, just as racial understanding is a matter of solo initiative. But both should be a matter of general concern. While the work must be done on a person-to-person level, its effects will resound community-wide. Ugly as it can be, I think it would be salutary to amplify Penn's racial dialogue and thereby hope to hear it. Racial issues don't lend themselves to satisfying closure. There's a whole lot of gray area where many see only black and white; and, not surprisingly, there's plenty of room for cant and self-serving rhetoric. The heart of the matter gets clogged with b.s. deposits -- for instance, Clint Bolick likening affirmative action to Jim Crow laws -- and creative discourse recedes into improbability. Dialogue is dangerous, and necessary. I recently attended a discussion on race and housing. It was hugely informative, and attendance reflected the racial imbalance on campus, only in reverse, letters in a mirror. Those who would benefit most from the discussion were absent. And that's the paradox: Involvement -- the best cure for our social ills -- is voluntary, and disinterest prevents involvement on a larger scale. The many remain reticent while the few replace taboos with candor; and that majority, in their silent search for scapegoats, will only find louder opposition.