COLUMN: Learning by being in the minority

From Amanda Bergson-Shilcock's, "A Few Good Words," Fall '99 From Amanda Bergson-Shilcock's, "A Few Good Words," Fall '99I am a glow-in-the-dark white person. My Lithuanian, Welsh, English, German, French and Swedish ancestors bequeathed to me the kind of skin that makes "paleface" an understatement. My childhood consisted of sunblock and disastrous photographs. In spite of all this focus on my skin color, I didn't feel white until my third year of college. It began in a summer-session course on Asians in America. Only about a dozen people were registered, and not all of them came to every class. I hadn't thought much about what the ethnic makeup of the students would be. If it occurred to me at all, I probably assumed there would be a somewhat higher proportion of Asian Americans than in some other random class, but I didn't spend a lot of time on it. Still, I was startled to discover that there were only three white students in the class. The other two had excuses for being there -- one was married to a Filipina; the other was majoring in Asian Studies -- leaving me fumbling to justify my presence. What was I doing there? The only answer I had was personal interest. A few semesters later, I was again one of the few non-minority students in Minorities and Media. Ditto for Race and Ethnicity, although it was slightly more balanced. The questions kept troubling me: Why was I there? What right did I have to be there? Was it necessarily a bad thing that minorities were overrepresented in a class designed for them? Wait. Designed for them? Isn't it the epitome of bigotry and prejudgment to assume that non-minority students wouldn't be interested in or benefit from ethnic studies? Even if ethnic studies programs were created in response to requests from minority students, they weren't the only ones asking. Thirty years ago, my mother and other white students at her college participated in demonstrations calling for an Afro-American Studies program. There weren't a dozen blacks in the entire college. I've been in five classes about minority issues. Three of them worked; two of them kept the subject matter at a respectful distance. There was a class on religion that was essentially a group of white Judeo-Christian women sitting around examining the rest of the world. And one on Native Americans, equally well-intentioned, managed to drive away three of four non-white students after the first class. Then there were the three classes with large minority presences -- talking about diverse backgrounds with people who live them just feels much more human. White people in the U.S. can almost always choose not to be out-numbered. The conscious decision to be a minority, even temporarily, is valuable because it creates an atmosphere where any one viewpoint is less likely to be overpowered by a majority viewpoint. The traditional boundary lines between groups just get messed up when you have 20 individuals from 20 different backgrounds. The demographics of the University mean that it is impossible for all white students to have my experience. It wouldn't take too many well-meaning liberals to tip the balance back to a white-dominated classroom. But in my experience, few white students today take advantage of such openings. We are in no imminent danger of tipping the balance. Every semester, some ethnic studies courses are canceled because of low enrollment. And it's not because people don't have room for electives in their schedules. Many of the courses are cross-listed with other departments and satisfy General Requirement sectors. White students are losing opportunities, not just courses. College is not the only place, nor even necessarily the best place, to learn about people with different histories. But it is a place to learn about others. It is an opportunity far too many students overlook.