COLUMN: Do your part to bridge the town-gown divide

From Ronald Kim's, "The Wretched of the Earth," Fall '99 From Ronald Kim's, "The Wretched of the Earth," Fall '99Let's face it. Despite a decrease in the University City crime rate over the past three years, the divide between Penn's campus and West Philadelphia remains every bit as visible and fraught with tension as ever. But perhaps a better question is what individual students can do, in their own lives, to address the problem. After all, University policies are unlikely to be affected by what I, or any one student, happen to think. I may think that it would be nice if more West Philly folks could, or wished to, shop at these new stores. But it takes real collective action to change University plans and I strongly doubt that enough Penn students care enough to ensure that some affordable stores are built at 40th and Walnut. My views on bringing together wealthy white Penn students and working-class, black and immigrant West Philly are equally unlikely to matter to the Indian immigrant truck vendors who were forced to relocate by Penn's zoning restrictions, or the African-American woman who manages my department's photocopying, or the "grungy" poets who live down the street from me. Not, that is, unless I talk to them. Making that contact is the first and most crucial step toward dissolving those pernicious walls, toward unlearning the mistrust and fear on which they are built and toward building a better community. History has given us far too many examples of peoples separated by race, nationality, religion, money or ideology who lived side by side without ever crossing that invisible line drawn by ignorance and pockmarked by fear. Think of Muslims, Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Empire, English- and French-speakers in Montreal, rich and poor in Cairo or Calcutta -- or Italians, blacks, and Cambodians in South Philly's Italian Market. Peoples who rub shoulders at the same markets and use the same facilities, even walk the same streets, and nevertheless rarely stop to look into each others' eyes and talk. For some reason these situations have usually been considered less shameful, less deserving of condemnation than cases of blatant, full-blown geographic segregation. South Africa came under some criticism for instituting the modern form of apartheid in 1948, yet it was not until the white nationalist government disclosed its plans to eventually relocate most of the country's black population to tiny discrete "homelands" that worldwide outrage began to climb. We in the U.S. have moved past this most infamous form of segregation but residential segregation of the black underclass -- and Latinos and Asians, as well -- in decaying urban centers continues to bode poorly for the future of U.S. society. However, such spatial or economic segregation can be undone by governments, if they have the will. What no government, not even the most totalitarian, can legislate -- however much it may try -- is human interaction. As the more privileged and powerful side of the Great Divide between town and gown, we have the responsibility of reaching out to the locals, to the people who live and work all around us whether we acknowledge it or not. It may well be true that Penn should be doing more to foster student-community interaction. But the truth is that such top-down initiatives are nothing by themselves. In the end, either students take on the task of reaching out, or Penn's initiatives remain just dreams on paper. Part of this involves getting out beyond 41st Street, as Andrew recommended. But you don't even have to "go west." Recently, the woman who staffs the copy room in my building commented on how nice it was that I always said hi and wanted to talk to her. Initially I was flattered, but afterwards I was left wondering. Why should I stick out in her mind? Is it that rare for students or lecturers to have any conversations with her that go beyond asking for help? It shouldn't be. Say hello to the man who sweeps the ground by the tables at 36th and Walnut. Ask your lunch truck server how business has been. And definitely show some respect for the hundreds of staff workers who keep this gigantic school running every day. You may not end the tensions or physical separation between Penn and the surrounding community but you will be making a positive contribution, and you'll have done so all by yourself. I guarantee you'll make some new friends, too.